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I have written hundreds of articles documenting that unregulated, speculative derivatives (especially credit default swaps) are a primary cause of the economic crisis.

And I have pointed out that (1) the giant banks will make a killing on carbon trading, (2) while the leading scientist
crusading against global warming says it won’t work, and (3) there is a
very high probability of massive fraud and insider trading in the
carbon trading markets.

Now, Bloomberg notes that the carbon trading scheme will be centered around derivatives:

The
banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design
and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge
their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell
carbon-related financial products to outside investors.

 

[Blythe]
Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory
carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest
possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the
mix, she says. Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from
the value of an underlying commodity — in this case, CO2 and other
greenhouse gases…

 

 

Who is Blythe Masters?

She is the JP Morgan employee who invented credit
default swaps, and is now heading JPM’s carbon trading efforts. As
Bloomberg notes (this and all remaining quotes are from the
above-linked Bloomberg article):

Masters, 40, oversees the New York bank’s environmental businesses as the firm’s global head of commodities…

 

As
a young London banker in the early 1990s, Masters was part of
JPMorgan’s team developing ideas for transferring risk to third
parties. She went on to manage credit risk for JPMorgan’s investment
bank.

Among the credit derivatives that grew from the bank’s early efforts was the credit-default swap.

Some in congress are fighting against carbon derivatives:

“People
are going to be cutting up carbon futures, and we’ll be in trouble,”
says Maria Cantwell, a Democratic senator from Washington state. “You
can’t stay ahead of the next tool they’re going to create.”

 

Cantwell,
51, proposed in November that U.S. state governments be given the right
to ban unregulated financial products. “The derivatives market has done
so much damage to our economy and is nothing more than a
very-high-stakes casino — except that casinos have to abide by
regulations,” she wrote in a press release…

However, Congress may cave in to industry pressure to let carbon derivatives trade over-the-counter:

The
House cap-and-trade bill bans OTC derivatives, requiring that all
carbon trading be done on exchanges…The bankers say such a ban would
be a mistake…The banks and companies may get their way on carbon
derivatives in separate legislation now being worked out in Congress…

Financial experts are also opposed to cap and trade:

Even
George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund operator, says money managers
would find ways to manipulate cap-and-trade markets. “The system can be
gamed,” Soros, 79, remarked at a London School of Economics seminar in
July. “That’s why financial types like me like it — because there are
financial opportunities”…

 

Hedge fund manager Michael Masters,
founder of Masters Capital Management LLC, based in St. Croix, U.S.
Virgin Islands [and unrelated to Blythe Masters] says speculators will
end up controlling U.S. carbon prices, and their participation could
trigger the same type of boom-and-bust cycles that have buffeted other
commodities…

 

The hedge fund manager says that banks will
attempt to inflate the carbon market by recruiting investors from hedge
funds and pension funds.

 

“Wall Street is going to
sell it as an investment product to people that have nothing to do with
carbon,” he says. “Then suddenly investment managers are dominating the
asset class, and nothing is related to actual supply and demand. We
have seen this movie before.”

Indeed, as I have previously pointed out, many environmentalists are opposed to cap and trade as well. For example:

Michelle Chan, a senior policy analyst in San Francisco for Friends of the Earth, isn’t convinced.

 

“Should
we really create a new $2 trillion market when we haven’t yet finished
the job of revamping and testing new financial regulation?” she asks.
Chan says that, given their recent history, the banks’ ability to turn
climate change into a new commodities market should be curbed…

 

“What
we have just been woken up to in the credit crisis — to a jarring and
shocking degree — is what happens in the real world,” she says…

 

Friends
of the Earth’s Chan is working hard to prevent the banks from adding
carbon to their repertoire. She titled a March FOE report “Subprime
Carbon?” In testimony on Capitol Hill, she warned, “Wall Street won’t
just be brokering in plain carbon derivatives — they’ll get creative.”

Yes,
they’ll get creative, and we have seen this movie before …an
inadequately-regulated carbon derivatives boom will destabilize the
economy and lead to another crash.

Submitted by Thought Offerings

With S&P 500 earnings reporting mostly (98%) complete for Q3 2009, it’s time for an update to the charts from Dividends, Earnings, and Stock Price Trends have Tracked the Great Depression.

The
following chart compares the decline in twelve month trailing earnings
and dividends since the stock market peaked in October 2007 to the same
measures following the stock market peak in September 1929:

Earnings have dropped more rapidly than during the Great Depression (dramatically so if you count reported rather than operating earnings), but they appear to have begun a recovery much sooner than occurred back then. Trailing 12-month dividends are still falling slightly faster than during the Great Depression, which is particularly remarkable given how much more severe deflation was then compared to now. These trends underscore that contrary to some claims, this is no crisis of confidence!

Since
dividend changes tend to lag earnings changes, rising earnings could
mean dividends will level out and start increasing soon (and in fact
the quarterly fall in dividends from Q2 to Q3 was small). However, if
earnings are being over-reported thanks to factors such as relaxed
accounting rules or optimistic loan loss assumptions, dividends should ultimately reveal the truth about underlying cash flows.

And
while we should all hope that this recovery can be sustained, there is
a significant probability (details of which I hope to discuss in a
separate post) that this is a temporary upturn in a longer term depression. A renewed fall in GDP, persistent unemployment, and intensifying deflationary pressures would not be good news for any fledgling recovery in earnings and dividends.

Here
is a chart comparing the dividend yield today with the Great Depression
trend. Yields are much lower today and are trending down again despite
the significant upward yield trend back then. So is this a genuine
early economic recovery, or a sign that the modern stock market tends
to be a capital-gain seeking momentum machine with little regard for
underlying fundamentals? Yes, interest rates are low, but they were
back then too, and David Rosenberg suggests most current corporate bond
yields are a lot more attractive than yields of the same companies’
stocks.

The next chart compares price/earnings ratios earnings during the Great
Depression with today using reported earnings. There is no comparison.

It is clear that the market has accepted Wall Street’s encouragement to ignore reported earnings when valuing stocks,
so here is the same price/earnings chart using operating earnings (for
the recent trend — the measure had not been invented back then):

The P/E ratio based on operating earnings has soared above 25 just as
it did at a later stage during the Great Depression. I just wish I had
more confidence that this was the start of an earlier sustainable
recovery rather than a sign of the irrationality of markets and reckless myopia.

Note:
All of these charts use Robert Shiller’s monthly stock data (with a
single representative stock price for each month), not daily prices.

US consumers keeps on purchasing Kindles on credit cards which they apparently have no intention of every paying off.  The most recent Fitch report disclosed that October delinquencies have continued their steady climb, and together with charge-offs, are at near record highs: “Consumer credit quality remains under significant strain as a result of the  persistent weakness in the labor markets,” noted managing director Michael Dean. The Labor Department will report unemployment data Friday; the jobless rate is expected to hold steady at 10.2%, the highest level in decades, while the decline in payrolls is seen mitigating from the previous month.

Dow Jones reports:

All types of consumer lending have worsened the past several years, with borrowers falling increasingly behind and lenders writing off many billions of dollars of owed loans.

Fitch’s credit-card performance indexes show late payments rising to their highest levels in five months and indicate higher charge-offs in the months to come.

Fitch’s index on delinquencies of at least 60 days rose to 4.41% from 4.22% in September. Late-stage delinquencies are now 31% higher than year-earlier levels and just below the record high of 4.45% in June. Delinquencies of at least 30 days rose as well.

As Zero Hedge pointed out, and as Meredith Whitney has voiced her concernes about, the biggest threat to the economic going into 2010 may be that not only are banks dropping reducing overall credit availability, but that ongoing credit contraction to the tune of almost $2 trillion over the next several years will mean existing credit limits are tapped out as existing ones become increasingly maxed out.

This will likely further entrench the consumer into an accelerated deleveraging mindset, and no matter what the incremental liquidity from the Fed is, the deflationary pressures will likely continue. Which means that markets will continue in full melt-up mode to compensate for real economic losses, which benefit exlusively the top percentile of the US population as the middle and lower classes continue experiencing the brunt of the credit contraction. At some point the economic reality is sure to catch up with the market surreality. That will be the point when all the flawed market policies by the Administration and Bernanke become exposed for the clothesless emperors they are.

Albert Edwards and Dylan Grice’s latest must read slideshow:

We have just had the worst decade’s performance for equity investors on record. Relative to government bonds, equities have been an even bigger disaster. Surely after such a terrible decade for equity investors things can only get better?

On a ten year view, equities may indeed prove to be a good investment. On a 1-2 year view, however, we still see much pain to come. After what we have been though so far, where the bulls? optimism has been crushed in 2001/2 and in 2007/8 surely there must be a heavy weight of self-doubt yoked onto the shoulders of the bulls ? but apparently not!

The lesson from Japan is that while de-leveraging plays itself out, the global economy will remain extremely vulnerable. The Great Moderation is dead. It was built on a super-cycle of private sector debt. We know from Japan, we now return to what was before, i.e. highly volatile and unpredictable cycles. Recession will quickly follow recovery.

US equity valuations did not reach revulsion levels in March this year. After some 15 years of gross overvaluation do we really believe that this valuation bear market that has been in place since 2000 will finish with equities looking cheap for only three months? Long term-valuation measures suggest equities will fall substantially below March lows.

Government bonds are now an extremely poor investment. On a 10-year view, the insolvency of government finances will surely end in substantially higher inflation. Yet on a 1-2 year view, we believe the key threat remains deflation. Markets will react aggressively to this as the cycle stalls in 2010. Expect sub-2% bond yields to accompany new lows on the equity market next year. Thinking the unthinkable has paid off over the last decade and should continue to do so.

Edwards Slideshow –

by Marla Singer and Geoffrey Batt

Buried in the depths of page 26 of the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program’s (SIGTARP’s) November 17, 2009 report “Factors Affecting Efforts to Limit Payments to AIG Counterparties” hidden in footnotes 33 and 34 is something of a mystery.  It might be the beginning of an interconnected financial chain involving Dubai, the Federal Reserve, AIG, Basel I, Eastern Europe and even Switzerland and which, even if it doesn’t worry you, probably should.  Or it might be nothing at all.

Consider first “footnote 33,” that reads as follows:

The first Basel Accord, known as Basel I, was issued in 1988; it focused on the capital adequacy of financial institutions. The capital adequacy risk—the risk that a financial institution will be hurt by an unexpected loss—categorizes the assets of financial institution into five risk categories (0 percent, 10 percent, 20 percent, 50 percent, and 100 percent). Banks that operate internationally are required to have a risk weight of 8 percent or less….

The original paragraph that references the footnote reads thus:

As of September 30, 2009, AIG had $172 billion in exposure to swaps in its foreign regulatory capital portfolio.  The portfolio contains swaps purchased by financial institutions, principally in Europe, to provide regulatory capital relief under Basel I. [note 33]  AIGFP’s COO informed SIGTARP in July 2009 that they expect that most of these swaps will be terminated by the end of the first quarter 2010 as most financial institutions complete their transition to Basel II.  Currently, financial institutions are required to hold a certain level of capital against their assets, and one way for a financial institution to reduce the amount of capital is to purchase swap protection on its assets.  However, new requirements decrease the level of capital required for such assets and, in most cases, there will be limited capital benefit to holding on to the existing swaps. Nonetheless, AIG warned in a June 29, 2009, SEC filing that if credit markets deteriorate, the company may recognize unrealized losses in AIGFP’s regulatory capital credit default swap portfolio. [note 34]  AIG could continue to be at risk if the swaps in its regulatory capital portfolio are not terminated by the end of first quarter 2010 as expected. (Emphasis added).

Taken together we read the thrust of this section to mean that a number of European banks, seeking to limit their regulatory capital requirements under Basel I (read: seeking to increase their leverage) bought swap protection on their assets from AIG.  These obligations still sit with AIG and, in the event credit markets sink materially, AIG is likely to take losses on these instruments.  Not just that but:

According to an AIG SEC filing, an ongoing concern for AIGFP is whether it will have to post more collateral if credit markets continue to deteriorate.  The amount of future collateral postings is partly a function of AIG’s credit ratings, which may be affected by any further decline in AIG’s financial condition. (Emphasis added).

Simply put, AIG might also have to post more collateral.  Moreover, though AIG initially expected most of these swaps to “be terminated by the end of the first quarter 2010 as most financial institutions complete their transition to Basel II,” we see from footnote 34 that:

Subsequent to the June filing, European regulators adjusted the implementation timing of Basel II, potentially affecting the holders of AIGFP’s regulatory capital swaps to hold beyond previously anticipated termination dates.

In other words, AIG is still on the hook- and hadn’t planned to be.

This raises a number of questions:

1. If the European banks that bought swap protection from AIG are still relying on this protection to meet their capital requirements, and AIG might be unable to make good on the agreements, are these banks actually out of Basel I compliance as we type this?
2. Are the banks still able to use swap protection to reduce their collateral requirements because of the implicit or explicit backing of AIG by the Federal Reserve?
3. If this situation existed in September-November 2008, as it certainly appears to have, how exactly can the Federal Reserve claim in good faith that it lacked the leverage to negotiate with these banks from a position of strength?  (One assumes that many of the same names collecting payment from AIG were also AIG swap protection buyers of the sort mentioned in the SIGTARP report).  Failure to back up an insolvent AIG would have resulted in near-immediate Basel I non-compliance as the protection offered by these swaps, and on which these banks depended for their reduced capital requirements, evaporated- a near death sentence.
4. Or had these banks somehow, and in the middle of the credit crisis, managed to boost their capital to levels that made the swaps unimportant?
5. If so, why keep them on the books now, instead of unwinding them?
6. Since it doesn’t seem likely that a teetering AIG could make good on these agreements without substantial assistance is the Fed is currently the ultimate backstop for AIG?
7. Does this mean that the Fed is effectively underwriting these swap agreements?
8. Will the Fed post collateral if deteriorating credit conditions at AIG (today’s -$11 billion news suddenly seems especially daunting if the potential insurance shortfall has an effect on credit ratings) or general credit market issues require it?  Or are we missing something significant?  By September 30, 2008 AIG had already posted $974 million in collateral for its “Foreign Regulatory Capital” portfolio.
9. What if European banks are hit with more losses from, oh, we don’t know, say… Dubai?  Deleveraging, risk reduction and credit tightening would have an effect on LIBOR, the Eurobond market and, of course, Eastern Europe.  Might not that sort of contagion easily spread to, say, Switzerland, which enjoyed the other side of the carry trade for years by lending Swiss Franc like mad to any Eastern European mortgage borrower who could sign documents?
10. Could it be that the Fed, once again, might have to bail out the world?

Or maybe we are just missing something obvious.

By Economic Forecasts & Opinions

Stock markets around the world cracked on Friday with the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 150 points (Fig. 1), and commodities plunging as Dubai debt woes unnerved investors, and sent tremors of uncertainty throughout all markets.

The crisis flared after Dubai, a part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) federation, asked to delay interest payment for six months on $60 billion of debt issued by the state-run conglomerate Dubai World and its main property unit Nakheel.

Concerns that a government-backed investment company risked default ripped through world markets. Investors read it as a sign of yet another sovereign implosion after Iceland and Ireland, and recoiled from risk and piled into dollars.

Las Vegas on Steroids

Dubai World has served as Dubai’s main driver of growth, operating ports, transportation groups, spearheading real-estate & infrastructure projects both at home and abroad. Its real-estate subsidiary Nakheel built Dubai’s iconic palm-tree-shaped island, packed with luxury villas and hotels, many still under construction. Real estate and construction accounts for about 23% of Dubai’s GDP.

With little oil, Dubai financed much of this rapid real estate development with debt. After incurring its estimated $80-$90 billion of debt in a four-year construction boom to transform its economy into a regional financial and tourism hub, Dubai suffered the world’s steepest property slump in the first global recession since World War II.

Deutsche Bank estimates that Dubai’s property prices, both commercial and residential, have halved since August last year, and could fall a further 15-20% this year.

U.S. Banks Less Exposed

Most analysts believe U.S. banks are probably less exposed than European rivals to a potential debt default by Dubai World, but a lack of transparency and the interconnection of the modern financial system make it difficult to know which institutions are ultimately exposed.

Dubai World’s largest creditors are reportedly domestic banks in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. MarketWatch noted data from the Bank for International Settlements which put cross-border banking exposure for the UAE as a whole at $123 billion at the end of June. Of that total, European banks hold 72%, with the United States and Japan only holding 9% and 7% of the exposure, respectively. The United Kingdom is by far the biggest creditor with a share of 41%.

Reminder of Other Risks

On a global scale, Dubai World’s debt problem seems relatively minor, but it illustrates the impact from one tiny country in an increasingly interconnected world. The Dubai news also cast doubt over the strength of the U.S. economic recovery, and the prospects for a bottoming of property prices.

Commercial Real Estate

As pointed out in my previous article that the commercial real estate sector posed a much greater threat than the over-hyped “mother of all carry trades.”  The Dubai debt crisis further reinforces this viewpoint.

The potential for contagion from Dubai’s debt woes could further unhinge an already fragile U.S. commercial real estate sector, whose values have already fallen 42.9% from their 2007 peak, close to the lowest since 2002, according to Moody’s. (Fig. 2) The latest Moody’s projection is for prices to bottom at 45-55% below their peak, but could drop as much as 65% from their peak in a “stress case”.

As commercial property values fall, debt defaults rise. The $3.4 trillion outstanding in debt backed by commercial real estate poses a real threat to the recovery. Trepp LLC reported that last month, delinquencies on U.S. commercial real estate loans that were packaged into commercial mortgage-backed securities reached 4.8%, more than six times the year earlier level. Hotel loans, at 8.7% distressed, have begun falling into delinquency faster than any other kind of commercial real estate debt.

Write-downs and losses at banks around the world have risen to more than $1.7 trillion since 2007 as the credit crisis undermined the value of assets owned by financial institutions, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Any further deleveraging and the resulting credit tightening from commercial real estate would impede the financial sector and probably derail the U.S. economy sending it into another recession. 

Housing Market Mortgage Crisis

So far, the appearance of recovery in the housing sector is being driven primarily by reduced prices combined with federal programs to lower mortgage rates with the goal of bringing more buyers into the market.

Based on a study released by Zillow.com, the foreclosure crisis has moved beyond subprime mortgages and into the prime mortgage market. (Fig. 3) While subprime borrowers are still a factor in the current foreclosure epidemic, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the weak labor market is the driving force behind the mortgage crisis we face today.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, one in seven U.S. home loans was past due or in foreclosure as of Sept. 30, putting that quarterly delinquency measure at its highest level since t

he report’s inception, 1972, and up from one in ten at the beginning of the year.

The continued surge in delinquencies suggests that a recovery in the housing market could be hindered by the weak job market as well as by further fallout from the easy money and loose lending practices of the past. The foreclosures and delinquencies are expected to keep rising well into 2010, not leveling off until the unemployment rate starts to moderate.

In a study by First American CoreLogic found that one in four of all U.S. mortgage-borrowers owe more than the value of their properties in the 3rd quarter. And many experts didn’t expect U.S. home prices to hit bottom until early 2011, perhaps falling another 5-10%, as more foreclosures get pushed onto the market.

Negative equity is another outstanding risk hanging over the mortgage market.

Dubai Is No Lehman

The circumstances behind Dubai’s moves are murky, making it hard to gauge the exact risk to the pertaining bonds and Dubai’s own general creditworthiness. UBS cautioned that Dubai’s overall debt “might be higher than the generally assumed $80 billion to $90 billion, due to potential off-balance sheet liabilities. These could include unlimited and unquantifiable amount of credit default swaps (CDS) and other derivatives against the underlying assets, and once unraveled, could potentially erupt into a subprime-like crisis.

The current expectation; however, is that there’s a good chance that Dubai’s problems will probably prove a local issue. Most likely, Dubai, or its neighboring emirate, Abu Dhabi, won’t risk tarnishing their images and reputation further, and will come up with a reasonable resolution.

Even if Dubai goes into sovereign default, the amount is probably not enough on its own to threaten the financial system since any actual losses would be a fraction of the total. So, the problems in Dubai are unlikely to be as serious as last year’s Lehman Brothers collapse, nor is it a reflection on the ability of emerging markets to lead a global economic recovery.

Rational Expectations?

But Dubai could well spur a broader crisis of investor confidence in overly leveraged economies as market confidence world-wide is still fragile from the severity of the financial crisis.  The debts of many emerging markets have risen even further as the countries governments have fought the ravages of the global recession by issuing more stimulus debt to fill the gap voided by private investment.

The spread of credit-default swaps on developing-nation’s bonds jumped 14 basis points after the Dubai news broke, the most in a month, to 3.24 percentage points, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s EMBI+ Index. There is also a clear sign of potential contagion effects of global risk aversion on basically all risky assets, with the dollar and yen being the prime beneficiaries.

Rational expectations or not, for now, the Dubai crisis is simply a reminder that the severe global recession has relegated much debt to near junk status, and there still remains a high degree of uncertainty as to the percentage recoverable on all outstanding debt which is going to be coming due over the next 5 years.

Despite some seminal signs of green shoots in the news headlines during this 9 month liquidity driven rally in many asset classes around the globe, we should be reminded that all that glitters is not gold, and that the global economic recovery is still on shaky ground.

#  “I know the odds are against me, but if there’s a win I’m gonna find it!”  ~Goku  #

Economic Forecasts & Opinions