PrefBlog

The IMF has released the March 2010 edition of Finance & Development.

Europe will bail out Greece, if necessary:

Europe’s blueprint for a financial lifeline to Greece amounts to an unprecedented bet by finance ministers that they can avert a euro crisis by sidestepping the no-bailout rules intended to sustain the 11-year-old currency.

Improvising their way through the euro’s harshest test since its debut in 1999, officials meeting in Brussels late yesterday and today worked out a strategy for emergency loans in case Greece’s plan for 4.8 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in tax increases and wage cuts fails to stave off fiscal disaster.

There is no word as to whether the EU will demand management changes, vilify the top guys, claw back pay or threaten criminal charges. S&P affirmed Greece at BBB+.

Moody’s is shift municipal ratings to the global scale:

Municipal bond issuers led by California Treasurer Bill Lockyer began pressing companies that rate their debt two years ago to show investors how they would be rated on a corporate scale. They claimed that the scale cost them more in interest rates because state and local borrowers default at a lower rate than higher-rated corporations.

U.S. Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, called the different rating scales “ridiculous” at a hearing on the $2.8 trillion market in May 2008.

This cosmetic change was last reported on PrefBlog in September 2008 in Global Scale for Municipal Credit Ratings a Bust?. So, the story so far is: CDOs, etc., must get their own scale because global scales are ridiculous. Municipalities must get their own scale because the global scale is ridiculous. Can’t tell your players without a political programme, can you?

In a speech at the Heyman Center on Corporate Governance, Julie Dickson acknowledged the issue of regulatory capture, but didn’t offer any insights:

Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT, says that the failure of supervisory judgement is often linked to regulatory capture. Regulatory capture refers to supervisors thinking like the industry they regulate because they either come from industry, or hope to work in the industry. In some cases there may be a belief that it is easier to just agree with industry rather than to fight their lobbying efforts. He has written many articles on this, which I read with great interest as they contribute to the debate around regulators, incentives, and judgement.

My own view is that clear mandates and accountabilities, independence, resources, and international assessment programs are key to getting the incentives right. I would also say that I have seen some very courageous supervisors in my time, and that sometimes people recruited from industry are even more demanding, having experienced first hand some of the dynamics within institutions. So this issue is rather complex.

There was an interesting and unusual note in today’s FOMC release:

Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; James Bullard; Elizabeth A. Duke; Donald L. Kohn; Sandra Pianalto; Eric S. Rosengren; Daniel K. Tarullo; and Kevin M. Warsh. Voting against the policy action was Thomas M. Hoenig, who believed that continuing to express the expectation of exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period was no longer warranted because it could lead to the buildup of financial imbalances and increase risks to longer-run macroeconomic and financial stability.

A good day in the Canadian preferred share market, with volume at above-average levels. Six issues traded more than 100,000 shares on the Toronto Exchange. PerpetualDiscounts gained 3bp and FixedResets were up 8bp, which took yields of the latter down to 3.47%, the second-lowest on record.

Under proposed legislation, the New York Fed will be politicized:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York president, who supervises five of the seven largest U.S. banks, would be subject to White House appointment and lawmakers’ approval under legislation proposed today.

Also, one member of the Fed Board of Governors would be designated vice chairman for supervision, and no firm under Fed oversight would be allowed to vote for or have past or present employees serve as directors of regional Fed banks, according to the bill to overhaul financial regulation. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, unveiled the proposed legislation in Washington.

This might make a bit of sense if one could point to elements of the Credit Crunch and make a case that Fed failure to regulate was responsible. Unfortunately for logic lovers, however, it was basically Fed-regulated entitites who bailed out Non-Fed-regulated entities (JPM/BSC, BAC/MER) and the spectactular bankruptcies (AIG, LEH) were non-regulated. But it’s not logic, it’s politics!

CLOs are coming back!:

The market for collateralized debt obligations backed by high-yield, high-risk loans is poised to reopen in the U.S. for the first time in a year after losses on mortgages prompted investors to flee bundled securities.

Citigroup Inc. is underwriting a $500 million fund managed by New York-based WCAS Fraser Sullivan Investment Management LLC, scheduled to price as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the offering, who declined to be identified because terms are private. The deal refinances an existing collateralized loan obligation and increases its size by more than 50 percent.

The offering would mark the first new issue backed by widely syndicated loans in the $440 billion market for CLOs since last March and a return to investments that contributed to $1.76 trillion of writedowns and credit losses at the world’s largest financial institutions. Citigroup and WCAS Fraser Sullivan are marketing the deal after prices on CLO debt staged a record rally on signs of economic recovery.
…
JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Deutsche Bank AG have also been approaching managers of leveraged loans since last year to offer terms for new CLOs to restart the market, according to people familiar with the discussions. CLOs pool loans and slice them into securities of varying risk intended to provide higher returns than similarly rated investments.

Volume slackened off today, with only twenty-two issues trading more than 10,000 shares. PerpetualDiscounts lost 9bp on the day – yields are approaching 6.00% – and FixedResets hovered at their 3.50% yield level.

Another boring day, as far as actual news was concerned. An explanation of Lehman’s financing technique looked interesting at first, but turned out to be only legal hairsplitting. OK, OK, so the outward leg of the repo is recorded as a true sale and that delevers the balance sheet. Fair enough. But how did they avoid putting the inward leg on the balance sheet? Fortunately, volume 3 of the Examiner’s report makes that part clear:

Unlike an ordinary repo transaction, Lehman did not record the borrowing of cash from a Repo 105 transaction even though Lehman was obliged to repay the borrowing. Instead, Lehman established a long inventory derivative asset representing the obligation under a forward contract to repurchase the full amount of securities “sold.”3009 As Lehman’s internal Repo 105 Accounting Policy explained, assuming Lehman borrowed $100 cash in exchange for a pledge of $105 of fixed income collateral, Lehman booked a $5 derivative, which represented Lehman’s obligation to repurchase the securities at the end of the term of the repo transaction. The $5 arose from the fact that when it came time to repurchase the pledged securities, Lehman paid $100 cash for $105 worth of securities. The transaction therefore had a $5 value to Lehman reflecting the market value of the “overcollateralization” amount of the Repo 105 transaction. Because it had a positive fair value of $5, the derivative was recorded as an asset under SFAS 133.

Volume stayed perky today, while PerpetualDiscounts lost 8bp and FixedResets gained 14bp, taking yields on the latter down to 3.50%. Yields on FixedResets have only been below 3.50% on three days – ever! – with the all time low being 3.46% on January 11, 2010.

March 12 is the fourth-lowest FixedReset index yield of all time, March 11 is fifth-lowest.