The Banking Crisis: Obama's Iraq Part 2

It is hard to assess who among the current DC crew are more limp when it comes to addressing the banking crisis in a meaningful and effective manner: Geithner, Summers or Bernanke.

They are all the very picture of the bureaucrat, which is a nice way of saying "systemic hacks." Have Timmy and Ben have reached their level of incompetency? Larry Summers has far exceededed his some years ago at Harvard.

It is difficult ground when one speculates on motives, but these are all rather bright fellows, albeit creatures nurtured by the system that they serve. It is hard to accept that their inability to address our financial crisis is sheer incompetency. But for now they obtain the benefit of doubt and the CEO's defense made so popular by the Enron crowd.

We wonder how bad it will get before Obama understands that his team is not working, that they have no actionable vision among them for whatever combination of reasons, and that the corruption being perpetuated is starting to stick rather handily to the Democrats.

The banking crisis is starting to look like Obama's Iraq.


Bloomberg
Hoenig Says Treasury Failed to Take ‘Decisive’ Action on Banks
By Steve Matthews and Vivien Lou Chen

March 6 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Treasury has failed to take “decisive” action to address the bank crisis, pursuing an ad- hoc approach that leaves management in place and avoids necessary asset writedowns, a veteran Federal Reserve official said.

“If an institution’s management has failed the test of the marketplace, these managers should be replaced,” Fed Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig said in prepared remarks for a speech in Omaha, Nebraska. “They should not be given public funds and then micro-managed, as we are now doing” with “a set of political strings attached.”

Hoenig’s comments are the most detailed criticism of the Treasury’s actions by a Fed official since the financial crisis began. By contrast, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has endorsed the approaches taken by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his predecessor.

Geithner is requiring a “stress test” for the largest 19 U.S. banks to determine if they need more capital. He has stressed that nationalization isn’t the goal.

Last week, the U.S. government moved to convert some of the preferred stock it owned in Citigroup Inc. to common shares, gaining a 36 percent stake in the company and boosting Citigroup’s buffer against future losses. While authorities pushed for changes to the makeup of Citigroup’s board, Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit remains at the helm.

Hoenig said while policy makers “understandably” want to avoid nationalizing banks, “We nevertheless are drifting into a situation where institutions are being nationalized piecemeal with no resolution of the crisis.”

The Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program “began without a clear set of principles and has proceeded with what seems to be an ad-hoc and less-than-transparent approach,” Hoenig said today.

Banking regulators need to be willing to write down losses, bring in new managers and sell off businesses if institutions can’t survive on their own, “no matter what their size,” said Hoenig, the second-longest serving of the Fed district bank presidents, after Minneapolis’s Gary Stern.

The Banking Crisis: Obama's Iraq Part 1

Its a step in the right direction, but its hardly reform.

Everything about the Obama Administration to date has been 'limp,' toothless, almost apologetic.

Obama is on the road to failure, getting an "A" for rhetoric but "F's" for vision, commitment, team-building, and action.


Bloomberg
Volcker Urges Dividing Investment, Commercial Banks
By Matthew Benjamin and Christine Harper

March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Commercial banks should be separated from investment banks in order to avoid another crisis like the U.S. is experiencing, according to former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

“Maybe we ought to have a kind of two-tier financial system,” Volcker, who heads President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said today at a conference at New York University’s Stern School of Business. (Uh, didn't we have one up until a few months ago when Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley put on the Fed feedbag? - Jesse)

Commercial banks would provide customers with depository services and access to credit and would be highly regulated, while securities firms would have the freedom to take on more risk and practice trading, “relatively free of regulation,” Volcker said. (OMG - Jesse)

Volcker’s remarks indicated his preference for reinstating some of the divisions between commercial and investment banks that were removed by Congress’s repeal in 1999 of the Great Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act.

Volcker’s proposals, included in a January report he wrote with the Group of 30, would allow commercial banks to continue to do underwriting and provide merger advice, activities traditionally associated with investment banking, he said.

Still, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, which converted to banks in September, would have to exit some businesses if they were to remain as commercial banks, he said.

‘Separation’

“What used to be the traditional investment banks, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs so forth, which used to do some underwriting and mergers and acquisitions, are dominated by other activities we would exclude -- very heavy proprietary trading, hedge funds,” he said. “So there’s some separation to be made.”

Jeanmarie McFadden, a spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley, declined to comment. A Goldman spokesman couldn’t be immediately reached.

Volcker also said international regulations on financial firms are probably an inevitable consequence of the industry’s current problems.

“In this world, I don’t see how we can avoid international consistency” on securities regulations going forward, he said. “The U.S. is no longer in a position to dictate that the world does it according to the way we’ve done it.”

Volcker’s comments come as President Barack Obama seeks legislative proposals within weeks for a regulatory overhaul of finance, especially companies deemed vital to the stability of the financial system.

Glass-Steagall

The new regulatory framework may stop short of reinstating Glass-Steagall, analysts say, though banks may separate their business lines in order to avoid strong regulatory scrutiny.

Volcker, who ran the Fed from 1979 to 1987, said the financial industry’s problems stem from larger issues. “I don’t think this is just a technical problem, it’s a societal problem,” he said. He cited bankers on Wall Street receiving multimillion-dollar bonuses for engineering failed mergers.

“There’s something wrong with the system,” Volcker said. “What are the incentives, what’s going on here?”

British Airways Cut to "Junk"

Hard times for the world's favorite airline.

We hope it endures. It was a blow to traveling civility when SwissAir closed shop.

Many fond memories of the day flight from JFK to Heathrow with the odd chance of an upgrade to the Concorde.

Still, there is always the upstrart Virgin and Branson's Heathrow Clubhouse. And First on Alitalia to Roma. La dolce vita! lol.

Do we lose the frequent flier mileage points in bankruptcy? Oh the humanity!


Reuters
British Airways debt cut to junk after profit warning
By John Bowker
Wed Feb 11, 2009

LONDON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Moody's cut its debt rating on British Airways to 'junk' status in light of the airline's recent profit warning and future spending plans.

The agency said it expected BA's gearing to rise to more than six times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) after warning it would make an operating loss of 150 million pounds ($216.1 million) in the year to end March -- or a record 240 million pounds in this quarter alone.

It said BA had 5.3 billion pounds in cash and committed debt facilities, but that the majority of it was tied up in spending plans. BA's rating was cut from Baa3 to Ba1 -- the difference between investment grade and junk status.

"In light of stepped up capex planned in full year 2010 and the continued weak outlook for the industry as a whole, the company will be challenged to improve its credit metrics materially," Moody's said in a statement....

"The rating downgrade reflects extremely difficult trading conditions ... we continue to review all aspects of the business to further control costs and preserve our cash position," he added.


Wall Street Journal
British Airways Warns of Revenue Drop for Next Fiscal Year
By KAVERI NITHTHYANANTHAN
MARCH 6, 2009

British Airways PLC lowered its expectations for revenue growth in the current fiscal year and warned sales would fall next year as it cuts capacity in response to softening demand.

The British flag carrier said that in the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, it expects revenue to rise 3.5%, which compares with an earlier estimate of 4% growth. Next fiscal year, the airline expects revenue to decline 5%.

At its investor day on Thursday, BA said that fuel costs for this year will rise by £950 million ($1.35 billion). However, for the coming fiscal year, the airline expects fuel costs to decline 10%, thanks to hedging at levels lower than the peaks seen in the middle of 2008....

Most Chinese Economists Favor Gold Over US Treasuries for Their National Reserves

Barbarously inconvenient to the global dollar hegemon.

Time for another announcement of an IMF gold sale? Sounds as though China would like to know when they will be able to take delivery.

Zimbabwe Ben will simply have to pick up the slack.

In all seriousness, if China starts pressing this issue the US will have no choice but engage in the long overdue revaluation of its national gold reserves significantly higher. This would be one method of reducing the national debt to China and buying back some of the Treasury bonds.

Unfortunately in this case 'higher' would be a factor of x5 at least, or as high as an order of magnitude, x10.

Perhaps the Chinese would settle for an option on West Texas, if Mexico is not interested.

And the angel shouted, "Fallen! Powerful Babylon has fallen..." Revelation 18:2


ChinaStakes
Survey: Over Two-Thirds of Chinese Economists Favor Gold Over US Bonds
by CSC staff, Shanghai
March 02,2009

In a survey of major Chinese economists, more than two-thirds are reportedly bearish on the prospect of China increasing its holdings of US government bonds, and believe instead the nation should putting more of its hard-earned into gold.

According to a China Business News survey of 70 Chinese economists (including one foreign economist), the exact figure is 71.4% anti-bonds and pro-gold.

The use of China's huge foreign exchange reserve is a topic of concern and controversy. The remaining 28.6% of those polled believe China should continue to buy U.S. Treasury bonds. 38.6% think that China should not continue to buy, but also should not to sell US bonds. 32.8% believe that China should unload the bonds, 22.8% of whom think we should have a slight sell-off, while 10% think China should drop them like a bad habit.

All this is against a backdrop of China surpassing Japan to become America's largest US bond holder and of the ever-widening global financial kerfuffle.

The survey also brings to light the question of whether China’s gold reserves should be increased. Recent gold futures prices broke through US$1000/ounce, making gold the most outstanding asset in the financial turmoil. One economist thinks China’s current gold reserve of 600 tons is an unnecessary load and that the opportunity should be grasped to sell off a bunch of it at a good price.

21.4% of economists said that the gold reserve level was fine and leave it alone.

But 75.7% of the economists asked believe that China should increase its holdings of gold, with 48.6% opting for a slight increase while 27.1% think China should pile in.

At US$1000 an ounce?!