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Ten years after the crisis… they’re doing the same thing and expecting different results

Ten years after the crisis… they’re doing the same thing and expecting different results

“Holy Crap– turn on your TV! This is crazy!”

It was Sunday, September 14, 2008. Exactly 10 years ago to the day.

My friend Jeff called me and told me to turn on the television—where I saw dozens of people on the streets of Manhattan filing out of a skyscraper carrying boxes full of their office junk.

They were all employees of Lehman Brothers, one of the largest investment banks in the world.

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Lehman was hours away from filing bankruptcy in what would go down as THE biggest bankruptcy in US history.

The next day the US stock market tanked. And for most of the next several weeks, all global financial markets were a roller coaster of surreal panic and chaos.

I don’t know if you can remember the general mood back then. I can. It was fear.

People were terrified of what was happening in the economy. The real estate market had dried up. The stock market had crashed. Some of the most hallowed financial institutions in the world went bust in the blink of an eye.

It’s now officially been a decade since the collapse.

And the typical sentiment among economists, politicians, and central bankers is that the economy has come roaring back.

There’s certainly a lot of evidence to support this assertion—

Several financial markets around the world have hit all-time highs. Stocks. Real estate. Bonds. They’re all generally selling for record high prices.

Earlier this week the US Census Bureau announced that median household income in the Land of the Free had increased by 1.8% between 2016 and 2017.

(That’s hardly a life-changing pay raise for workers… but it’s better than nothing.)

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

The Bank Bailout of 2008 was Unnecessa

The Bank Bailout of 2008 was Unnecessary

Photo Source Xavier | CC BY 2.0

This week marked 10 years since the harrowing descent into the financial crisis — when the huge investment bank Lehman Bros. went into bankruptcy, with the country’s largest insurer, AIG, about to follow. No one was sure which financial institution might be next to fall.

The banking system started to freeze up. Banks typically extend short-term credit to one another for a few hundredths of a percentage point more than the cost of borrowing from the federal government. This gap exploded to 4 or 5 percentage points after Lehman collapsed. Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke — along with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Bank of New York President Timothy Geithner — rushed to Congress to get $700 billion to bail out the banks. “If we don’t do this today we won’t have an economy on Monday,” is the line famously attributed to Bernanke.

The trio argued to lawmakers that without the bailout, the United States faced a catastrophic collapse of the financial system and a second Great Depression.

Neither part of that story was true.

Still, news reports on the crisis raised the prospect of empty ATMs and checks uncashed. There were stories in major media outlets about the bank runs of 1929.

No such scenario was in the cards in 2008. Unlike 1929, we have the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC was created precisely to prevent the sort of bank runs that were common during the Great Depression and earlier financial panics. The FDIC is very good at taking over a failed bank to ensure that checks are honored and ATMs keep working. In fact, the FDIC took over several major banks and many minor ones during the Great Recession. Business carried on as normal and most customers — unless they were following the news closely — remained unaware.

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

As The Fed Raises Rates, The Ghost of Lehman Bros Lingers

As The Fed Raises Rates, The Ghost of Lehman Bros Lingers

In just two days – September 15 – it will be the 10-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers collapse. The date they filed bankruptcy.

With nearly $620 billion in debts, it was the largest bankruptcy in history.

Now, a decade late – it appears the mainstream’s learned nothing. And many have forgotten the crisis that was 2008. . .

The banks are bigger and the damage of them crashing will be even greater this time around.

The elites – led by the Federal Reserve – have since 2008 told banks to continue lending and for consumers to continue borrowing. They did this by cranking interest rates down to zero (technically 0.25%). This allowed funds and ‘shadow banks’ to borrow huge amounts on margin.

It also kept commercial banks continually lending out loans. And at the end of the day if they lent out too much and didn’t have enough legal ‘reserves’ (deposits) to close, they’d simply ring up another bank (or the Fed) and borrow the amount needed.

“Hey BofA, we need $26 million.”
“Okay Citi, sounds good.”

Borrowing at near zero and lending out at higher rates was very lucrative. And basically, free money.

Banks can ultimately borrow from the Fed for 0.25% and lend out to the U.S. government for a solid 2-3% nominal return. Or even better, they’ll lend out to consumers who want a new house at a higher interest rate. Students that need debt for college. Auto loans. Or Emerging economies that need funding.

There’s more to it – and I’ll highlight it more in-depth in later articles. But aslong as interest rates are low, the game continues.

But the problem is – and just like before 2008 kicked off – short term interest rates are now rising.

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

The Makings of a 2020 Recession and Financial Crisis

stockbrokerCarl Court/Getty Images

The Makings of a 2020 Recession and Financial Crisis

Although the global economy has been undergoing a sustained period of synchronized growth, it will inevitably lose steam as unsustainable fiscal policies in the US start to phase out. Come 2020, the stage will be set for another downturn – and, unlike in 2008, governments will lack the policy tools to manage it.

NEW YORK – As we mark the decennial of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, there are still ongoing debates about the causes and consequences of the financial crisis, and whether the lessons needed to prepare for the next one have been absorbed. But looking ahead, the more relevant question is what actually will trigger the next global recession and crisis, and when.

The current global expansion will likely continue into next year, given that the US is running large fiscal deficits, China is pursuing loose fiscal and credit policies, and Europe remains on a recovery path. But by 2020, the conditions will be ripe for a financial crisis, followed by a global recession.

There are 10 reasons for this. First, the fiscal-stimulus policies that are currently pushing the annual US growth rate above its 2% potential are unsustainable. By 2020, the stimulus will run out, and a modest fiscal drag will pull growth from 3% to slightly below 2%.

Second, because the stimulus was poorly timed, the US economy is now overheating, and inflation is rising above target. The US Federal Reserve will thus continue to raise the federal funds rate from its current 2% to at least 3.5% by 2020, and that will likely push up short- and long-term interest rates as well as the US dollar.

Meanwhile, inflation is also increasing in other key economies, and rising oil prices are contributing additional inflationary pressures. That means the other major central banks will follow the Fed toward monetary-policy normalization, which will reduce global liquidity and put upward pressure on interest rates.

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

Carmot Capital: “The Next Crisis Won’t Be A Flash Crash; It Will Be A Flash Flood”

THE STRAIGHT FLUSH CRASH

AN ILLUSION OF SIMPLICITY, AN ENTANGLEMENT OF COMPLEXITY

Lately, there has been talk of so-called “elevated” markets. Equity markets, real estate markets and bond markets are indeed reaching new highs regularly. But how long will this last? Can it last indefinitely? Or as is often said, “It’s different this time,”; is it really? We posit that it is not different this time. In fact, there are very real parallels that should concern every investor. What could catalyze the next global financial crisis (“GFC II”)? We suggest that it won’t be a “Flash Crash.” Instead it will be a flash flood that could be caused by very real systemic risk. In other words, the system will flush itself of the market detritus accumulated over the last 8-9 years. We are calling it The Straight Flush Crash. This paper will explain why.

For anyone that has studied the sequence of events leading up to the Global Financial Crisis (“GFC”) of 2008-09, it would not be hard to put together the shape of the new crisis. The first GFC began with the New Century Financial bankruptcy that caused the first market hiccup on February 27, 2007 (when the VIX indicator jumped a record 60% in one day) and escalated to Bear Stearns, to Lehman Brothers, then to the whole GFC debacle. In our opinion, the market blip on August 24, 2015 (affectionately known as the ETF Flash Crash) was the first indication of the shape of things to come. During each crisis, a flashpoint has ignited the existing structure, which then toppled and in turn caused enormous losses for investors. For example, in the GFC of 2008-09, subprime lending was a small fraction of lending which ignited the whole structured finance pyramid and caused the liquidity crisis that bankrupted multiple banks.

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

Hong Kong Interbank Rates Spike To Highest Since Lehman

Hong Kong Interbank Rates Spike To Highest Since Lehman

For only the third time since Lehman, the price of liquidity in the Hong Kong Dollar interbank markets has exploded higher.

Overnight HKD Hibor soared over 60 basis points to 0.71407% in Monday trading – the highest since October 2008…

Note that the two previous spikes were around year-end, so this is unusual in both its velocity and size.

Of course, the narrative of a panic in Asian liquidity is not a good one for supporting risk assets and so the spike is being dismissed as a one-off due to several factors (as Bloomberg reports)…

Monday’s rise in Hong Kong dollar overnight interbank rate was due to major fund providers being more cautious in lending at month-end, and because of demand from some market players, a Hong Kong Monetary Authority spokesperson writes in an emailed reply to questions from Bloomberg. Interest rates subsided when fund providers responded by lending out more Hong Kong dollars. Relatively large movements in short- dated interest rate Monday was probably a result of thin market conditions ahead of the month-end. The market continued to function normally.

Monday’s sudden spike in HKD overnight funding cost is probably due to short-term funding activities, likely for I Squared Capital’s purchase of Hutchison Telecom’s unit and HSBC share buyback announcement, says Angus To, deputy head of research at ICBC International Research.

Rate likely to drop soon as HKD liquidity remains ample in general, To says in a phone call.

So just ignore the fact that the HKD liquidty markets just exploded due to month-end (well it hasn’t before – see chart) and some M&A (there’s been no M&A in the last 9 years?)… it’s probably nothing.

So Many Triggers

So Many Triggers

So Many Triggers

It’s not a story that’s likely to appear on the evening news, but it certainly should.

Deutsche Bank has announced that it will create more shares, selling them at a 35% discount. Existing shareholders have not been pleased and, in the first four days since the offer was announced, the value of existing shares dropped by 13% as shareholders began dumping them.

So why on earth would Germany’s foremost bank do something so rash? Well, in recent years, the bank has been involved in many arbitrations, litigations, and regulatory proceedings as a result of fraudulent activities, including the manipulation of markets. Having been found guilty, they presently owe $7.2 billion to the US Department of Justice and are now facing an additional $10 billion litigation bill. Unfortunately, the bank is already broke and, should Deutsche actually be able to sell the new shares, the $8.6 billion they hope to receive will still not save them from bankruptcy.

Business has also not been so good. They’ve lost nearly $2 billion in the last two years, instituted a hiring freeze, cut bonuses by 80%, and are facing a $2.5 million civil penalty to pay to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for failure to report transactions and, not surprisingly, have been downgraded.

The German government has stated that they will not bail out Deutsche and, indeed, under the EU agreement, they cannot do so. It’s safe to say that Germany’s largest bank will soon go the way of the dodo.

For those who don’t live in Europe, this may not seem all that significant. However, Deutsche is the bank that funds the euro system, which they can now no longer do. Further, Deutsche is ten times larger than Lehman Brothers, an American bank that famously went down in 2008, heralding in that year’s economic crash. (Ninety percent of Deutsche’s revenue has been from derivative trading, which is what brought down Lehman.)

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

 

The Coming Collapse of the World’s Biggest Economy

The Coming Collapse of the World’s Biggest Economy

The stage is set for the collapse of the world’s largest economy—the European Union. The trigger: Italy’s exit from the euro currency.

The Financial Times recently put it this way:

An Italian exit from the single currency would trigger the total collapse of the eurozone within a very short period. It would probably lead to the most violent economic shock in history, dwarfing the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008 and the 1929 Wall Street crash.

If the FT is even partially right, it means we’re looking at a possible stock market crash of historic proportions. It could devastate anyone with a brokerage account. But it could also present enormous opportunities to profit.

Here’s how it could happen…

What started out as a joke has become Italy’s most popular political party.

In 2007, Beppe Grillo, an Italian actor and comedian, launched Vaffanculo Day (“vaffanculo” is Italian for “f*** off”).

Grillo and his followers used V-Day to bluntly express their displeasure over Italian establishment politicians using imagery from the movie V for Vendetta.

V-Day helped organize Italians frustrated by their political system. It gave birth to the Five Star Movement, Italy’s new populist political party.

Grillo’s Five Star Movement—or M5S, as it’s known by its Italian acronym—is anti-globalist, anti-euro, and anti-establishment. It doesn’t neatly fall into the left/right political paradigm.

According to the latest polls, M5S is now the most popular party in Italy. It won mayoral elections in Rome and Turin earlier this year.

M5S is riding a wave of populist anger at entrenched political elites over economic stagnation. Italy has had virtually no productive growth since it joined the eurozone in 1999.

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

Three reasons why the banking system is rigged against you

Three reasons why the banking system is rigged against you

If there were ever any doubt about how completely RIGGED the banking system is against depositors, allow me to introduce the following:

Exhibit A: Governments are working to make banks LESS safe

Yesterday an unelected bureaucrat that no one has ever heard of made a stunning announcement that has sweeping implications for anyone with a bank account.

Dombrovskis is Europe’s top financial services official, so he controls bank regulations in the European Union.

He issued a stern warning to global bank regulators yesterday that he is prepared to reject any further plans they might have to tighten bank capital requirements.

This might sound rather dry, but it’s incredibly important.

“Bank capital” is the most critical component of any bank balance sheet.

Capital is like a bank’s rainy day fund; when things start to go bad, a bank’s capital provides a margin of safety to ensure that their depositors’ funds are safe.

Strong banks have ample capital and are able to withstand crises.

Weak banks with low levels of capital collapse. And that’s precisely what happened in 2008.

Most banks across the west had very low levels of capital. They had spent years making appallingly stupid ‘no money down’ loans with 0% teaser interest rates to borrowers with pitiful credit.

When that bubble burst, the banks lost billions of dollars. And it turned out that most of the banks at the time had razor thin levels of capital.

If you’re wondering why, the answer is quite simple: the less capital a bank maintains, the more money it can invest… so poorly capitalized banks tend to make more money.

Lehman Brothers was quite profitable.

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

I’m in Awe of How Fast Deutsche Bank is Falling Apart

I’m in Awe of How Fast Deutsche Bank is Falling Apart

Counterparties lose confidence, withdraw cash.

Deutsche Bank, with $2 trillion in assets, amounting to 58% of Germany’s GDP, one of the most globally interwoven banks, with gross notional derivatives exposure of €46 trillion, right at the top along with JP Morgan (booked as €41 billion in derivative trading assets after netting and collateral) – this creature of risk and malfeasance, is finally starting to scare its counterparties.

This is how Lehman came unglued. Slowly and then all of a sudden.

Bloomberg News today:

[S]ome funds that use the bank’s prime brokerage service have moved part of their listed derivatives holdings to other firms this week, according to an internal bank document seen by Bloomberg News. Millennium Partners, Capula Investment Management, and Rokos Capital Management are among about 10 hedge funds that have cut their exposure, said a person familiar with the situation….

So far, these are just the first of Deutsche Bank’s 200 hedge-fund clients that use it to clear their derivatives transactions. Banking is a confidence game. When confidence sags, the whole construct comes tumbling down. And the first movers have a big advantage in getting their cash out in in time. Bloomberg:

Clients review their exposure to counterparties to avoid situations like the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and MF Global’s 2011 bankruptcy when hedge funds had billions of dollars of assets frozen until the resolution of lengthy legal proceedings.

As the leak ricocheted around the world, Deutsche Bank shares plunged 6.6% in late trading today in Frankfurt to €10.25, having been down 8% at one point earlier. Shares are at the lowest level since they started trading on the Xetra exchange in 1992. They’re down 68% from April 2015. Just before the financial Crisis, they briefly traded at over €100 a share. By that measure, they’re down over 90%!

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

Charting The Epic Collapse Of The World’s Most Systemically Dangerous Bank

Charting The Epic Collapse Of The World’s Most Systemically Dangerous Bank

It’s been almost 10 years in the making, but the fate of one of Europe’s most important financial institutions appears to be sealed.

After a hard-hitting sequence of scandals, poor decisions, and unfortunate events,Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes that Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank shares are now down -48% on the year to $12.60, which is a record-setting low.

Even more stunning is the long-term view of the German institution’s downward spiral.

With a modest $15.8 billion in market capitalization, shares of the 147-year-old company now trade for a paltry 8% of its peak price in May 2007.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

 

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

If the deaths of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were quick and painless, the coming demise of Deutsche Bank has been long, drawn out, and painful.

In recent times, Deutsche Bank’s investment banking division has been among the largest in the world, comparable in size to Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Citigroup. However, unlike those other names, Deutsche Bank has been walking wounded since the Financial Crisis, and the German bank has never been able to fully recover.

It’s ironic, because in 2009, the company’s CEO Josef Ackermann boldly proclaimed that Deutsche Bank had plenty of capital, and that it was weathering the crisis better than its competitors.

It turned out, however, that the bank was actually hiding $12 billion in losses to avoid a government bailout. Meanwhile, much of the money the bank did make during this turbulent time in the markets stemmed from the manipulation of Libor rates. Those “wins” were short-lived, since the eventual fine to end the Libor probe would be a record-setting $2.5 billion.

The bank finally had to admit that it actually needed more capital.

In 2013, it raised €3 billion with a rights issue, claiming that no additional funds would be needed. Then in 2014 the bank head-scratchingly proceeded to raise €1.5 billion, and after that, another €8 billion.

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

Italy Seeks “Last Resort” Bailout Fund To “Ringfence” Troubled Banks, Meeting Monday

Italy Seeks “Last Resort” Bailout Fund To “Ringfence” Troubled Banks, Meeting Monday

Italy’s finance minister, Pier Carlo Padoan, wants to “ringfence” its troubled banks.

Padoan called a meeting of the executives of Italy’s troubled banks in Rome on Monday. The banks allegedly will come up with a “Last Resort” bailout fund.

Last resort or first resort, is there a difference at this point in time?

Please consider Italy Pushes for Bank Rescue Fund. I highlight the key buzzwords and phrases italics.

Finance minister Pier Carlo Padoan has called a meeting in Rome on Monday with executives from Italy’s largest financial institutions to agree final details of a “last resort” bailout plan.

Yet on the eve of that gathering, concerns remain as to whether the plan will be sufficient to ringfence the weakest of Italy’s large banks, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, from contagion, according to people involved in the talks.

Italian bank shares have lost almost half their value so far this year amid investor worries over a €360bn pile of non-performing loans — equivalent to about a fifth of GDP. Lenders’ profitability has been hit by a crippling three-year recession.

The plan being worked on, which could be officially announced as soon as Monday evening, recalls the Sareb bad bank created in 2012 by the Spanish government to deal with financial crisis in its smaller cajas banks, say people involved.

Although the details remain under discussion, it foresees the establishment of a private vehicle that will include upwards of €5bn in equity contributions — mostly from Italy’s banks, insurers and asset managers — and then a larger debt component. The fund will then mop up shares in distressed lenders.

A second vehicle will seek to buy non-performing loans at market prices.

“It is a backstop fund,” said one person involved in the talks.

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

Austria Just Announced A 54% Haircut Of Senior Creditors In First “Bail In” Under New European Rules

Austria Just Announced A 54% Haircut Of Senior Creditors In First “Bail In” Under New European Rules

Just over a year ago, a black swan landed in the middle of Europe, when in what was then dubbed a “Spectacular Development” In Austria, the “bad bank” of failed Hypo Alpe Adria – the Heta Asset Resolution AG – itself went from good to bad, with its creditors forced into an involuntary “bail-in” following the “discovery” of a $8.5 billion capital hole in its balance sheet primarily related to ongoing deterioration in central and eastern European economies.

Austria had previously nationalized Heta’s predecessor Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International six years ago after it nearly collapsed under the bad loans it ran up when it grew rapidly in the former Yugoslavia. Having burnt through €5.5 euros of taxpayers’ money to prop up Hypo Alpe, Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling ended support in March 2015, triggering the FMA’s takeover.

This was the first official proposed “Bail-In” of creditors, one that took place before similar ad hoc balance sheet restructuring would take place in Greece and Portugal in the coming months. Or rather, it wasn’t a fully executed “Bail-In” for the reason that creditors fought it tooth and nail.

And then today, following a decision by the Austrian Banking Regulator, the Finanzmarktaufsicht or Financial Market Authority, Austria officially became the first European country to use a new law under the framework imposed by Bank the European Recovery and Resolution Directive to share losses of a failed bank with senior creditors as it slashed the value of debt owed by Heta Asset Resolution AG. 

The highlights from the announcement:

Today, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) in its function as the resolution authority pursuant to the Bank Recovery and Resolution Act (BaSAG – Bundesgesetz über die Sanierung und Abwicklung von Banken) has issued the key features for the further steps for the resolution of HETA ASSET RESOLUTION AG. The most significant measures are:

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

Deutsche Bank Is Scared: “What Needs To Be Done” In Its Own Words

Deutsche Bank Is Scared: “What Needs To Be Done” In Its Own Words

It all started in mid/late 2014, when the first whispers of a Fed rate hike emerged, which in turn led to relentless increase in the value of the US dollar and the plunge in the price of oil and all commodities, unleashing the worst commodity bear market in history.

The immediate implication of these two concurrent events was missed by most, although we wrote about it and previewed the implications in November of that year in “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed.”

The conclusion was simple: Fed tightening and the resulting plunge in commodity prices, would lead (as it did) to the collapse of the great petrodollar cycle which had worked efficiently for 18 years and which led to petrodollar nations serving as a source of demand for $10 trillion in US assets, and when finished, would result in the Quantitative Tightening which has offset all central bank attempts to inject liquidity in the markets, a tightening which has since been unleashed by not only most emerging markets and petro-exporters but most notably China, and whose impact has been to not only pressure stocks lower but bring economic growth across the entire world to a grinding halt.

The second, and just as important development, was observed in early 2015: 11 months ago we wrote that “The Global Dollar Funding Shortage Is Back With A Vengeance And “This Time It’s Different” and followed up on it later in the year in “Global Dollar Funding Shortage Intensifies To Worst Level Since 2012” a problem which has manifested itself most notably in Africa where as we wrote recently, virtually every petroleum exporting nation has run out of actual physical dollars.

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

The Big Short is a Great Movie, But…

The Big Short is a Great Movie, But…

 

Paris — Michael Lewis is the chronicler of Wall Street.  He takes the complexity behind which the inhabitants of the financial world hide and weaves a tale that is both understandable and compelling.  Starting with the classic “Liars Poker” (1989), Lewis has produced a number of books about the financial markets including “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt” (2014) and “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” (2010).  Working with director Adam McKay and some great actors and screen writers, Lewis has managed to produce what is perhaps the most accessible and relevant treatment of the mortgage boom and financial bust of the 2000s, and the subsequent 2008 financial crisis.

The beauty of “The Big Short,” both as a movie and a book, is that it provides sufficient detail to inform the general audience about events and issues that are not part of everyday life.  Wall Street is a secretive place, but “The Big Short” manages to convey enough of the details to make the story credible as a journalistic effort, yet also enormously entertaining.  Lewis does this with two essential ingredients of any film: a simple story and compelling characters.

Images of greed and stupidity are presented like Italian frescos in “The Big Short,” pictures that are memorable and thought provoking.  Indeed, what many people know and remember years from now about the 2008 financial crisis will be shaped by creative efforts such as “The Big Short” for the simple reason that Lewis has simplified the description into a manageable portion.  Unlike hedge fund manager Michael Burry (played by Christian Bale), most people lack the patience and expertise to sift through and understand reams of financial data.

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

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