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“It turned into a lender which financed its owners”: Central Bank.

It’s Friday, and another Russian bank gets taken over and most of its creditors get bailed out by the Central Bank, this time the 10th largest bank in Russia, Promsvyazbank – with the top six being state-owned banks; with number seven, Bank Otkritie, having toppled in August; with number 12, B&N Bank, having toppled in September; and with Jugra Bank having gotten its banking licence revoked in July for having falsified its accounts.

The bailout of Promsvyazbank (PSB) will require between 100 billion rubles and 200 billion rubles (between $1.7 billion and $3.4 billion), based on a preliminary estimate, said Central Bank deputy governor Vasily Pozdyshev on Friday, according to Reuters.

“Preliminary estimates” of bank-bailout costs have a way of morphing into bigger ones. The Central Bank, which is also the banking regulator, has already increased its estimate for the combined cost of the bailouts of Otkritie and B&N Bank to 820 billion rubles ($14 billion), but it now deems both too financially weak to continue.

The combined assets of PSB, Otkritie, and B&N would amount to 4 trillion rubles, equivalent to Russia’s fourth biggest bank, according to Reuters calculations. By comparison, Russia’s largest bank, state-controlled Sberbank, accounts for one-third of the Russian banking system, as it says, and has 22 trillion rubles ($374 billion) in assets.

PSB’s subordinated debt will likely be written off, Pozdyshev said. Shareholders will also take a big hit or be wiped out. They include as of the end of November: The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Russian financial group Budushchee, the Credit Bank of Moscow, and non-state pension fund Safmar.

But the Central Bank plans to honor the PSB’s other obligations to creditors and bondholders, which include other Russian banks. It always does this to avoid contagion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ECB and the Coming Banking Crisis

November 20, 2017

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Your post of November 16th where you state that the ECB is looking to freeze accounts in a banking crisis, does that mean they will no longer honour the claimed insurance of €100,000 per account?

ANSWER: No. They will not pretend to eliminate that insurance, they just will “suspend” it as a bank holiday. But you gloss over another problem. The insurance of €100,000 is NOT per account, but PER PERSON. So taking €1 million euro and spreading among 10 banks does not thereby provide insurance for the whole lot. The same is true in the USA. The ECB is proposing supplementing it with discretionary powers to suspend bank withdrawals. To say that the entire program will be terminated is an exaggeration. Nevertheless, it reflects the realization that the European banking system is in serious trouble. I recommend that Europeans should have a stash of cash, and if you have a lot of cash in your account, put some into dollars in the States before it is too late.

EU Preparing for the Banking Crisis

November 16, 2017

EU Preparing for the Banking Crisis

Subtly, the EU is looking to establish preparations for the coming banking crisis and how to protect the banks from massive withdrawals. The solution? The EU wants to be able to temporarily free up credits for the banks and at the same time to freeze bank deposits, In other words, like Greece, you just won’t be able to withdraw funds. Obviously, everything will be frozen. The current EU plan envisages blocking account disbursements for five working days and with the authority to extend any suspension to up to 20 days. They may need longer!

I recommend that you have 30 days worth of cash on hand. What the authorities do not understand is that if they freeze one bank, a run will unfold on all banks. The public will not believe whatever the government says. Therefore, banks that are not in crisis can be pushed into a crisis by a contagion. That is simply how it all unfolded in 1931-1933. The only way to stop a contagion will be a bank holiday and you have to close them all.

The End of Quantitative Easing – Perhaps Now It Will Be Inflationary?

April 20, 2017

The End of Quantitative Easing – Perhaps Now It Will Be Inflationary?

One of the greatest monetary experiments in financial history has been the global central bank buying of government debt. This has been touted as a form of “money printing” that was supposed to produce hyperinflation, which never materialized as predicted by the perpetual pessimists. Nevertheless, the total amount of Quantitative Easing (QE) adding up the balance sheets of the Federal Reserve (Fed), the European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Japan (BOJ) is now around $13.5 trillion dollars, which by itself is a sum greater than that of China’s economy or the entire Eurozone for that matter.

If QE failed to produce inflation, then ending QE may actually produce the inflation people previously expected. Where’s the strange logic in that one? Well you see, it really does not matter how much money you print, if it never makes it into the economy, it will not be inflationary. Additionally, even if it makes it into the economy and the people hoard for a rainy day, it still will not be inflationary.

The craziest thing the Fed did was create excess reserves. The bankers complained that the Fed was buying the government debt so they would have no place to park their money. The Fed then accommodated them creating the Excess Reserves facility and paid them interest for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Almost $3 trillion was parked at the Fed collecting interest so that $4.5 trillion of “printing” money never made it out the door. Hence, there was no inflation to speak of (outside of healthcare which always rises no matter what), and people hoarded. The pundit kept calling for a crash in the stock market but overlooked the fact that retail participation was at historic lows. Why? They were hoarding their money.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italy’s Banking Crisis Is Even Worse Than We Thought

February 9, 2017

Italy’s Banking Crisis Is Even Worse Than We Thought

The insider blame game has begun.

In this late winter of generalized discontent, it is not easy to pinpoint just where the biggest threat to Europe’s increasingly flimsy union lies, so intense is the competition. One obvious contender is the Eurozone’s third largest economy, Italy, which faces a banking crisis, an economic crisis, a debt crisis, and a political crisis all at the same time.

The country’s Five Star Movement is gaining momentum both in the polls and in its efforts to call for a referendum on euro membership. In the meantime, Italy’s newly installed government wants — indeed, needs — to bail out a growing number of banks but has neither the money nor the political capital to do so.

Things had gotten so bad that the country’s two bad banks (Atlante I and Atlante II), ostensibly created to stabilize the financial system, were themselves on the verge of collapse. Turns out that things are even worse than we had thought, following a blistering tirade on Tuesday from Italy’s bad banker-in-chief, Alessandro Penati.

“There is no clear vision of the problem and no strategy,” Penati told a financial conference in Milan, according to Reuters. He said he was virtually working alone on rescues that had revealed “horror stories” within some banks.

In short, the insider blame game has begun.

Penati, whose boutique asset management firm, Quaestio Capital Management, was chosen to oversee the supervision of Atlante in late 2015, directed much of his ire at the banks themselves, in particular Italy’s two largest financial institutions, UniCredit and Intesa Sao Paolo. Atlante’s investors had, he said, shown “zero long-sightedness,” after declining to invest more in the fund, which has used 80% of its money to rescue two mid-sized banks in northeast Italy — Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza. Both these lenders now need more capital.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Italian Banking Crisis: No Free Lunch – Or Is There?

January 12, 2017

The Italian Banking Crisis: No Free Lunch – Or Is There?

It has been called “a bigger risk than Brexit”– the Italian banking crisis that could take down the eurozone. Handwringing officials say “there is no free lunch” and “no magic bullet.” But UK Prof. Richard Werner says the magic bullet is just being ignored.

On December 4, 2016, Italian voters rejected a referendum to amend their constitution to give the government more power, and the Italian prime minister resigned. The resulting chaos has pushed Italy’s already-troubled banks into bankruptcy. First on the chopping block is the 500 year old Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA (BMP), the oldest surviving bank in the world and the third largest bank in Italy. The concern is that its loss could trigger the collapse of other banks and even of the eurozone itself.

There seems little doubt that BMP and other insolvent banks will be rescued. The biggest banks are always rescued, no matter how negligent or corrupt, because in our existing system, banks create the money we use in trade. Virtually the entire money supply is now created by banks when they make loans, as the Bank of England has acknowledged. When the banks collapse, economies collapse, because bank-created money is the grease that oils the wheels of production.

So the Italian banks will no doubt be rescued. The question is, how? Normally, distressed banks can raise cash by selling their non-performing loans (NPLs) to other investors at a discount; but recovery on the mountain of Italian bad debts is so doubtful that foreign investors are unlikely to bite. In the past, bankrupt too-big-to-fail banks have sometimes been nationalized. That discourages “moral hazard” – rewarding banks for bad behavior – but it’s at the cost of imposing the bad debts on the government. Further, new EU rules require a “bail in” before a government bailout, something the Italian government is desperate to avoid.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bank Bailout Balloons, Tab for Italian Banking Crisis Soars

December 27, 2016

Bank Bailout Balloons, Tab for Italian Banking Crisis Soars

Monte dei Paschi di Siena sinks deeper into the mire.

Over the Christmas holidays, when no one was supposed to pay attention, and when the markets were closed, the bailout costs of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the third largest bank in Italy, and the center of the Italian banking crisis, suddenly jumped by 75% to €8.8 billion ($9.2 billion)!

Just how immense the black hole inside of a bank really is remains unknown until the bank collapses entirely and the pieces are sorted out. No one wants to know, especially not bank regulators. But when banks are teetering, and a bank bailout, or rather a bondholder bailout is being discussed, the aspects of that hole begin to emerge, and the hole keeps getting bigger the longer someone looks at it.

Earlier this year, the ECB’s stress tests of 51 large European banks determined that Monte dei Paschi was the shakiest among them. The ECB gave the bank until the end of 2016 to raise enough capital or contemplate the prospect of being wound down.

Last week, after Monte dei Paschi failed to work out a private-sector rescue deal led by JP Morgan, a taxpayer bailout was moved to the front burner. The bank’s shares and bonds were suspended from trading until the details of the bailout would emerge. This came after two prior capital increases from the private sector in recent years had failed to fill the holes. Each time, gullible investors had gotten crushed.

On Friday, the Italian government decided to shanghai its taxpayers into bailing out the bank’s bondholders with only a small haircut for holders of certain junior bonds. The decree it approved to that effect was based on the assumption that a €5-billion bailout – a “precautionary recapitalization” – would be needed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Italy’s Banking Crisis is Spiraling to Heck

October 16, 2016

Why Italy’s Banking Crisis is Spiraling to Heck

€4.8 billion window-dressing to cover a growing €360 billion hole

Things have got so serious in Italy that the only two things propping up the country’s crumbling banking sector — apart from the last few remaining crumbs of public faith in the system — are two inadequately capitalized bad bank funds, Atlante I and the imaginatively named Atlante II.

Both funds are operated by a deeply opaque Luxembourg-based private firm called Quaestio SGR. The firm is a wholly owned subsidiary of Quaestio Holding S.A, which is itself jointly owned by a bizarre mishmash of organizations, including Fondazione Cariplo (37.65%), an influential “charitable” banking foundation; Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì (6.75%), a regional savings bank; Cassa Italiana di Previdenza e Assistenza dei Geometri liberi professionisti (18%), a bank for professional freelance surveyors (no, seriously); Locke S.r.l. (22%), an obscure Milan-based holding company; and Direzione Generale Opere Don Bosco (15.60%), a Roman Catholic religious institute. No surprises there.

[Hat tip to regular WOLF STREET reader and commenter MC for pointing out some of the peculiarities of Italy’s two bad banks]Atlante I’s funds are largely privately sourced, coming primarily from Italy’s largest banks. The two biggest banks, Unicredit and Intesa San Paolo,both pledged around a billion euros a piece. A further €500 million was provided by a gaggle of smaller banks and another €500 million was pledged by Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP for short), an almost wholly state-owned financial institution. With a little extra help from certain foreign investors, Atlante was able to claw together some €4.8 billion — to help solve a €360 bad-debt problem.

So far, €1.5 billion of those funds have been used to sub-underwrite the capital expansion and failed IPO of Banco Popolare di Vicenza.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Did the Fed Really Say they Could Buy Stocks?

October 1, 2016

Did the Fed Really Say they Could Buy Stocks?

The Fed told Congress it would buy stocks if Congress allowed it. This statement has caused a lot of people to scratch their heads. Will this cause all the stock bears to rethink their prognostications of a major stock market crash? This was not even on the radar of most people.

Some have reported this story as “the first time in U.S. history” that the Federal Reserve has openly spoken about purchasing of stocks rather than bonds and mortgage-backed securities. While this news may have been shocking to most, South Carolina Republican Mick Mulvaney asked Janet Yellen before the House Financial Services Committee about the Fed’s authority to buy stocks to stimulate the economy. Mulvaney asked:

“There’s been some attention in the last few months about the recent decision by the Bank of Japan to start purchasing equities and my question to you is fairly simple. Is the United States Federal Reserve looking at the possibility of adding the purchase of equities to its tool box as it looks at monetary policy?”

Yellen answered:

“Well, the Federal Reserve is not permitted to purchase equities. We can only purchase U.S. treasuries and agency securities. I did mention in a speech in Jackson Hole, though, where I discussed longer term issues and difficulties we could have in providing adequate monetary policy. Accommodation may be somewhere in the future, down the line that this is the kind of thing that Congress might consider, but if you were to do so, it’s not something that the Federal Reserve is asking for.”

UB1798-Y-MA

This response shook many on Wall Street. It is true that buying equities has been a part of Japan’s effort to stimulate its economy. We will most likely see this tool attempted by Draghi on Europe since he has run out of things to do.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Price Of Silver Explodes Past 20 Dollars An Ounce As The European Banking Crisis Deepens

July 5, 2016

The Price Of Silver Explodes Past 20 Dollars An Ounce As The European Banking Crisis Deepens

Have you seen what the price of silver has been doing? On Monday, it exploded past 20 dollars an ounce, and as I write this article it is sitting at $20.48. Earlier today it actually surged above 21 dollars an ounce for a short time before moving back just a bit. In late March, I told my readers that silver was “ridiculously undervalued” when it was sitting at $15.81 an ounce, and that call has turned out to be quite prescient. The Friday before last, silver started the day at $17.25 an ounce, and it is up more than 18 percent since that time. Overall, silver is up more than 30 percent for the year, and that makes it one of the best performing investments of 2016. So what is causing this sudden surge in the price of silver? This is something that we will discuss below…

This sudden spike in the price of silver has definitely caught a lot of analysts off guard. Some are suggesting that the fact that the Fed is now less likely to raise rates after the Brexit and the fact that the dollar has been slipping a bit lately are the primary reasons for silver’s rise…

This isn’t a gradual increase either. It’s an explosive growth spurt. Just three months ago silver had reached an 11 month high. Now silver prices have reached a 23 month high. Several factors appear to be influencing these gains, including a weakening dollar, and the fact that the Fed may cut interest rates in light of the Brexit vote.

Personally, I don’t buy those explanations.

To me, the continuing implosion of major banks over in Europe is the main factor that is driving investors to safe haven assets such as silver.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fear Hits Japanese Banks, Nikkei Plunges, 10-Year Yield Negative for First Time Ever

February 9, 2016

Fear Hits Japanese Banks, Nikkei Plunges, 10-Year Yield Negative for First Time Ever

A banking crisis radiating out from Europe?

While China, Hong Kong, and some other Asian markets celebrated the lunar New Year and wisely kept their markets closed, all heck is breaking loose in Japan.

The Nikkei had risen 1% on Monday and was down “only” 18.8% from its recent high in June 2015, thus dodging not only the rout of most other markets that day but also the ignominious fate of being pushed, like so many other markets, below the blue line in my infamous Global Bear-Market Progress Report. The blue line indicates a decline of 20% or more. But that was like so yesterday.

Today, the Nikkei plunged 919 points or 5.4%. It’s now down 23.1% from its recent high, in a solid bear market. Fears about global growth coagulated with fears about a banking crisis radiating out from Europe, and particularly its epicenter, Deutsche Bank.

So Japan’s four systemically important megabanks that will not be allowed to implode if at all possible got totally smoked today, and have gotten crushed since their highs last year:

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group plunged 8.7%, down 47% from June 2015.
Mizuho Financial Group plunged 6.2%, down 38% since June 2015.
Sumitomo Mitsui plunged 6.2%, down 26% since May 2015
Nomura plunged a juicy 9.1%, down 42% since June 2015

Hedge funds, particularly US hedge funds, that once had plowed into Japanese equities including the banks, hoping that Abenomics would perform miracles, have abandoned the cause. Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund, upon the urging of the Bank of Japan, sold its mainstay investment, Japanese Government Bonds, to the Bank of Japan and loaded up with equities instead. This process is now mostly finished, and it too stopped buying equities. Other pension funds did the same. The artificial demand for stocks is dead. Now pension funds are left with stocks that have plunged.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Who Gets to Pay for the Italian Banking Crisis?

January 28, 2016

Who Gets to Pay for the Italian Banking Crisis?

The missing Capital Buffer.

Six years after Europe’s sovereign debt crisis began, the Eurozone’s third largest economy, Italy, has finally decided to do what just about every other country has done when facing a full-blown, almost out-of-control banking crisis: to set up a bad bank to hide its worst debt.

It was only a matter of time: in the last six years, Europe’s economies have been drowning in an ever-expanding vitrine of bad debt — and none more so than Italy, where non-performing loans have soared to more than 350 billion euros, a fourfold increase since the end of 2008. At 18%, Italy’s ratio of nonperforming loans is more than four times the European average (and Europe’s banks are in worse shape than America’s). It’s the equivalent of 21% of GDP in a country that boasts Europe’s second highest public debt-to-GDP ratio (130%), just behind Greece, and where the banks hold over 70% of the country’s debt.

To make matters even worse, if Brussels gets its way, Italy’s government will not be able to dip into future taxpayer funds to stop its debt-laden banks from dropping like flies. European law no longer allows that sort of thing. Well, not really. Now, in the wake of new regulations that came into effect at the beginning of this year, collapsing banks in Europe will be “resolved” with the funds of stockholders, bondholders and other investors, including account holders with deposits of more than €100,000 euros — instead of classic bailouts that would raid directly or indirectly the taxpayers of other countries.

It might even make bank creditors realize that investing in a bank is not a risk-free venture.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Reinventing Banking: From Russia to Iceland to Ecuador

December 27, 2015

Reinventing Banking: From Russia to Iceland to Ecuador

Global developments in finance and geopolitics are prompting a rethinking of the structure of banking and of the nature of money itself. Among other interesting news items:

In Russia, vulnerability to Western sanctions has led to proposals for a banking system that is not only independent of the West but is based on different design principles.

In Iceland, the booms and busts culminating in the banking crisis of 2008-09 have prompted lawmakers to consider a plan to remove the power to create money from private banks.

In Ireland, Iceland and the UK, a recession-induced shortage of local credit has prompted proposals for a system of public interest banks on the model of the Sparkassen of Germany.

In Ecuador, the central bank is responding to a shortage of US dollars (the official Ecuadorian currency) by issuing digital dollars through accounts to which everyone has access, effectively making it a bank of the people.

Developments in Russia

In a November 2015 article titled “Russia Debates Unorthodox Orthodox Financial Alternative,” William Engdahl writes:

A significant debate is underway in Russia since imposition of western financial sanctions on Russian banks and corporations in 2014. It’s about a proposal presented by the Moscow Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church. The proposal, which resembles Islamic interest-free banking models in many respects, was first unveiled in December 2014 at the depth of the Ruble crisis and oil price free-fall. This August the idea received a huge boost from the endorsement of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It could change history for the better depending on what is done and where it further leads.

Engdahl notes that the financial sanctions launched by the US Treasury in 2014 have forced a critical rethinking among Russian intellectuals and officials. Like China, Russia has developed an internal Russian version of SWIFT Interbank payments; and it is now considering a plan to restructure Russia’s banking system. Engdahl writes:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Seek and Ye Shall Find

November 25, 2015

Seek and Ye Shall Find

A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.”
– Max Lucado.

So. Farewell then Jim Slater, who died earlier this month. We met Mr. Slater only once, at an investment conference at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. Just before going on stage we asked him what he was doing with his own money. He replied,

“I own index-linked Gilts in bearer form and I am holding them in a fire-proof safety deposit box.”

We doubt if he was joking.

Seven years on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, everything has changed, and yet nothing has changed. There is no longer a perception of panic. $14 trillion of central bank stimulus has seen to that. But at the same time, a predicament brought to crisis by too much borrowed money has been exacerbated by much more borrowed money: $57 trillion of it, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Perhaps the most prescient commentator before the fall of Lehman Brothers was Tim Lee of pi Economics, who wrote the following back in November 2007, fully 10 months before the failure of a second-rate investment bank triggered a global credit crisis:

“There is little doubt, to my mind, that we are now at a defining moment in financial history, a time that, once it has passed will be referred by economic and market historians in much the same way as the Wall Street Crash of 1929 or the credit and banking crisis of 1973-4 are now.

“Unfortunately, as is becoming increasingly clear, this crisis is not really just about subprime mortgages. It is much more serious than that. It is the beginning of an inevitable realignment of credit and wealth with incomes and accumulated savings… subprime is merely the first part of the credit edifice to give way, rather than the whole story…”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The $4.6 Trillion Leveraged Loan Market—–Next Crisis In The Making

November 22, 2015

The $4.6 Trillion Leveraged Loan Market—–Next Crisis In The Making

Financial crises take about a decade to be born. Having lived through four of them, I see the raw materials for a fifth one — flowing from the collapse of so-called leveraged loans — debt piled on top of companies with weak credit ratings.

Before examining the latest news on leveraged loans, let’s take a quick tour down the memory lane of financial crises I’ve lived through.

My first one was in 1982 — that’s when banks lent too much money to oil and gas developers in Oklahoma and Texas as well as local real estate developers.

At the suggestion of McKinsey, money-center banks like Chemical Bank thought it would be a great idea to buy a piece of those loans. It’s all described nicely in a wonderful book — Belly Up.

Too bad the price of oil and gas tumbled, leaving lenders in the lurch and causing a spike in bank failures that gave me the chance to spend a balmy summer in Washington helping the FDIC develop a system to manage the liquidationof those failed banks.

By 1989, it was time for another banking crisis — this one was pinned to too much lending to commercial real estate developers in New England and junk-bond-backed loans for what used to be known as leveraged buyouts.

The government shut down Bank of New England and was threatening my employer, Bank of Boston, with the same. I worked on a government-mandated strategic plan intended to save the bank from a similar fate.

Next up— the dot-com bust — which introduced me to the idea that not all bubbles are bad if you can get in when they’re forming and exit before they burst. I invested in six dot-coms and had a mixed record — the three winners offset the three wipe outs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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