Wow, the efforts to find and discredit strategic defaulters and other types of mortgage borrower reprobates appear to be picking up steam at the New York Times. Let’s be clear: there are not doubt more than a few people who bought more house than they could afford who had out of control spending habits. But […]
Read more...This post first appeared on August 21, 2007 A gut-wrenching two weeks in the credit markets have been capped by unprecedented moves by central bankers. The ECB’s offer of an unlimited infusion to member banks the week before last was followed last Friday’ by the Fed’s discount rate cut, which included stern warnings that those […]
Read more...The latest stunt from the Obama Administration on the housing front is a peculiar bit of theatrics at the margin. As Bloomberg reports: The Obama administration will offer $1 billion in zero-interest loans to help homeowners who’ve lost income avoid foreclosure as part of $3 billion in additional aid targeting economically distressed areas. The Department […]
Read more...Bloomberg tells us: The Federal Reserve’s decision to buy Treasuries and keep interest rates low will support “risk assets” without bringing down unemployment, said Anthony Crescenzi at Pacific Investment Management Co. “Low volatility tends to be good for the interest-rate climate,” said Crescenzi, who is based in Newport Beach, California at Pimco, manager of the […]
Read more...By Yves Smith and Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive Update and correction 4:45 PM: We owe an apology to readers and to Louise Story of the New York Times, for an apparent error in our analysis. We have been informed that, remarkably, there were two separate Pyxis vehicles which were issued in […]
Read more...As discussed in ECONNED and on this blog, clearinghouses are not a solution to the systemic risk posed by credit default swaps, since there is no way to have a CDS counterparty post adequate margin and have the product be viable (to put it more simply, adequate margin make CDS uneconomic). So for CDS, the […]
Read more...We pointed out that reappointing Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve chairman would be inconceivable in the private sector, since CEOs who preside over disasters are dismissed (captains have the good taste to go down with their ships). But of course, Bernanke is a failure only if you believe that the Fed’s official mandate – soundness […]
Read more...Gretchen Morgenson is often a target of heated criticism on the blogosphere, which I have argued more than once is overdone. While her articles on executive compensation and securities litigation are consistently well reported, she has an appetite for the wilder side of finance, and often looks a bit out of her depth. Typically, she […]
Read more...Is it any surprise that Wall Street went a bit off the deep end with the (admittedly barmy, but that’s a separate issue) Blanche Lincoln proposal to spin off derivatives desks? Derivatives, which are now deeply integrated in how dealer banks devise customer transactions and how they manage their own risks, are a large proportion […]
Read more...An article by Gillian Tett in the Financial Times, “Trading volumes retreat with investor trust,” contends that the notably low trading activity of late is a sign of deeper changes in financial markets: The most pernicious issue hanging over the system right now is a loss of confidence – not merely in the idea that the […]
Read more...This post first appeared on July 11, 2007 Readers of this blog know that I have been concerned about the state of the credit markets for some time. We’ve had (until the last month or so), rampant liquidity feeding asset bubbles in virtually every asset class except the dollar and the yen, tight risk spreads […]
Read more...There are a lot of bad things you can say about Fannie and Freddie: that they were part of the oversubsidization of housing in America, that they’ve had an overlarge side business of funneling cash to friendly politicians, that some of their “innovative” practices, like requiring the use of the electronic mortgage registration system, MERS, […]
Read more...A good piece at Mother Jones, “Fannie and Freddie’s Foreclosure Barons” (hat tip Foghorn Leghorn) provides a window on a seamy big business: cut rate foreclosure processing machines that routinely ride roughshod over borrowers and the law. Unfortunately, space limitations prevent the story from going deeply into some critical issues. The piece does a good […]
Read more...This post appeared originally on July 27, 2007 Warning: this post is only for those with sound constitutions. Tim Lee, head of a financial economics consultancy, tells us in a Financial Times article what a carry trade unwind will look like (answer: very nasty) and what it would take to prevent it (the Japanese have […]
Read more...I recall a presentation on China at the Asia Society on the eve of the financial crisis, in which an economist commented on China’s extremely low interest rate on deposits (less than 1%) versus its markedly higher inflation rate, and commented that that was a recipe for hyperinflation. Well, that hasn’t been and is unlikely […]
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