Category Archives: Credit markets

Wolf Richter: Treasury Warns of Leveraged Loan Risk

Yves here. Wolf provides a detailed and informative account of a new report by the Office of Financial Research on the risk of leveraged loans. The big finding is they don’t like what they are seeing. And on top of that, part of their nervousness results from the fact that the ultimate holders of leveraged loans are typically part of the shadow banking system, such as ETFs, and thus beyond the reach of bank regulators.

Because these loans were issued at remarkably low interest rates, they aren’t a source of stress. But as their credit quality decays (recall quite a few were made in the energy sector) and/or interest rates rise (the Fed is making noises again), investors in mutual funds and ETFs will show mark to market losses that could well be hefty. Any bank with large amounts of unsold inventory would also be exposed; query whether regulators will let them fudge by moving them to “hold to maturity” portfolios.

Oh, and what is the biggest source of leveraged loans? Private equity funds when they acquire or add more gearing to portfolio companies.

Yanis Varoufakis: Burst Greek Bubbles, Spooked Fund Managers – A Cause for Restrained Celebration

Yves here. Varoufakis describes a classic case of the old investing adage, “Little pigs get fed, big pigs get slaughtered.” In this case, the big pigs decided to ride what was clearly only a momentum trade on Greek sovereign debt, since anyone with an operating brain cell could tell that Greece was not getting better any time soon, and limited German tolerance for bailouts meant that some sort of restructuring was inevitable. The concern that the Greek bubble will be pricked sooner than expected looks to have wrong-footed some big name investors.

Ilargi: Oil Shock – More Than A Quantum Of Fragility

Yves here. We’ve written that the sudden decline in the price of oil has the potential to deliver some nasty financial shocks, given that shale companies and even the majors have been financing exploration and development with debt.

But while concerns about fragility are well warranted, we wanted to make sure a mention made in this article is not treated with undue alarm. It points out that the BIS is concerned that an unprecedented portion of CDOs are now made of leveraged loans.

The problem is that the term “CDO” has been used inconsistently in the financial media. The CDO that you learned to hate in the wake of the crisis and blew up AIG, monoline insurers, and did a lot of damage to big banks were more formally called “asset backed securities CDOs” or “ABS CDOs” But that was too much of a mouthful, so they were referred to as “CDOs” in the press. There were two periods when that type of CDO existed, the late 1990s, and from the mid 2000 to mid-2007. Ina both cases, that market was a Ponzi, used to make the unwanted parts of subprime securitizatons saleable by making them into financial sausage, with some better assets thrown in, and then re-tranched again. The Ponzi part came about from the fact that these CDOs also had unsaleable parts, which were either put into first generation CDO sausage (CDOs allowed a certain portion of CDOs to be included) or sold into CDO squareds (which were hard to sell).

But the more mainstream type of CDO was one made of credit defaults swaps on corporate credits. That was the original CDO done in the famed JP Morgan Bisto deal in the mid-1990s. Indeed, when I first started researching subprime (ABS) CDOs, and just called them “CDOs” some experts assumed I meant the corporate loan type, since that was prevalent. During the crisis, possibly to make sure no one confused these CDOs with the ones that were blowing up, they were increasingly called CLOs, or “collatearlized loan obligations.” They were also legitimately less risky than the subprime CDOs, since their value didn’t suddenly collapse when a certain level of loan losses was breached.

The cause for pause is that CLOs, which are indeed a type of CDOs have traditionally been made mainly or entirely of investment grade credits. It now appears that junk credits predominate. While their structures and diversification will keep ABS CDO-type total wipeouts from happening, they could still deliver some nasty surprises.

The ECB’s Balance Sheet and Draghi’s Confidence Game

Yves here. This post provides a high level summary and assessment of the ECB’s post-crisis conduct. Among other things, it demonstrates that the ECB makes the Fed look good. Some readers will take issue with the fact that Mody treats QE as a reasonable policy, when the experimental policy has goosed asset markets without doing much for the real economy. It has hurt savers by flattening the yield curve and reducing yields on longer-term investments and many economists believe it has exacerbated income inequality, which is increasingly seen as a drag on growth. However, the hair shirt of the Masstricht treaty rules out fiscal stimulus, and most economists accept the view that monetary stimulus is better than standing pat.

Oil Tanks After OPEC Fails to Cut Production; US Shale Gas Targeted?

After a testy meeting, OPEC agreed to maintain current production targets. The failure to support oil prices via reducing production led to a sharp fall in prices on Thursday, with West Texas Intermediate crude dropping by over 6% and Brent plunging over 8% before rebounding to finish the day 6.7% lower, at $72.55 a barrel. Many analysts believe that oil could continue its slide to $60 a barrel.

Who Will Wind Up Holding the Bag in the Shale Gas Bubble?

We’ve been writing off and on about how the sudden fall in gas prices has been expected to put a lot of shale gas development on hold. In fact, quite a few analysts believe that one of the big Saudi aims in refusing to support oil prices was to dent the prospects for competitive energy sources, not just renewables like wind and hydro power, but shale gas.

Even though OilPrice reported that US rig count had indeed fallen as oil prices plunged, John Dizard at the Financial Times (hat tip Scott) gives a more intriguing piece of the puzzle: the degree to which production is still chugging along despite it being uneconomical. The oil majors have been criticized for levering up to continue developing when it is cash-flow negative; they are presumably betting that prices will be much higher in short order.

But the same thing is happening further down the food chain, among players that don’t begin to have the deep pockets of the industry behemoths: many of them are still in “drill baby, drill” mode.

Treasury Liquidity Freakout: Searching for a Market-Maker

As someone old enough to have done finance in the ~~Paleolithic~~ pre-personal computer era (yes, I did financial analysis using a calculator and green accountant’s ledger paper as a newbie associate at Goldman), investor expectations that market liquidity should ever and always be there seem bizarre, as well as ahistorical. Yet over the past month or two, there has been an unseemly amount of hand-wringing about liquidity in the bond market, both corporate bonds, and today, in a Financial Times story we’ll use as a point of departure, Treasuries.

These concerns appear to be prompted by worries about what happens if (as in when) bond investors get freaked out by the Fed finally signaling it is really, no really, now serious about tightening and many rush for the exits at once. The taper tantrum of summer 2013 was a not-pretty early warning and the central bank quickly lost nerve. The worry is that there might be other complicating events, like geopolitical concerns, that will impede the Fed’s efforts at soothing rattled nerves, or worse, that the bond market will gap down before the Fed can intercede (as if investors have a right to orderly price moves!).

Let’s provide some context to make sense of these pleas for ever-on liquidity.

AIG Bailout Trial Revelation: Morgan Stanley Told Geithner it Would File for Bankruptcy the Weekend it Became a Bank

I’m still hugely behind on the AIG bailout trial, and hope to show a ton more progress in the next week. I’m posting the transcript for days three the trial; you can find the first two days here and other key documents here.

The first week was consumed with the testimony of the painfully uncooperative Scott Alvarez, the general counsel of the Board of Governors, who Matt Stoller argued needs to be fired, and the cagier-seeming general counsel of the New York Fed, Tom Baxter. Unlike Alvarez, Baxter at least in text seemed to be far more forthcoming than Alvarez and more strategic in where he dug in his heels. But the revelations about the Morgan Stanley rescue alone are juicy. The main actors have sold a carefully concocted story for years.

Should We Believe the Bank of England’s “No More Bailouts” Promise?

Michael Hudson sent an article No more bailouts: BoE chief says banks won’t be saved by taxpayers and wondered if we should take it at face value.

The short answer is “almost certainly not” but it also depends on what you mean by “saved by taxpayers”.

Ed Harrison: Zero Rates, Resource Misallocation, and Shale Oil

Yves here. Established Naked Capitalism readers may recall that Ed Harrison was a regular and much appreciated contributor to the site, particularly in 2009 when I was on partial book leave writing ECONNED. Ed now focuses more on writing premium content, as well as producing RT’s Boom and Bust. But he is now posting occasional pieces on his non-subscription site, and has graciously allowed us to post them from time to time.

This article is a more systematic work-up of something that we’ve discussed short form and Wolf Richter has also written up: that of the dependence of the shale oil boom on reasonably high oil prices as well as cheap financing. And as predicted, shale oil producers have shut marginal wells, and even majors are cutting back on oil production.

Matt Taibbi and Alayne Fleischmann Discuss JP Morgan Mortgage Fraud, Eric Holder CoverUp on Democracy Now

Even though many readers have already read Matt Taibbi’s new article on how Attorney General Eric Holder acceded to Jamie Dimon’s efforts to squelch a criminal prosecution of JP Morgan’s securitization of toxic mortgages, I thought it would be useful to present the Democracy Now discussion of the story, particularly since the whistleblower, Alayne Fleischmann, discusses the case in her own words. Amy Goodman also asks Tabbi late in the broadcast about his departure from First Look.

Taibbi: Ex-JP Morgan Lawyer With Smoking Gun on Mortgage Fraud Stymied by Holder Cover-Up

Matt Taibbi has pulled the curtain back on an offensive and obvious bit of Obama administration bank cronyism that disappeared too quickly from public attention. Earlier this year, JP Morgan settlement negotiations over mortgage misconduct had broken down over price. When word got out that the Department of Justice had a criminal suit that it was ready to file, Jamie Dimon called the DoJ and went to Washington to negotiate a deal. Let us turn the mike over to Georgetown law professor Adam Levitin who wrote at the time:

Nomi Prins: Why the Financial and Political System Failed and Stability Matters

Yves here. We’re delighted to be featuring a post by Nomi Prins, a former Goldman managing director turned critic of the way the financial services industry has become a “heads I win, tails you lose” wager with the entire economy at stake. Many readers are likely familiar with her through her books, such as Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America and It Takes a Pillage: An Epic Tale of Power, Deceit, and Untold Trillions, as well as her regular TV appearances.

Federal Reserve Policy Keeps Fracking Bubble Afloat and That May Change Soon

Yves here. This post highlights an issue that has also been flagged by Wolf Richter, that fracking depends on junk bond financing that has been made unnaturally cheap by the machinations of the Fed. Steve Horn conflates QE with the Fed’s super-low interest rate policy known as ZIRP, when they are distinct, but they have been implemented with the same idea in mind, that of encouraging investors to make riskier investments, particularly riskier loans.

Horn cites sources that suggest that the Fed could start undoing its rock-bottom rates in 2015. Bear in mind that that’s a minority view.

Wolf Richter: The Wrath of Draghi – First German Bank Hits Savers with Negative Interest Rate

Draghi’s near zero rates have resulted in banks that don’t engage in casino banking to start imposing negative interest rates on savers. The case described in the post is likely to lead other banks to follow suit if there isn’t a big backlash.