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Shale Euphoria: The Boom and Bust of Sub Prime Oil and Natural Gas

March 24, 2016

Shale Euphoria: The Boom and Bust of Sub Prime Oil and Natural Gas

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first send mad

Introduction

The aim of this article is to show that the shale industry, whether extracting oil or gas, has never been financially sustainable. All around the world it has consistently disappointed profit expectations. Even though it has produced considerable quantities of oil and gas, and enough to influence oil and gas prices, the industry has mostly been unprofitable and has only been able to continue by running up more and more debt. How could this be? It seems paradoxical and defies ordinary economic logic. The answer is to be found in the way that the shale gas sector has been funded. It is part of a bubble economy inflated by monetary policy that has kept down interest rates. This has made investors “hunt for yield”. These investors believed that they had found a paying investment in shale companies – but they were really proving that they were susceptible to wishful thinking, vulnerable to hype and highly unethical practices that enabled Wall Street and other bankers to do very nicely. Those who invested in fracking are going to lose a lot of money.

A Global Picture of disappointed expectations

Around the world big expectations for fracking have not been realised. One example is Argentina where shale oil reserves were thought to rival those in the USA. It is a country where there has been local opposition while central government pushed the industry in alliance with multinational companies and its own company YPC. However profitability has been elusive. To have any hope of profitability shale development has to be done at scale to rapidly bring down costs enough to make a profit.

 

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The Subprime Auto Loan Meltdown Is Here

February 25, 2016

The Subprime Auto Loan Meltdown Is Here

Debt Loans Auto Loans - Public DomainUh oh – here we go again.  Do you remember the subprime mortgage meltdown during the last financial crisis?  Well, now a similar thing is happening with auto loans.  The auto industry has been doing better than many other areas of the economy in recent years, but this “mini-boom” was fueled in large part by customers with subprime credit.  According to Equifax, an astounding 23.5 percent of all new auto loans were made to subprime borrowers in 2015.  At this point, there is a total of somewhere around $200 billion in subprime auto loans floating around out there, and many of these loans have been “repackaged” and sold to investors.  I know – all of this sounds a little too close for comfort to what happened with subprime mortgages the last time around.  We never seem to learn from our mistakes, and a lot of investors are going to end up paying the price.

Everything would be fine if the number of subprime borrowers not making their payments was extremely low.  And that was true for a while, but now delinquency rates and default rates are rising to levels that we haven’t seen since the last recession.  The following comes from Time Magazine…

People, especially those with shaky credit, are having a tougher time than usual making their car payments.

According to Bloomberg, almost 5% of subprime car loans that were bundled into securities and sold to investors are delinquent, and the default rate is even higher than that. (Depending on who’s counting, delinquency is up to three or four months behind in payments; default is what happens after that). At just over 12% in January, the default rate jumped one entire percentage point in just a month. Both delinquency and default rates are now the highest they’ve been since 2010, when the ripple effects of the recession still weighed heavily on many Americans’ finances.

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Why Greece Is The Precursor To The Next Global Debt Crisis

July 11, 2015

Why Greece Is The Precursor To The Next Global Debt Crisis

The Eurozone fantasy will be one of the early casualties

The one undeniable truth about the debt drama in Greece is that each of the conventional narratives—financial, political and historical—has some claim of legitimacy.

For example, spendthrift Greeks shunned fiscal discipline: here’s an account from 2011 that lays out the gory details: The Big Fat Greek Gravy Train: A special investigation into the EU-funded culture of greed, tax evasion and scandalous waste.

Or how about: Greek reformers want to fix the core structural problems but are being stymied by tyrannical European Union/Troika leaders: The Greek Debt Crisis and Crashing Markets.

Rather than get entangled in the arguments over which of the conventional narratives is the core narrative—a hopeless misadventure, given that each narrative has some validity—let’s start with the facts that are supported by data or public records.

The Greek Economy Is Small and Imbalanced

Here are the basics of Greece’s economy, via the CIA’s World Factbook:

Greece’s population is 10.8 million and its GDP (gross domestic product) is about $200 billion (This sourcestates the GDP is 182 billion euros or about $200 billion). Note that the euro fell sharply from $1.40 in 2014 to $1.10 currently, so any Eurozone GDP data stated in dollars has to be downsized accordingly. Many sources state Greek GDP was $240 billion in 2013; adjusted for the 20% decline in the euro, this is about $200 billion at today’s exchange rate.

Los Angeles County, with slightly more than 10 million residents, has a GDP of $554 billion, more than double that of Greece.

The European Union has over 500 million residents. Greece’s population represents 2.2% of the EU populace.

External debt (public and private debt owed to lenders outside Greece):

$568.7 billion (30 September 2013 est.)

National debt:

339 billion euros, $375 billion

Central Government Budget:

revenues: $119.5 billion

expenditures: $127.9 billion (2014 est.)

Budget surplus (+) or deficit (-):

-3.4% of GDP (2014 est.)

Public debt:

174.5% of GDP (2014 est.)

Labor force:

3.91 million (2013 est.)

GDP – per capita (Purchasing Power Parity):

$25,800 (2014 est.)

Unemployment rate:

26.8% (2014 est.)

Exports:

$35.8 billion (2014 est.)

Imports:

$62.8 billion (2014 est.)

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

 

 

 

 

BREAKING BAD (DEBT) – EPISODE THREE

March 3, 2015

BREAKING BAD (DEBT) – EPISODE THREE

In Part One of this three part article I laid out the groundwork of how the Federal Reserve is responsible for the excessive level of debt in our society and how it has warped the thinking of the American people, while creating a tremendous level of mal-investment. In Part Two I focused on the Federal Reserve/Federal Government scheme to artificially boost the economy through the issuance of subprime debt to create a false auto boom. In this final episode, I’ll address the disastrous student loan debacle and the dreadful global implications of $200 trillion of debt destroying the lives of citizens around the world.

Getting a PhD in Subprime Debt

“When easy money stopped, buyers couldn’t sell. They couldn’t refinance. First sales slowed, then prices started falling and then the housing bubble burst. Housing prices crashed. We know the rest of the story. We are still mired in the consequences. Can someone please explain to me how what is happening in higher education is any different?This bubble is going to burst.” – Mark Cuban

Now we get to the subprimiest of subprime debt – student loans. Student loans are not officially classified as subprime debt, but let’s compare borrowers. A subprime borrower has a FICO score of 660 or below, has defaulted on previous obligations, and has limited ability to meet monthly living expenses. A student loan borrower doesn’t have a credit score because they have no credit, have no job with which to pay back the loan, and have no ability other than the loan proceeds to meet their monthly living expenses. And in today’s job environment, they are more likely to land a waiter job at TGI Fridays than a job in their major. These loans are nothing more than deep subprime loans made to young people who have little chance of every paying them off, with hundreds of billions in losses being borne by the ever shrinking number of working taxpaying Americans.

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Greece and Euroland’s Crumbling McMansion of Debt

February 16, 2015

Greece and Euroland’s Crumbling McMansion of Debt

All the gimmicks lenders press on borrowers to maintain the artifice that the loan is being serviced are financial frauds.

Sometimes the best way to summarize a complex situation is with an analogy. The Greek debt crisis, for example, is very much like the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-08.

 

As you might recall, service workers earning $25,000 annually got $500,000 mortgages to buy McMansions in subprime’s go-go days. The applicant fudged a bit here and there on income and creditworthiness, and lenders reaping huge profits from originating and selling mortgages were delighted to ignore prudent underwriting standards and stamp “low-risk” on the mortgage because it was quickly sold to credulous investors.

The bank made its money in transaction and origination fees, and passed the risk of default on to investors who accepted the fraud that the loan was low-risk.

The loan was fundamentally imprudent and risky because the borrower was not qualified for a loan of such magnitude. But since the risk was distributed to others, the banks ignored the 100% probability of eventual default and skimmed the profits upfront.

Greece was the subprime borrower, and its membership in the euro gave the banks permission to enter the credit rating of Germany on Greece’s loan application. Though anyone with the slightest knowledge of Greece’s economy knew it did not qualify for loans of such magnitude, lenders were happy to offer the loans at interest rates close to those of Greece’s northern neighbors, and then sell them as low-risk sovereign debtinvestments.

 

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