The US is acting more and more like a banana republic with every passing day. One of the characteristics of a banana republic is that it puts out flattering-to-the-point-of-being-unreliable data about its economy and important institutions.
Alert reader James Bianco pinged us about a new SEC release today and Floyd Norris of the New York Times’ commentary on it, “If Market Prices Are Too Low, Ignore Them,” Norris, who is usually pretty understated, disapproved of one of the items in the SEC letter, as do we.
Most readers probably know that accounting rule FAS 157 became effective as of January 1 of this year. It requires companies, subject to certain restrictions, to classify financial assets as Level 1 (easily valued by reference to market prices), Level 2 (doesn’t trade actively, but similar enough to actively traded assets that can be valued in relationship) and Level 3 (known in the trade as “mark to model” or “mark to make believe”). Some financial firms opted to comply with FAS 157 early, which led to quite a few investment banks revealing that the value of their Level 3 assets exceeded their net worth.
In the last couple of months, there has been increased worry that mark-to-market accounting leads to the operation of a destructive “financial accelerator.” As prevailing values go down, banks have to lower the value of their holdings. This leads to a direct hit to their net worth, which will lead them to contract their balance sheets, either by withholding credit or selling assets. More sales in a weak market lead to further declines in the prices of financial instruments, leading to more writedowns and sales of inventory.
Funny how no one had a problem with mark-to-market when asset prices were rising. The process in reverse leads to mark-to-market gains, higher net worths fueling balance sheet growth and credit expansion, which led to more demand for financial assets. That gives you higher securities prices which least to more mark-to-market gains. Sounds like a bubble, doesn’t it?
The SEC’s solution for the contractionary version of this dynamic is simple: ignore those market prices if they are too ugly. From the release:
Fair value assumes the exchange of assets or liabilities in orderly transactions. Under SFAS 157, it is appropriate for you to consider actual market prices, or observable inputs, even when the market is less liquid than historical market volumes, unless those prices are the result of a forced liquidation or distress sale (boldface ours).
Quite a few observers had argued that the windups of SIVs and the failure of hedge funds, and even Bear Stearns, would be a good thing because they would force price discovery of assets that are normally illiquid and/or hard to value. That in turn would resolve a great deal of uncertainty of what bank and hedge fund positions were really worth.
But now the SEC has given banks and brokers a huge out. No matter how small or easily absorbed by the market a forced sale might be (think of a hedge fund hit by a margin call), a financial institution can ignore the price realized. In fact, they get to determine what trades constitute a forced sale. As Norris dryly notes:
Some people on Wall Street think that nearly every sale today is a forced sale. There are entire categories of collateralized debt obligations where most, if not all, of the trades, occur because a holder has received, or expects, a margin call.
Moreover, we’ve seen plenty of unintended consequences, or worse, backfires, as regulators intervene trying to alleviate the credit crisis. Banks have been reluctant to extend credit to each other precisely because they don’t trust their creditworthiness. That’s tantamount to saying they already don’t trust their public financial statements, since according to their public filings, virtually all major financial institutions have more than the required statutory capital.
So this move, to stem the balance-sheet-shrinking impact of mark-to-market accounting in a falling price environment, may further undermine liquidity. Companies will less able to judge whether their published financials are telling the whole story, And where the numbers are in doubt, rumors are taken more seriously.
Now in fairness, the entire letter wasn’t a gimmie to the securities industry. Entities that report Level 3 exposures have to talk about them at great length:
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it has been said that mark to market accounting is the worst form of financial accounting except for all the others that have been tried. But it looks like we are going to try them anyhow.
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Death of a salesman…Life is stranger than fiction
Today marked a seminal event in capital markets. For the first time as far as I am aware we got an upgrade of an American icon, the investment bank, on grounds there can be no liquidity issue as they have the full faith and credit of the government. This is no quasi governement agency either. This is the almight Lehman Brothers. Forget the good old days of burying it in the middle of the report; instead we get a front page bullet. A few days ago Dick Bove, relic turned CNBC darling, laid the foundation for this timely rating schange saying that Lehman has the best management in the industry. Wait what? First off that is an oxymoron to begin with, no? Bove soundly reasons that Lehman’s will simply find growth somewhere else. Oh, ok. No mention of the $80 billion in mortgages on the book, or the ballooning balance sheet.
As a postscript to the story we actually had a break in call by Lehman IR yesterday midday when the stock was under pressure which followed the tried and true tactic being employed in the UK so successfully, namely demonizing the hated locust of capitalism: the SHORT SELLER.
Is it me or is there something sureal about this entire espisode. A bankrupt bank led by former head of Treasury who helped engineer the destructive policies that took us down this road (an arbitrage guy himself, how ironic) – an now being touted as boy genius by Hillary Clinton – upgrades an insolvent investment bank based on an implicit government guarantee. Then we have the rough and tumble Fuld, sounding more and more like Willy these days, who showed such bold leadership going hat in hand to the Fed window, sending out his PR squad to attack short sellers. I wonder if that applies to their hedging subprime bonds or their internal prop desks?
I say bring on the investigation; perhaps through the process of discovery we might get to examine the internal logs and trade blotters. Could be a seminal event in the quest for a market clearing mechanism.
The bank with the sharp elbows has been reduced to publicly wimpering to regulators – who have responded vigoriously in a pavolvian fashion with an “investigation” into the bear raiders.
If not the government than at least Lehman has a fiduciary responsibility to Lenin to lower the green flag and ceremoniously raise the hammer and sickle. Fitting that it would fly over Time Square the epicenter of American consumerism. Red really has become America’s color.