Category: regulation

Are You Wondering Just How Corrupt the Stress Tests Were

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Well, wonder no more. Treasury negotiated the results of the tests with the banks.

Of course if you were a student, and attempted to browbeat your teacher into improving your grade, they would just laugh in your face or demand a bribe, but if you are Ben Bernanke and Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, they can do it for you for free, or as Joe Btfsplk wrote in the comments section of this story, “Maybe next time, they could give the banksters multiple choice tests,” because they certainly failed the true-false test:

The Federal Reserve significantly scaled back the size of the capital hole facing some of the nation’s biggest banks shortly before concluding its stress tests, following two weeks of intense bargaining.

Bargaining?

This is supposed to be a test administered by the Treasury and Federal Reserve, not a negotiation.

The banks are in hock to the Treasury and FDIC for hundreds of billions of dollars, and to the Federal Reserve for Trillions, and they negotiated with the banks?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

In addition, according to bank and government officials, the Fed used a different measurement of bank-capital levels than analysts and investors had been expecting, resulting in much smaller capital deficits.

Again, this is not grading on a curve, this is is everyone getting a gold star.

Yes, Wells threatened a lawsuit, but that was an empty threat, because of the response of the market to their suing the FDIC, Treasury, and Federal reserve would have turned their shares into penny stocks.

Moron

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Yep, it’s Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner again, who really does not have a f^%$ing clue.

In this case, it is his insistence that U.S. banks can earn their way out of the current hole that they dug themselves in:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is betting that U.S. banks can do something their Japanese counterparts were unable to accomplish in that country’s “lost decade” of the 1990s: earn their way out of trouble.

The stress-test results released yesterday by regulators found that the 19 largest banks face a $74.6 billion capital hole that may be filled mostly by private money. That compares with the hundreds of billions of dollars seen by outside analysts, including the International Monetary Fund, and takes into account banks’ projected earnings over the next two years.

The “stress-test results are an important step forward,” Geithner said in a statement announcing the results. “Americans should know that the government stands behind the banking system and that their deposits are safe.”

…

Geithner told reporters that regulators took a conservative approach to toting up potential credit losses and calculating the industry’s ability to absorb them through increased earnings. The forecast of future profits was at the “quite low end of analysts’ expectations,” he said.

(emphasis mine)

It is quite literally all a confidence game to him: If he can convince the American public to maintain their confidence in the banking system, then they will make so much money, from those FDIC subsidized loans, I guess, that they will earn their way out of this.

It’s also clear that the “stress test” was intended as a confidence building measure, whether it is justified or not.

When you look at the dictionary for the definition of “regulatory capture“, the process by, “which a government regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead acts in favor of the commercial or special interests that dominate in the industry or sector it is charged with regulating,” you sill see this picture.

Great googly moogly! How stupid do they think that we are?

Who are they anyway? Maybe we can export them to Namibia.

Just So You Know, There Are No Grown-Ups In Charge

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Alan Grayson (D-FL) questioning the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve, and it appears that no one is in the process of reviewing any Federal Reserve activities.

Un-dirtyword believable.

The Federal Reserve needs to be reformed and made more transparent.

I don’t know of any specific allegations of corruption, but when you are seeing 9 trillion in transactions, and not even the attempt to see what is going on, I cannot imagine that someone out there is not lining their own pockets.

More Evidence that the Fix Was In on the Stree Tests

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As Peter Boockvar observes, they can raise the capital through a simple accounting trick

Considering that they’ve already received $45b in preferred stock from the US taxpayer, an accounting maneuver of converting that to common can, Voila, cure their capital needs without raising a penny of new money, a move that even the magician David Copperfield would be in awe of.

Just delightful.

Everyone gets a gold star, and all the test takers are cheating.

Economics Update

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I think that we have some promising news here, though, eternal bear that I am, believe it to be a pause rather than the start of a turn around.

That being said, first time jobless claims fell, as did the less noisy 4 week moving average (see pic), which makes 4 weeks for the 4 week moving average, though continuing claims rose 56K to 6.351 million, indicating that this might more that businesses are running out of people to lay off than people are being rehired.

That being said, the fact that the April retail sales numbers beat expectations is just generally good news.

I’m not sure, however, how they managed to beat expectations, what with consumer credit dropping a record $11.1 billion in March, which indicates that the consumer is retrenching.

My guess is that this is an artifact of tax refunds.

In Europe, we have the Bank of England holding rates steady and the ECB cutting rates by 250 basis points (¼%), and both have expanded their programs of “quantitative easing” (printing money).

These actions were not particularly aggressive, which meant that the dollar Euro, because they are simply less likely to debase the currency as much as Uncle Ben (Bernanke).

The concerns about the US money supply are also finding their way into the US Treasuries market, with interest rates on the latest bond sales exceeding expectations, because investors are worried about monetarily driven inflation.

Still, reading the tea leaves on real estate, things are not going well, with delinquencies on dues to homeowners associations, which tend to foreshadow mortgage defaults, growing rapidly from 2.8% last June to 5.3% today.

Additionally, you have condo and apartment sales in Manhattan declining precipitously, with sales falling 48% year over year. (!)

The fact that mortgage rates are trending higher is not a help here.

In the world outside of real estate, the transportation based indicators are not showing any sign of recovery either, with Suez Canal April revenues falling 22.7% YoY.

Still, oil traders are betting on increased demand for oil, which translates into increased economic activity, and so crude rose today.

It’s Official, the “Stress Test” Was Just Theater

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We are getting reports now of what Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner’s stress test has determined, and it’s clearly not reality.

Bank Needs
Capitalization		 Amount
Bank of America Yes $34 B
Wells Fargo Yes $15B
Citigroup Yes $5B
Morgan Stanley Yes $1-2B
Goldman No

MetLife No

JP Morgan Chase No

Bank of NY Mellon No

American Express No

Capital One No

BB&T No

This is a damn joke.

You have one “oh my God” number, for Bank of America, and it’s about 50% of their market cap, but Citi, which is clearly in much worse shape is somehow better capitalized by a factor of 6.

This is simply not true, even after BoA’s disastrous acquisition of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide.

Also note this joint statement from the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, FDIC, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which, to my untutored eye, appears to say that they are going to go with their cockamamie scheme to claim that capital is increased by swapping preferred for common stock.

It’s an accounting trick, and what’s more, it’s one where the taxpayer has just taken a second haircut.

They are making great theater by pretending to talk tough and giving a month for the banks that need to to present a plan to raise capital, and 6 months to have this plan in action, but it’s all a lie, since the plan may very well be, “suck on this, taxpaying rubes”.

I disagree with former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson’s analysis, which is that they are selectively leaking to create confusion in order to keep people from looking at whether the test was too hard on the banks.

I think that his analysis is incomplete. The “stress test” begins and ends with public relations. It’s a sham, and it has always been a sham, intended to show that the government was serious about reigning in the big banks, without actually engaging in the necessary actions, like seizure of insolvent institutions that would actually be required for it to work.

Stress Test Leaks: BoA In Trouble, Whither Citi?

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Well, the rumors are out there, and the latest is that the test will report that Bank of America needs $34 billion in additional capital.


Bank of America 3 Month Share Price

(By way of context, BoA is trading at about $11½ with a market cap of $74 billion, which means that it needs to sell new shares roughly equivalent to half of its outstanding ones in order to properly capitalized by the standards of Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner’s Treasury Department.

Note, of course that this is based on their so called “worst case” stress test, which is already more optimistic than what we have seen in the past 3-4 months.


Citi 3 Month Share Price

That being said, if the numbers are bad for BoA, they must be truly horrific for Citi, which is generally considered to be in the worst shape of the big 19 banks, which has been trading at about $3½, with a market cap of 19.2 billion, and if they need to raise anything near to 30 billion, they will be back in penny stock land for good.

I would also note that if these numbers are accurate, and they might not be, I think that the indications are that the stress test was conceived to make sure that everyone “got a gold star,” which would make reality even more alarming.

(click pictures for full size)

Economics Update

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Well, here’s a big surprise, credit card delinquencies are up.

Truth be told, this is a lagging indicator, seeing as how closely it is tied to unemployment.

I would note that so called “marginally attached workers,” which is workers who are still looking for work, but are no longer looking hard enough to be counted, has risen significantly, see pic.

Then again, remember the increase in construction spending I mentioned yesterday?

Private construction spending actually fell slightly in March so the increase I was stimulus spending.

Also, note that the Institute for Supply Management’s index of non- manufacturing businesses, basically a measure of activities in the services, fell in April, albeit at a slower pace than the past few months, so you can decide whether the glass is half full or half empty.

We have another retailer filing bankruptcy, this time Chapter 11 reorg,
Filene’s Basement.

Here’s one for nostalgia’s sake, another monoliner insurer has been downgraded, Fitch cuts Assured Guaranty from AAA to AA, which means that their insurance, which basically leases out their credit rating, is done.

We have more evidence of credit loosening though, with the
LIBOR falling below 1% for the first time ever for overnight interbank loans.

I’m not sure if this is confidence in banks, or confidence in government bailouts though.

In currency, the dollar gained vs the Euro, largely on the expectation of an ECB rate cut, which in turn is based on the largest drop in European producer prices in over 20 years.

Oil is down on reports of large inventories.

I Hope that They Are Lying

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the Chrysler creditors, the ones who pushed the automaker into Chapter 11, are claiming that the White House threatened the reputations of the firms involved in order to get them to accede to their demands

In an interview with a Detroit radio host, Frank Beckmann, Mr. Lauria said that Perella Weinberg “was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.”

I hope that the WH was threatening to destroy the reputations of the firms involved.

Shame is a legitimate tactic to coerce cooperation, though the idea that Obama would use the, “full force of the White House press corps,” is absurd on its face.

Now to start playing hardball with Goldman Sachs.

Obama to Go After Offshore Tax Havens

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This is actually a very good idea, see also here.

Of course, you will hear a lot of hand wringing about “free trade,” and “global competitiveness,” but the real reason that there will be objections is because these folks believe that only the little people pay taxes.

Personally, I would go further, and label the worst of them as money laundering nations, which is what they are, and forbid US banks from doing business with them.

“Stress Test” Results Delayed

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They were supposed to be announced tomorrow, but the results will be delayed until Thursday.

A delay means bad news. If it had been good, Geithner and Summers would already be crowing about it.

Also note that Austan Goolsbee is saying that the delay is, “A disagreement by banks over the results of the tests,” which also implies bad news, because the bankers would never object to an overly optimistic projection, which would make them money off their stock options.

Additionally, it seems to me that the reports themselves will be rather sketchy, with important details not being made available to the public.

My Bad

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On my last bank fail post, I listed the total number of bank failures this year at 28. This in error.

That number is just those banks closed by the FDIC, and I got it by totalling their Full list.

If you go there, and click on the most recent closing, it gives the current tally, which is 32 for the year.

Additionally, I neglected to mention the significance of the failure of Silverton Bank.

Silverton Bank was a large institution, providing services for other banks, about 1500 of them, not consumers.

It was a clearing house for payments, credits, and it repackaged loans among multiple banks.

As such, this may trigger further bank failures.

Posted via mobile phone….While in line for a roller coaster at Hershey Park.

Friday Night Bank Failures

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28 so far this year.

America West Bank, Layton, UT

Citizens Community Bank, Ridgewood, NJ

Silverton Bank, N.A., Atlanta, GA

Full FDIC list.

Oh, we also have a German bank, Hypo Real Estate (HRE), that specialized in loans to developers being nationalized by the German government, albeit in a confusing, slow motion sort of way.

And finally, there is Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co., a San Diego, California based mortgage banker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing debt of as much as $500 million and assets of less than $50 million.

Now For the Criminal Investigation

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Neel “Cash and Carry” Kashkari is finally leaving as head of the TARP.

I have no knowledge of whether or not he actually broke any laws, though describing the management of the program as “criminal,” is certainly appropriate, but I do think that the DoJ and SEC should investigate because it smells bad.

I do not think that it is at the level of a grand jury investigation….Yet….But you won’t know what’s under the rocks until you turn them over.

Certainly, the program was an example of corruption and regulatory capture though.

Economics Update

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Great Googly Moogly, the new GDP numbers are in for the first quarter, and they show that the economy contracted at a 6.1% annual rate, which follows a 6.3% rate for Q4 of 2008, the worst contraction for a 6 month period in 50 years.

There is a bright spot, however. As Calculated Risk notes, is that sectors that have been traditionally leading are doing better than those that typically lag a recession, which might point toward a bit of a moderation.

At least we are not Lithuania, whose economy contracted by 12% year over year.

It’s news like this that makes the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) statement minor economic news.

Basically, they said, “We think that it’s getting worse more slowly, and we can’t cut rates any more, but we will keep shoveling money out the door, and we are watching inflation, really we are.”

If that means anything, it’s beyond me, but it appears that the
Fed’s aggressive asset purchase program will not be further expanded, which implies that they think that we are at/near bottom.

In other banking news, remember yesterday’s stress test update, which fingered BoA and Citi?

Well, there are now reports that at least 6 of the 19 banking giants are under capitalized, hoocoodanode?

Meanwhile, in real estate, we have mortgage applications falling by 18%, and it appears that there is a tidal wave of troubled commercial mortgages on the horizon, with, “volume of commercial mortgages at risk of default has quintupled since the beginning of 2008.”

One of the interesting things here is that commercial real estate loans are generally short term, 5 years or so, so people who have to refinance into the teeth of the recession and credit crisis may be up a certain creek without a paddle, even though they would be otherwise solvent.

Meanwhile, oil rose on the slightly positive Fed statement and reports of a drop in gasoline inventories, while the dollar fell on on optimism about the world economy.

Federal Reserve Determines Interest Rate Appropriate to Economic Situation

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Using the “Taylor-rule approach”, basically yet another one of those equations for the economy that the “quants” came up with, and they get a number: negative five percent.

This is why central bankers have no clue what to do.

Of course, if Greenspan had not created the bubble, both in real estate, and in other investments, by pushing interest rates so low and ignoring market abuses, there would still be some marging, but there is no margin, so we are screwed.

Stress Test Update

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We are already getting reports, and the latest is that preliminary results show that Bank of America and Citigroup are under capitalized.

The truth is that it is very likely that all 19 banking giants are under capitalized, and that Citi and BoA are insolvent, but the tests would be universally seen as a joke if they had cited these two banks as needing more capital.

One area of concern here is that there is a a tremendous opportunity for insider trading and abuse here, and no one knows who has the data, and who doesn’t, so I would expect that some people are trading on this, or will be in the next few days.

Just in Case You Were Wondering How Tied Into Wall Street Geithner Is….

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The New York Times has a rundown of his ties, and the behavior that this has engendered:

Timothy F. Geithner, who as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank oversaw many of the nation’s most powerful financial institutions, stunned the group with the audacity of his answer. He proposed asking Congress to give the president broad power to guarantee all the debt in the banking system, according to two participants, including Michele Davis, then an assistant Treasury secretary.

The proposal quickly died amid protests that it was politically untenable because it could put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars.

“People thought, ‘Wow, that’s kind of out there,’ ” said John C. Dugan, the comptroller of the currency, who heard about the idea afterward. Mr. Geithner says, “I don’t remember a serious discussion on that proposal then.”

But in the 10 months since then, the government has in many ways embraced his blue-sky prescription. Step by step, through an array of new programs, the Federal Reserve and Treasury have assumed an unprecedented role in the banking system, using unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money, to try to save the nation’s financiers from their own mistakes.

And more often than not, Mr. Geithner has been a leading architect of those bailouts, the activist at the head of the pack. He was the federal regulator most willing to “push the envelope,” said H. Rodgin Cohen, a prominent Wall Street lawyer who spoke frequently with Mr. Geithner.

There is no failure in Wall Street that Geithner does not think should be subsidized by the taxpayer, or as Yves Smith says, “Geithner is a creature of the financial establishment.”

What is important here is that this was page 1 on the New York Times, which is a recognition by the main stream media that this is a problem, and they used his calendar while President of the New York Fed, showing private meetings and lunches with Wall Street executives, as a part of this.

The use of the calendar is very competent shoe leather journalism, and as Ms. Smith notes, it is exceedingly rare to see it used in a story.

If you scroll down toward the bottom of the story, you discover that the bill drafted to give the Treasury the authority to take over large institutions was drafted by Wall Street lobbyists, literally.

The draft bill sent to Congress sent contained metadata that showed it was from a law firm that represents lobbyists.

Seriously, if the problem is that the banking industry and its ethos are dysfunctional, and I believe this to be the case, you could not find a worse steward of this crisis.

And the MSM is beginning to notice,