Category Archives: Credit markets

SEC Shows Abject Incompetence in Toxic CDO Case Against Citi Staffer

The verdict is in: nearly 20 years of keeping the SEC budget starved and cowed have rendered a once competent and feared agency incapable of doing more than winning cases on illegal parking, um, insider trading.

The SEC’s performance in the case at issue, SEC v. Stoker, was such a total fail that the odds are high that any motivated member of the top half of the NC readership would have done a better job of arguing this case pro se than the SEC did.

Why “Firing Ed DeMarco” is No Solution to FHFA Refusal to Engage in Principal Modifications (Updated)

Today, Acting FHFA Director Ed DeMarco wrote to Congress, after due consideration, reaffirming his position that he will not permit Fannie and Freddie to lower principal balances of mortgages of borrowers that are delinquent. This is despite the fact that the top analyst in this space, Laurie Goodman, has determined that principal modifications are the most effective form of mortgage modification, resulting in much lower refault rates than interest rate mods or capitalization mods. And that makes sense. Why should a borrower struggle to hang on to a home when even if they make all the payments, when they sell they they are stuck with a big tax bill? And as we’ve stressed, private label investors are overwhelmingly in favor of deep principal mods for viable borrowers, and that’s because foreclosure is costly and leaves them worse off.

As much as this blogger is firmly of the view that this is a poor economic decision (deep principal mods are a sound idea, as long as you have a decent approach for vetting borrower income and other debt payments to see if they are viable with a mod), I have to hand it to DeMarco as a bureaucratic infighter.

More on Draghi’s “The ECB is All In” Bluff

The more news comes out, the more it looks like Mario Draghi’s pledge that the ECB would do all it would take to save the Euro was a bluff.

Yet Another Barmy Obama Administration Excuse for Preserving the Banking Status Quo

The Administration, meaning the Treasury Department, is never wanting for a defense of the big financial services incumbents.

Is the ECB Ready and Able to Cross the Rubicon?

The big news of the day on Thursday was Mario Draghi’s pronouncement that the ECB would do “whatever it takes” to shore up the Euro. He also used the same phrases about the need to keep the monetary channel open prior to preceded previous interventions. Two-year Spanish bond yields, which had risen to unprecedented levels, came in by over 150 basis points and global stock markets rallied.

But how seriously should we take this talk?

Josh Rosner: Eurozone Crisis – No More Safe Havens

Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher published a report last week urging subscribers to short bunds, beating the Moody’s negative watch for Germany and the Netherlands by a full week.

The article provides a data-rich analysis of how a banking crisis has morphed into a sovereign debt crisis as the authorities have refused to impose losses on investors in banks in the so-called core Eurozone countries. And as Rosner argues, the current path of denial and delay has increased the eventual costs to Germany and the global economy, with the tab to Germany already €500 billion higher than it would otherwise have been.

Satyjit Das: The LIBOR Fix – Part II

By Satyajit Das, derivatives expert and the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk and Traders Guns and Money. Jointly posted with roubini.com

The scandal surrounding the manipulation of LIBOR sets raises a number of issues. The first part of this two part piece set out the known facts. In the second part, we discuss the broader implications of the episode.

EuroCrisis Intensifies as Spain Spirals Downward, Greek Impasse Nigh

It is increasingly difficult to find metaphors adequate to describe the pathological dysfunction among European leaders as their rigidities and biases make a full blown crisis look inevitable.

Satyajit Das: The LIBOR Fix – Part 1

By Satyajit Das, derivatives expert and the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011)

The scandal surrounding the manipulation of LIBOR sets raises a number of issues. In the first part of the two part piece, the known facts are outlined. In the second part, the broader implications of the episode are discussed.

Europe to Put Interest Rate Fixers in Jail

Prospectively only, it seems. But we see “criminal” and “banking” in the same sentence so rarely in official circles that this is a welcome development.

Libor Scandal Apologist Avinash Persaud Displays Inability to Do Math

Nothing like putting your foot in mouth in public and chewing.

SIFMA Fires Shot, Excludes Mortgages in Localities that Adopt Condemnation From To-Be-Announced Market

On Monday, the financial services industry association (aka lobbying group) SIFMA said that it would exclude mortgages in localities that had condemned mortgages from the to-be-announced market, which is an important source of liquidity for new Fannie and Freddie loans. The promoters of the program, Mortgage Resolution Partners, issued a wounded-sounding response.

So what does this all mean? The short answer is that on the surface, this looks like a clever bit of banker thuggery.

Spain Slides

By Delusional Economics, a regular blogger at MacroBusiness and a consulting editor at the Macro Investor newsletter. He is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint

It was an all round horrible night for Spain, starting with a bond auction that went a little wrong:

Quelle Surprise! New York Times’ “Deal Professor” Ignores Facts and Law to Defend Citi Employee Stoker in SEC Toxic CDO Case Rakoff Highlighted

While the New York Times’ DealBook section generally hews to a financial-services-industry-friendly line, presumably as a Faustian bargain for being a preferred leakee, there’s not even a weak defense for the article by the New York Times’ so called “Deal Professor” Steven Davidoff, “If Little Else, Banker’s Trial May Show Wall St. Foolishness.” It’s yet another brazen effort to diminish the seriousness of rampant fraud by arguing it was just carelessness. But to make his case, Davidoff misrepresents both the facts of the situation as well as the law. Since Davidoff’s lawyer union card is an explicit part of his brand at the Times, this story amounts to another credentialed effort to run the “nothing to see here, it’s too hard to get these guys” line that has become the Administration’s pet excuse for not going after one of its biggest sources of campaign funds.