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Bill Black Calls It As It Is

Posted by Karl Denninger

An amazing set of written testimony was given to the panel on Lehman’s collapse that you all need to read has been filed by Bill Black.

Read this:

Lehman’s principal source of (fictional) income and real losses was making (and selling) what the trade accurately called “liar’s loans” through its subsidiary, Aurora. (The bland euphemism for liar’s loans was “Alt-A.”) Liar’s loans are “criminogenic” (they create epidemics of mortgage fraud) because they create strong incentives to provide false information on loan applications. The FBI began warning publicly about the epidemic of mortgage fraud in 2004 (CNN). Liar’s loans also produce intense “adverse selection” – even the borrowers who are not fraudulent will tend to be the least creditworthy. The combination of these two perverse incentives means that liar’s loans, in economics jargon, have a deeply “negative expected value” to the lender. In English, that means that the average dollar lent on a liar’s loan creates a loss ranging from 50 – 85 cents.

The value of Lehman’s Alt-A mortgage holdings fell 60 percent during the past six months to $5.9 billion, the firm reported last week.1

Gambling against the casino creates a negative expected value, but making liar’s loans creates inevitable, catastrophic losses.

Is it over?  Oh hell no.

That loss, however, may not be recognized for many years – particularly if the liar’s loans become so large that they help hyper-inflate a financial bubble. In the near-term, making massive amounts of liar’s losses loans creates a mathematical guarantee of producing record (albeit fictional) accounting income. (As long as the bubble inflates, the liar’s loans can be refinanced – creating additional fictional income and delaying (but increasing) the eventual loss.

And what are we doing right now with our still existing banks?

We have issued official guidance that they do not need to mark their commercial real estate exposures to the market so long as they are receiving income from them, even if the lies (valuation) are known. 

This is EXACTLY IDENTICAL to making liar’s loans to buy houses “which are perfectly ok so long as the people can make the (initial) payments”!

It gets better:

It was a painful, as a former regulator, to read the Valukas report’s discussion of the FRBNY staff’s open disdain for working cooperatively with the SEC to protect the public. The Valukas report exposes the sick relationship between the country’s main regulatory bodies and the systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) they are supposed to be policing. The FRBNY, led by President Geithner, had a clear statutory mission — promote the safety and soundness of the banking system and compliance with the law – stood by while Lehman deceived the public through a scheme that FRBNY officials likened to a “three card monte routine” (p. 1470).

And what are we doing right now with so-called “disclosure”?  Mark to fantasy accounting for commercial real estate loans and HELOCs, hundreds of billions of dollars of off-balance sheet “vehicles” that are being carried by all major financial institutions without any capital behind them at all since they are not counted in the firm’s “capital ratios” and explicit direction by the FDIC to examiners to not require banks to hold more capital against underwater real estate loans so long as rents are being paid?

Meanwhile we continue to see disclosures from the ratings agencies and others that CMBS (commercial mortgage backed security) delinquency/default rates continue to rise, with FITCH now saying that defaults will exceed 11% of all outstanding securitizations in their rated deals by the end of the year.

Yet the banks are being explicitly allowed to fail to reserve against these predictable and expected losses by both current policy and explicit direction from the so-called “risk managers” in the FDIC (that is, bank examiners) and others in the regulatory apparatus.

Translation: The FRBNY knew that Lehman was engaged in fraud designed to overstate its liquidity and, therefore, was unwilling to loan as much money to Lehman. The FRBNY did not, however, inform the SEC, the public, or the OTS (which regulated an S&L that Lehman owned) of the fraud. The Fed official doesn’t even make a pretense that the Fed believes it is supposed to protect the public. The FRBNY remained willing to lend to a fraudulent systemically dangerous institution (SDI). This is an egregious violation of the public trust, and the regulatory perpetrators must be held accountable. The Fed wanted to maintain a fiction that toxic mortgage product were simply misunderstood assets, so it allowed Lehman to keep dealing the three card monte scam.

Far worse than what happened with Lehman in this regard it is still the ongoing policy of all of these agencies to do the same damn thing with the still-existing banks and bank-holding companies!

Or, in plain English, the Fed didn’t want Lehman and other SDIs to sell their toxic assets because the sales prices would reveal that the values Lehman (and all the other SDIs) placed on their toxic assets (the “marks”) were inflated with worthless hot air.

AND STILL IS – the entire point of “extend and pretend”, that is, a formal and written policy crammed down FASB’s throat at literal gunpoint by the US Congress and implemented by current FDIC examiners with regard to both underwater commercial real estate loans and HELOCs behind underwater, delinquent first mortgages is to prevent the liquidation of these products into the market, thereby preserving the ability to make willfully and intentionally fraudulent claims of value that does not exist.

The FRBNY has vastly greater leverage than the FHLBSF ever had and in the context of the Lehman crisis it had the leverage to force any change it believed was necessary, including an immediate conversion of Lehman to a bank holding company and a commercial bank.

Of course it did.  The entire point of the scam was to prevent the recognition of the true value of any of these assets, lest they force a mark-to-market by all other system participants.  That would have been catastrophic (and still will be) but the market cannot clear until it happens.

Fifth, the Fed is addicted to opaqueness and its senior ranks believe the bankers when they claim that the people must never be allowed to learn the truth about asset losses. One of the conflicts of interest that a banking regulator must never succumb to is the temptation to encourage or allow the regulated entity to lie about its financial condition for the purported purpose of preventing a run on the bank.

Like, for example, claiming that the big banks all passed “stress tests” that were orchestrated to be impossible-to-fail because they were predicated on forcing FASB to allow these same institutions to carry underwater and unrecoverable paper at par?

What Bill Black has documented is not only how and why Lehman blew sky high, but that nothing has, in fact, changed – other than the fact that we have now effectively backstopped this activity among the current survivors by sweeping the truth under the rug!

If we do not stop it now the system will blow sky-high – again – and this time there won’t be enough money or credit available to the United States Government (or any other government) to stop it.

The Valukas Report on Lehman: My Questions

Posted by Karl Denninger

Giving that House Financial Services is having a hearing today on the Valukas report on the Lehman collapse, I thought I’d put forward the questions I would ask if I was a member of the committee.

In no particular order:

• From Mr. Valukas written testimony:
  (But) we found that Lehman was significantly and persistently in excess of its own risk limits. Lehman management decided to disregard the guidance provided by Lehman’s risk management systems. Rather than adjust business decisions to adapt to risk limit excesses, management decided to adjust the risk limits to adapt to business goals.

  We found that the SEC was aware of these excesses and simply acquiesced.

  In 2004, prior to becoming Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, then the head of Goldman Sachs, came to The SEC and asked for the leverage limits that formerly constrained investment banks – including Lehman – to be dropped.  SEC rules formerly limited leverage to 14:1.  It is important to note that this was Mr. Paulson’s second request – the first, made in 2000, was turned down.  This second request was granted.

  In point of fact, all of the firms that failed – AIG, Lehman, Bear, Fannie and Freddie – had leverage at the point of failure dramatically higher than the former limit.  At 14:1, Lehman would not have failed at all (neither would have Bear Stearns.)
  
  To Mary Shapiro, Ben Bernanke, and Tim Geithner:  How can we sit here today, more than three years into this crisis and coming up on two years since Lehman failed, and not have rescinded the leverage limit change that was asked for by Henry Paulson – and without which the failures would not have taken place?
  
  

• Again, from Mr. Valukas:
  The SEC

  knew that Lehman was reporting sums in its reported liquidity pool that the SEC did not believe were in fact liquid; the SEC knew that Lehman was exceeding its risk control limits; and the SEC should have known that Lehman was manipulating its balance sheet to make its leverage appear better than it was. Yet even in the face of actual knowledge of critical shortcomings, and after Bear Stearns’ near collapse in March 2008 following a liquidity crisis, the SEC did not take decisive action.

  Me:
  This is not a unique failure.  The OTS has been fingered by its own Inspector General for having an employee who was an OTS inspector during the S&L crisis and during that crisis allowed an S&L to fraudulently backdate deposits perform the exact same outrageous action with IndyMac bank.  The bank subsequently failed and a significant part of the FDIC loss was taken as a consequence of its delayed action.

  OTS was also fingered in the WaMu collapse for treating the bank as not a regulated entity but rather as a constituent, a term actually used by the OTS in hearings last week.

  The SEC clearly has historically taken the same sort of approach to so-called “regulation” leading up to this crisis with Lehman Brothers.   Indeed, we know from the report that:

  Valukis:
  But months earlier, it had learned critical information that put it on notice that Lehman’s liquidity was not as was portrayed to the investing public.  But the SEC did not act on its knowledge, it simply acquiesced.
  
  This is, for all intents and purposes, the same misrepresentation made by IndyMac bank and was both countenanced and intentionally ignored by The SEC.Both The Federal Reserve Board and FRBNY in addition have effectively ducked their responsibility as the primary safety and soundness regulator of the banking system as a whole.

  To Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and Mary Shapiro: As of the present day we have financial institutions throughout the land that we know for a fact are holding “assets” at dramatically above fair market value.  We know this through the weekly FDIC bank seizures where the discrepancy is, every week, outlined.  How can your agencies defend your actions both leading to Lehman’s bankruptcy and in the nearly two years hence when these practices are continuing even today and, since OTS is in fact  under Treasury, why are the person(s) responsible for the aforementioned egregious and documented conduct still employed?  Further, when are you going to force firms to actually account for their assets at market value instead of intentionally-inflated numbers that make financial institutions appear dramatically healthier than they really are?

I would additionally ask all present:

• Why has nobody bothered to finger the seminal change that led to the inflation of the terminal phase of the bubble and it’s collapse: the removal of former hard-cap leverage limits that was requested by Henry Paulson of Goldman Sachs in 2004, and why should we not legislatively re-impose this hard cap immediately – on all financial institutions?

• Why, after the collapse of Enron and MCI, two firms that used off-balance sheet structures to hide risk and distort their financial health, were such structures not entirely banned (as was often-claimed would be the case in the wake of both firms’ failure), and why to this day are these structures still outstanding in the aggregate of trillions of dollars among US Financial firms?  How do you and your agencies justify computing Tier Capital ratios without including these so-called “off balance sheet” exposures?
• Why, after the S&L Crisis and now IndyMac, as well as Lehman, have not each and every one of the alleged “regulators” that willfully looked the other way or even worse, were knowingly involved in manipulation of balance sheets and valuations, been at minimum been removed form their posts?  It is clear from the record that multiple Federal Agencies have in fact been willfully blind to either dramatic increases in risk among institutions or, in some cases, been willfully complicit in acts that give rise to a colorable claim of corruption.  Yet in exactly none of these cases has enforcement action been taken within the regulatory agencies.  Why not?

Dodd’s Chief Counsel Bought Financial Stocks During 2008 Crisis

By Robert Schmidt

March 18 (Bloomberg) — Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd’s chief counsel in 2008 traded stock in Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo & Co., American International Group Inc. and other rescued companies as the panel considered legislation to address the credit crisis, according to her financial disclosure form filed with the Senate.

Amy Friend, 51, who is now leading the panel’s effort to write a bill overhauling Wall Street regulations, bought $1,000- to-$15,000 stakes in four banks, weeks after Dodd hired her in January 2008, the form shows. She also owned shares of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and other insurance firms, according to the disclosure document, which she signed on June 5, 2009.

The transactions, permissible under Senate rules, included buying $1,000 to $15,000 of Federal Home Loan Bank bonds and Fannie Mae debt in June and July, 2008. On July 30 of that year, then-President George W. Bush signed into law a Dodd-sponsored bill setting out new regulations for the housing finance agencies and allowing the Treasury Department to give them cash injections.

“This looks very bad,” said Melanie Sloan, the executive director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a former Democratic congressional aide. “At the very least it’s inappropriate and it gives the appearance of wrongdoing, even if there is none.”

Ethics Committee

Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, defended his chief counsel. “Amy Friend is one of the fiercest public advocates on Capitol Hill today,” Dodd said in an e-mailed statement. “Her integrity is second to none.”

Friend, who declined to comment, informed her supervisor of her holdings, and consulted the Senate Ethics Committee when she was hired, Kirstin Brost, the Senate Banking Committee spokeswoman, said.

Friend lists the investments as jointly owned with her husband. She continues to hold financial securities, Brost said. Friend’s disclosure form for 2009 is due in May.

Sloan and other ethics specialists say Friend’s stock ownership and trading reflect the leeway lawmakers and congressional staff have with their investments. Unlike Treasury Department employees or bank examiners at independent regulatory agencies who aren’t allowed to hold shares of companies they oversee, U.S. lawmakers and their staff are free to invest with few restrictions.

Still, Friend’s counterparts on the banking panel’s Republican side and on the House Financial Services Committee didn’t own financial instruments, according to their 2008 disclosures.

‘Squishy’ Rules

The rules “are kind of squishy intentionally,” said Kenneth Gross, a partner at the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP law firm in Washington who counsels people on ethics regulations. “Congress has permitted the holding and trading of securities virtually unfettered.”

Senate rule 37 states that no lawmaker or employee “shall knowingly use his official position to introduce or aid the progress or passage of legislation, a principal purpose of which is to further only his pecuniary interest.”

In additional guidance, the Senate Ethics Manual notes that the restriction is “narrow” and says that if the legislation has broad impact, a prohibition wouldn’t apply.

The rules require staff that have “substantial holdings” that could be directly affected by a committee’s work to divest, unless they are given a waiver by the Senate Ethics Committee.

The ethics panel has told congressional staff that a fair definition of “substantial” would be any single holding equal to 3 percent to 5 percent of total liquid assets. Friend’s combined financial investments constituted less than 2 percent of her liquid assets, below the ethics guidance, Brost said.

‘Not Unethical’

John Hasnas, who teaches ethics as an associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business in Washington, said that while her actions may not look good politically, “the fact that it may appear unethical to others doesn’t mean what you did was wrong.”

“If the rules say that she is allowed to do it and the only problem is that it gives the appearance of impropriety, in my opinion she has not behaved unethically,” Hasnas said in a telephone interview.

It is impossible to tell the exact amount of Friend’s purchases and sales from the ethics records, which require her to value investments only in broad ranges.

She listed each of her financial stocks as being worth $1,000 to $15,000. They included: AIG, Bank of America Corp., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Discover Financial Services, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Federated Investors Inc., M&T Bank Corp., Wells Fargo, MetLife Inc. and MGIC Investment Corp., a mortgage insurer.

Company Stocks

Friend’s portfolio included stocks of more than 100 companies, many non-financial, ranging from Coca-Cola Co. to Target Corp. to Xerox Corp. She also owned mutual funds, municipal bonds and Treasury bills.

Friend was an attorney at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency before joining the banking committee. She also teaches a spinning class at a Northern Virginia gym in her spare time, earning $1,200 in 2008.

Friend’s first year working for the panel included the near-collapse of Bear Stearns Cos., the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the government bailouts of AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and passage of the $700 billion financial rescue law.

The committee also considered the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which provided foreclosure assistance to struggling homeowners, created a more powerful regulator for the home loan banks and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and gave the Treasury emergency authority to bail out the housing-finance giants.

Fannie Mae Shares

On July 23, as lawmakers neared agreement on the bill, shares of Fannie Mae rose 12 percent to close at $15 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Friend’s own Fannie Mae stock holdings would have increased in value as well, though not enough to cover steady declines since she acquired the shares on January 23, when they closed at $34.78

Friend also made five purchases of Federal Home Loan Bank Board bonds in 2008, each valued at $1,000 to $15,000, according to the form. Two were in January, one in February, one in March and one in June of that year. Friend valued her total holdings of the bonds at $50,000 to $100,000, according to the form.

She also purchased Fannie Mae debt on July 1, two weeks before the bill, sponsored by Dodd and Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the banking committee, passed the Senate.

Bank of America

Some of Friend’s trades listed in the disclosure statement were stock purchases — all in 2008 — and may not have been profitable. For example, when she bought Bank of America on Feb. 20, its closing share price was $42.97. She acquired additional shares on May 27, when the closing price was $34.17. It was $17.03 a share at yesterday’s close.

Friend purchased AIG on Aug. 12 when its closing share price was $457. About a month later, the firm received an $85 billion loan from the Federal Reserve, the first of several bailouts. AIG shares closed yesterday at $33.61 a share.

Very few of the trades in Friend’s portfolio were sales. She did unload $1,000 to $15,000 of Morgan Stanley shares on Sept. 22, several days after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asked Congress to pass the Troubled Asset Relief Program designed to remove toxic debt from banks’ books.

–Editors: Brendan Murray, Paula Dwyer

To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Schmidt in Washington at rschmidt5@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net

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What The Lehman Report Proves: Financial Insolvency

Posted by Karl Denninger

EXPLOSIVE: Lehman – Where Are The Cops?

Posted by Karl Denninger