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As Oil Prices Fall, Banks Serving the Energy Industry Brace for a Jolt
As Oil Prices Fall, Banks Serving the Energy Industry Brace for a Jolt
Banks have been lending hand over fist to companies in the nation’s energy industry, underwriting bonds, advising on mergers, even financing the building of homes for oil workers. All of this has provided a boon to banks that have been struggling to find more companies and consumers wanting to borrow.
Yet with the price of crude oil falling below levels sufficient for some energy companies to service their huge debts, strains are being felt and defaults are likely. While it may take some time for the crunch in the oil industry to translate into losses, one thing already seems clear: The energy banking boom is over.
The Price of Crude Oil Over the Last 9 Months
“At the least, you are talking about a slowdown in loan growth for the banks in the energy-producing states,” said Charles Peabody, a banking specialist at Portales Partners. “That, we feel pretty strongly about.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Cartel: How BP Got Insider Tips Through a Secret Chat Room – Bloomberg
The Cartel: How BP Got Insider Tips Through a Secret Chat Room – Bloomberg.
Halfway down a muddy, secluded road on marshland in suburban Essex sits Wharf Pool, a lake stocked with some of the biggest freshwater fish you will ever see.
A white sign with red lettering reads: “Private Syndicate: Strictly Members Only.” A metal gate, a barbed-wire fence and two CCTV cameras bar the way. Anglers hoping to spend time on the lake’s carefully tended banks must join a waiting list. Those who make it to the top pay a membership fee that buys them the chance to catch a carp that weighs more than a Jack Russell. There are hundreds of them swimming beneath the surface. It’s close to shooting fish in a barrel.
An hour away by train, in London’s financial district, the lake’s owners ply their trade. Wharf Pool was purchased for about 250,000 pounds ($388,000) in 2012 by Richard Usher, the former JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) trader at the center of a global investigation into corruption in the foreign-exchange market, and Andrew White, a currency trader at oil company BP Plc. (BP/)
The Banking System Can’t Lend Out Reserves, But a Bank Can – Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada
The Banking System Can’t Lend Out Reserves, But a Bank Can – Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada.
This post will seem simple to some, but I want to correct a slight confusion I’ve seen over the last several years in the economics blogosphere. (I was motivated to write because of an exchange with Nick Freiling, who loves the Austrian School but thought I had made a basic mistake in a recent piece I wrote about the Federal Reserve’s policies.) Specifically, Freiling and many others have challenged the standard claim that commercial banks lend out reserves when they make loans to customers. The critics argue that since the public will generally end up depositing their checks with their own respective banks, the granting of loans will merely rearrange which banks hold certain levels of reserves, but the banking system as a whole can’t “lend them out” because there would be nowhere for them to go. Hence, the critics allege, the talk of the Fed (say) raising the interest rate that it pays on reserves in order to discourage lending is nonsense; in Freiling’s words, there is (allegedly) no tradeoff between loans and reserves.
This argument from the critics is wrong. It rests on a confusion between micro-incentives and system-wide outcomes. In particular, the interest rate that the Fed pays on reserves can most definitely affect the willingness of commercial banks to make loans on the margin.
Before jumping directly into the issue, let me start with an analogy with actual currency held in people’s wallets or purses. (I see Nick Rowe thought of the same analogy last summer.) Forget about banks. Suppose there are $100 billion in actual currency in the economy, held by a population of 100 million people, and that this is the only money that these people use. That means on average each person holds $1,000 in currency.
Will they Hang Bankers Again on Wall Street? | Armstrong Economics
Will they Hang Bankers Again on Wall Street? | Armstrong Economics.
What took place in Washington over the past two weeks with the repeal of Dodd Frank and then the effective repeal of the Volcker Rule sounds strikingly familiar to at least three previous periods in American History that led to total disaster. There were of course the Northern “carpetbaggers”, whom many in the South viewed as opportunists looking to exploit and profit from the region’s misfortunes following the Civil War.The “carpetbaggers” would play a central role in shaping new southern governments during Reconstruction period who were joined by Southerners who saw economic gain in joining the Northerners in the exploitation of the South. There were called “scalawags”.
Then there were the Silver Democrats who were bought and paid for by the mining industry. William Jennings Bryan’s red-hot emotional speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention will forever live on in history. The shenanigans of the Democrats and Republicans who tried to overvalue silver led to the near bankruptcy of the nation and made JP Morgan famous thanks to the Panic of 1896 when he had to arrange a gold loan to save the country.
Then there was what people called the First Gilded Age more than a century ago, when senators and representatives were owned by Wall Street and big business. This culminated in the 1929 Crash.
What did all three of these period have in common with the last two weeks? Then, as now, those who footed the bill for political campaigns were richly rewarded with favorable laws. This is standard operating procedure in Washington and why we are in such desperate need of political reform.
2014 Year in Review – David Collum | Peak Prosperity
2014 Year in Review – David Collum | Peak Prosperity.
Every year, friend-of-the-site David Collum writes a detailed “Year in Review” synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year’s is no exception. As with past years, he has graciously selected PeakProsperity.com as the site where it will be published in full. It’s quite longer than our usual posts, but worth the time to read in full. A downloadable pdf of the full article is available here, for those who prefer to do their power-reading offline. — cheers, Adam
Background
“I don’t write about what I know: I write to find out what I know.”
~Patricia Hampl
Every December, I write a Year in Reviewref 1–7 first posted on Chris Martenson’s website Peak Prosperityref 2with a secondary posting at Zero Hedge.ref 3 What started as a brief introspective shared with a handful of e-quaintances has mutated into a detailed account that has accrued as many as 100,000 clicks. Each year I try to identify themes in events that evolve. As the title suggests, I have not seen a year in which so many risks—some truly existential—piled up so quickly. Each risk has its own, often unknown, probability of morphing into a destructive force. Groping for a metaphor—I love metaphors and similes—I feel like we’re in the final throes of a geopolitical Game of Tetris as financial and political authorities race to place the pieces correctly. But the acceleration is palpable. The proximate trigger for pain and ultimately a collapse can be small, as anyone who’s ever stepped barefoot on a Lego knows.
“If the world seems to be turning ’round faster than ever, you’re not alone. Grab hold of something, it shows no sign of abating.”
~Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management
Western Banks Cut Off Liquidity To Russian Entities | Zero Hedge
Western Banks Cut Off Liquidity To Russian Entities | Zero Hedge.
As Zero Hedge first reported today, shortly before noon one (and subsequently more) FX brokers advised clients that any existing Ruble positions would be forcibly closed out because “western banks have stopped pricing USDRUB“, over concerns of Russian capital controls. Ironically, it was this forced liquidation of mostly short RUB positions that pushed the RUB higher, which in turn had a briefly favorably impact on energy commodities and risk assets, as the market had by then perceived the Ruble selloff as excessive. Of course, since nothing had actually changed aside from a temporary market technical, the selloff promptly resumed into the close of trading once the market finally understood what we had explained hours previously.
And unfortunately for the bulls, various falling knife-catchers, and those who hope the Russian situation will stabilize imminently with or without capital controls, it appears things in Russia are about to get a whole lot worse because as the WSJ reports, the next driver of the Russian crisis is likely to come from within the banking system itself because “global banks are curtailing the flow of cash to Russian entities, a response to the ruble’s sharpest selloff since the 1998 financial crisis.”
Presenting Russia’s banks: now cut off from the outside world as the second cold war goes nuclear, at least when it comes to the financial system:
The Crude Crash Comes To Wall Street: Counterparty Risks Rear Their Ugly Heads Again | Zero Hedge
The Crude Crash Comes To Wall Street: Counterparty Risks Rear Their Ugly Heads Again | Zero Hedge.
In late 2006, default rates on lower-rate subprime private MBS began to rise considerably. Though not a very transparent market to the mainstream media-watching world, bankers knew trouble was brewing as this had not happened before in such a benign house price decline. Banks, knowing what they had on their books, what they had sold to others, and what that meant for risk, began quietly buying protection on other banks as counterparty risk became a daily worry for desks across Wall Street.
The stocks of US financials continued to rise amid “contained” and “no problem” comments from the status quo but credit spreads for the major US banks kept leaking wider even as stocks rallied… then reality dawned on stocks and the rest is history.
Today, US financial credit spreads (wider) have decoupled once again from stocks (higher) and that divergence began as oil prices started to slump.
Are banks hedging counterparty risk once more ‘knowing’ what loans and exposures they have to the massively levered US oil industry? Or is it different this time?
MYEFO: Australia set to emerge from once-in-a-century resources boom with little to show for it – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
That famous phrase, uttered by advisor James Carville in 1992 to then presidential hopeful Bill Clinton, has resonated across the globe.
It doesn’t matter how successful a leader is at foreign policy, infrastructure, social policy or education. If the economy tanks, and voters end up worse off, you’ll soon be an ex-politician.
It makes little difference to an electorate that your government may have done better than all the others, or that it had to contend with a crisis.
The hip pocket is paramount.
So for the past quarter of a century, it has been de rigueur for prime ministers, presidents and treasurers globally not only to boast their economic credentials but to give off the illusion that they actually run the show.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
H.R. 4681 Passes Congress – Justin Amash Calls It: “One of the Most Egregious Sections of Law I’ve Encountered During My Time as a Representative” | Liberty Blitzkrieg
Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face.
– Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice, in 1928
While most Americans are busy Christmas shopping and making preparations for trips to see family, Congress remains hard at work doing what it does best. Giving gifts to Wall Street and trampling on citizens’ civil liberties.
I knew the plebs were about to be royally screwed a week ago when I published the post: Wall Street Moves to Put Taxpayers on the Hook for Derivatives Trades. The piece concluded with the following:
Remember what Wall Street wants, Wall Street gets. Have a great weekend chumps.
Naturally, Wall Street got what it wanted. In fact, this provision was so important to the financial oligarchs that Jaime Dimon called around to encourage our (Wall Street’s) representatives to support it. TheWashington Post reports that:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Presenting The $303 Trillion In Derivatives That US Taxpayers Are Now On The Hook For | Zero Hedge
Presenting The $303 Trillion In Derivatives That US Taxpayers Are Now On The Hook For | Zero Hedge.
Courtesy of the Cronybus(sic) last minute passage, government was provided a quid-pro-quo $1.1 trillion spending allowance with Wall Street’s blessing in exchange for assuring banks that taxpayers would be on the hook for yet another bailout, as a result of the swaps push-out provision, after incorporating explicit Citigroup language that allows financial institutions to trade certain financial derivatives from subsidiaries that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, explicitly putting taxpayers on the hook for losses caused by these contracts. Recall:
Five years after the Wall Street coup of 2008, it appears the U.S. House of Representatives is as bought and paid for as ever. We heard about the Citigroup crafted legislation currently being pushed through Congress back in May when Mother Jones reported on it. Fortunately, they included the following image in their article:
Unsurprisingly, the main backer of the bill is notorious Wall Street lackey Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a former Goldman Sachs employee who has discovered lobbyist payoffs can be just as lucrative as a career in financial services.
We say explicitly, of course, because taxpayers have always been on the hook implicitlyfor the next Wall Street meltdown.
Why?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Next Round of the Crisis Will Reveal that the Entire System is Based on Fraud | Zero Hedge
The Next Round of the Crisis Will Reveal that the Entire System is Based on Fraud | Zero Hedge.
The biggest problem with the financial markets today is the fraud.
Fraud is endemic in the financial system today. We know that the currency, stock, bond, and even commodity markets have ALL been manipulated by Investment Banks or Central Banks.
No matter how sophisticated your analysis is, if your data inputs are garbage, your forecasts are garbage. We now know that the prices in just about every asset under the sun are garbage. Good luck computing with that.
Then there is balance sheet fraud. After the 2008 Crash, the regulators suspended accounting standards that required the banks to price their assets at market-based values. The reason the regulators did this was because the market priced these assets at pennies on the Dollar, if not ZERO.
This meant that most banks were insolvent and bankrupt.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
European Banks At Risk Of Bail-Ins In 2015 – Moody’s and S&P Warn | www.goldcore.com
European Banks At Risk Of Bail-Ins In 2015 – Moody’s and S&P Warn | www.goldcore.com.
Europe’s banks are vulnerable in 2015 due to weak macroeconomic conditions, unfinished regulatory hurdles and the risk of bail-ins according to credit rating agencies.
The economic outlook for European banks in 2015 will be hampered by weak profits, risks of bail-ins and litigation charges, Moody’s Investors Service announced Monday.
“Weak macroeconomic conditions will continue to weigh on Europe’s banking sector in 2015 and banks’ low overall profitability implies that Europe’s banking sector remains structurally vulnerable,” Moody’s Europe, Middle East and Africa financial institutions group managing director said in a statement.
“The European banking industry remains structurally vulnerable,” said Carola Schuler, managing director at Moody’s, in a presentation on the sector’s outlook.
The agencies said moves to reduce implied government support for the banking sector and force bank debt holders to participate by coming to the aid of wayward lenders would also put downward pressure on bank ratings.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Treasury Warns Congress (and Investors): This Financial Creature Could Sink the System | Wolf Street
Treasury Warns Congress (and Investors): This Financial Creature Could Sink the System | Wolf Street.
Office of Financial Research slams Leveraged Loans
In its 2014 Annual Report to Congress, the US Treasury’s Office of Financial Research, which serves the Financial Stability Oversight Council, analyzed for our Representatives the “potential threats” to the US financial house of cards. Among the biggest concerns was a financial creature that has boomed in recent years. The Fed, FDIC, and OCC have warned banks about it since March 2013. But they’re just too juicy: “leveraged loans.”
Leveraged loans are issued by junk-rated corporations already burdened by a large load of debt. Banks can retain these loans on their balance sheets or sell them. They can repackage them into synthetic securities called Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) before they sell them. They have “Financial Crisis” stamped all over them.
So the 160-page report laments:
The leveraged lending market provides a test case of the current approach to cyclical excesses. The response to these issues has been led by bank regulators, who regulate the largest institutions that originate leveraged loans, often for sale to asset managers through various instruments. Despite stronger supervisory guidance and other actions, excesses in this market show little evidence of easing.
How did we get here?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
NIRP Arrives In The US: TBTF Banks Tell Customers To Move Their Cash Or Be Charged Fees | Zero Hedge
NIRP Arrives In The US: TBTF Banks Tell Customers To Move Their Cash Or Be Charged Fees | Zero Hedge.
Back in June, the world was speechless when Goldman’s head of the ECB, Mario Draghi, stunned the world when he took Bernanke’s ZIRP and raised him one better by announcing the ECB would send deposit rates into negative territory, in the process launching the Neutron bomb known as N(egative)IRP and pushing European monetary policy into the “twilight zone”, forcing savers to pay (!) for the privilege of keeping the product of their labor in the form of fiat currency instead of invested in a global ponzi scheme built on capital market so broken even the BIS can no longer contain its shocked amazement.
Well, the US economy may be “decoupling” (just as it did right before Lehman) and one pundit after another are once again (incorrectly) predicting that the Fed may raise rates, but when it comes to the true “value” of money, US banks have just shown that when it comes to spread between reality and the economic outlook, the schism has never been deeper.
Enter US NIRP.
As the WSJ reports, far from paying for the privilege of holding other people’s cash (and why would they with nearly $3 trillion in positive carry excess reserves sloshing around) US banks – primarily of the TBTF variety – “are urging some of their largest customers in the U.S. to take their cash elsewhere or be slapped with fees, citing new regulations that make it onerous for them to hold certain deposits.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Canadian Banks’ Revenue Threatened By Falling Oil Prices
Canadian Banks’ Revenue Threatened By Falling Oil Prices.
TORONTO – Oil prices that reached a five-year low on Friday are starting to take a bite out of profits at TD Bank (TSX:TD) and raising concerns for the rest of the country’s top lenders.
Canada’s biggest banks earn up to 20 per cent of their revenues through providing investment and corporate banking services, with oil and gas companies an important part of that client base.
But with oil prices slipping — they have tumbled roughly 35 per cent to under $70 a barrel from their mid-summer highs due to a strong U.S. dollar, low demand and a glut of global supply — TD Bank says it will have to look beyond the oilpatch to make up its investment banking revenue.
“With the current activity going on in oil pricing, it certainly is impacting activity levels in the business,” Bob Dorrance, the head of TD’s wholesale banking division, told investors during a conference call earlier this week after the bank reported its fourth quarter results.
“Things have slowed down.”
Scotiabank was the last of Canada’s five big banks to report its quarterly earnings this week, wrapping up a series of conference calls that were peppered with talk about falling oil prices.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
