PrefBlog

Oh, the technology!

The Romney and Obama campaigns want supporters to be able to send contributions instantly using their smartphones, a step that would let telecommunications companies join in collecting fees that now flow to bank-card networks.
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Campaigns will have access to texters’ phone numbers, creating the opportunity to “upsell” them for larger donations, according to Armour, a press secretary in Al Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign.
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Political campaigns can expect to see 50 to 70 percent of a donation, with the rest going to fees to aggregators and carriers, Sege said. By comparison, a “card not present” transaction, such as one involving a credit card number entered into a campaign website, carries a fee ranging between 2 and 3 percent, according to Trish Wexler, spokeswoman for the Electronic Payments Coalition, a trade group that represents credit card networks and banks.

Tax the rich? It gets a little complex:

Increasing volatility in tax collections is complicating local governments’ emergence from the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression. States projected or dealt with a combined $54 billion of deficits in the fiscal year starting July 1, according to a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit group in Washington focusing on issues affecting lower-income Americans.

California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, last month cut the most-populous state’s revenue forecast by $4.3 billion after capital gains receipts fell 5 percent, instead of gaining 15 percent as forecast. In response, he proposed steps such as reducing government employees’ workweek by 5 percent.
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A one-step rating cut in January by Moody’s Investors Service, to Aa3, has contributed to weakness in Connecticut debt, said Brian Steeves, a portfolio manager at Belle Haven Investments in White Plains, New York. The rank is Moody’s fourth-highest.

Moody’s cited pension and debt costs as well as the state’s susceptibility to “financial market fluctuations,” given the dependence on capital gains.

There are more official worries about the US national debt:

The U.S. government risks a fiscal crisis unless it makes significant changes in tax and spending policies, the Congressional Budget Office said.

The nonpartisan agency said today that without policy changes, the national debt within 15 years will top the historical peak set after World War II. In 1946, government debt amounted to 109 percent of the economy.
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The gap between projected taxes and spending is so large, the report said, that if lawmakers merely wanted to prevent the debt-to-GDP ratio from increasing over the next 25 years, they’d have to immediately and permanently cut $700 billion from the $3.6 trillion U.S. budget.

Nothing will happen until the Treasury Secretary has to ask the President to play “Bond Salesman”. That’s what it took in Canada in 1994.

There is more despairing acknowledgement that the TMX / Maple deal is anti-competitive:

Chief among the concerns is that the result will be higher costs for users of TMX’s services that provide trading and market data, RBC said in its submissions. ITG, another large trading house, echoed many of RBC’s concerns in its own comments, which were also handed to the OSC on Monday.
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RBC argues that the Maple proposal “will require a significantly different approach to the regulation of fees and fee models in Canada,” and will require the OSC to bulk up to deal with the added workload.

“The commission should recognize the very substantial increase in its capacity and capability that will be required in order to make it an effective regulator of market structure and fees,” RBC said.
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ITG’s suggestions were along the same lines, saying that “the structure proposed by the Maple acquisition is fraught with conflicts of interest across every facet of the trading, clearing and settlement infrastructure of this country” and those conflicts “have the potential to seriously affect the ability of other participants to compete effectively in our capital markets.”

A successful deal will mean more jobs for more important regulators! Golly, I wonder if the regulators will approve it.

Investors have learned to demand to be shown the money whenever the Europeans politicians talk about ending the crisis. They are not yet so realistic about the G-7:

Asian stocks rose as finance ministers and central bank governors from the world’s leading economies agreed to coordinate their response to Europe’s financial crisis and U.S. service-industry growth tempered concern the world’s largest economy is slowing.
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Finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of Seven economies agreed to coordinate their response to Europe’s financial crisis on a conference call yesterday. G-7 officials said they will work together to help Spain and Greece place their public finances on a sustainable footing, Japanese Finance Minister Jun Azumi told reporters in Tokyo following the call.

I’m just overjoyed that they’re going to work together to coordinate their response! Yay!

The latest wooly-thinking comes from commentary on the Wisconsin gubernatorial re-run:

Over the past year, Wisconsinites divided into two camps: those who see public unions as critical to ensuring a stable middle-class and those like Mr. Walker who see them as the source of ballooning government debts and higher taxes.

Wrong! Public unions are not the source of ballooning government debts and higher taxes. The source of ballooning government debts and higher taxes are gutless wonder politicians (and do-gooders and their wooly minded supporters) who agree to ludicrous contracts. You will never hear me criticize welfare recipients, whether of the human or corporate variety, who ask for government largesse. Anybody can ask for money! It’s a free country! The villains are the idiots who give it to them.

What, never? Hardly ever.

Much more interesting was the note that:

But since Mr. Walker signed the collective-bargaining bill, which was passed last year by Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature amid weeks of protests around the state capitol, membership in the state’s public-sector unions has withered.

That is because the law ended the automatic deduction of union dues. Public workers must now choose to opt in to the union, rather than being included by virtue of their job.

The result is that the main union that represents state and municipal workers in Wisconsin saw its membership fall by more than half to about 29,000 from 63,000 in the past year. The Wisconsin wing of the American Federation of Teachers lost a third of its members.

It was a mixed day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualPremiums gaining 10bp, FixedResets winning 18bp and DeemedRetractibles off 9bp. Insurance losers were again notable in the Performance Highlights table, but on a much less overwhelming basis than they were yesterday. Volume was average.

RBC is defending its capital markets exposure:

Frustrated with a recent ratings downgrade and worried by the imminent possibility of another, Royal Bank of Canada is intent on proving that its capital markets arm poses no real threat to its future.
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Facing another blow, RBC lashed out, arguing that its inclusion in a review of too-big-to-fail firms was “unwarranted,” in part because its capital markets business represented less than 25 per cent of the bank’s bottom line.

Building on this argument, RBC put together a special presentation for analysts and investors on Friday that focused solely on its capital markets business. The bank did not come out and say that the presentation was designed to prove Moody’s wrong, but the potential downgrade was hinted at many times.
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RBC also devoted a lot of time to risk management practices, another of Moody’s concerns. In February, the rating agency noted that “rapidly changing risk positions expose these firms to unexpected losses that can overwhelm the resources of even the largest, most diversified groups.” RBC noted that of the roughly 1,000 people added since 2008, the majority have been in the back office, where divisions such as risk management are housed.

Divisions such as compliance are also housed in the back office. The RBC Presentation proudly states that the Capital Market division is:

Strategically extending our loan book to deepen client relationships

• Modest sized loan book representing 13% of RBC’s total outstanding loans and acceptances
• Since 2009, increased the number of lending clients by 30% to over 1,200

… but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing for either the bank or society, despite all their protestations regarding diversification, exposure limits and profitability. The lending makes it difficult, if not impossible, for non-bank dealers to compete; and the dual purpose of the lending (to make a lending profit and to make a trading profit) makes these loans somewhat more suceptible to jiggery-pokery at approval time.

The OSC has a new policy:

Staff of the Compliance and Registrant Regulation Branch of the Ontario Securities Commission (the OSC) is sending this email to firms that are registered under the Securities Act (Ontario) (the Act) in the categories of exempt market dealer, scholarship plan dealer, or portfolio manager, to advise such firms of a new approach OSC staff will be adopting when performing compliance reviews under section 20 of the Act. Specifically, OSC staff will now contact clients of registered firms as a routine part of its compliance review process.

While OSC staff have historically not contacted clients of a registered firm as part of the compliance review process, we have done so in a number of exceptional cases and have found that client contact is a valuable method of assessing the firm’s compliance with Ontario securities law. Accordingly, we will be expanding our use of this important tool and will be contacting clients in the normal course of compliance reviews. Clients may be asked a variety of questions regarding their experience with their registered firm and representative, including such things as the accuracy of know-your-client information the firm has about them and investment recommendations and advice provided to them.

Unless OSC staff have reason to believe that regulatory action against a firm may be warranted, clients who are contacted by OSC staff will be informed that they are being contacted in the normal course of a compliance review of the firm, and that the call to them should not be interpreted as a sign of any misconduct by the firm. Clients will also be informed that they are not required to speak with OSC staff should they choose not to, and that their participation in the compliance review process is entirely voluntary.

The Globe has a very interesting piece on housing affordability:

Where things get weird is in how they calculate the average house price. What they’ve done is set the price at $144,600 in 1990, which is simply the average resale price at the time as calculated by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA). From that point, the Bank of Canada estimates the change in the average house price by averaging out gains as reported by Statistics Canada’s New House Price index (NHPI), and by Royal Lepage (i.e. CREA).

The issue here is that the NHPI is a quality-adjusted index, which means it seeks to measure the change in a comparable dwelling over time. This is a very important concept when it comes to tracking true inflation over time as you need an apples-to-apples comparison.
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We know that the average size of new dwellings has risen in Canada, with the average new house being just under 2,000 square feet, according to data from the Canadian Home Builders Association. This is up markedly since the 1970s when the average house size in Canada was under 1,100 square feet. So as a society, we’ve changed our expectations for what constitutes a “normal sized” house. The problem is that as we’ve demanded larger and larger homes with better amenities and have been willing to stretch the household budget further to get those, the NHPI has been busy factoring out these changes.

The end result is that by pegging 50 per cent of the growth in house prices to the NHPI, the average house price used in the Bank of Canada affordability index has significantly underperformed other measures of house price appreciation. The chart above illustrates the change in value of the average house used in the Bank of Canada affordability index. If you believe that the average house in Canada is $260,000, I can see how you’d think that there was no problem with affordability in Canada.

The full piece is well-worth reading and is a good companion to the recent RBC quarterly report on the topic.

Henry Paulson has joined the fray on new US MMF rules:

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is backing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro’s effort to impose new rules on money- market funds.

In a letter that the SEC published May 30 on its website, Paulson highlights excerpts of his 2010 book, “On the Brink,” which provides his account of the financial crisis. Paulson’s letter covered the period between Sept. 16 and Sept. 19, 2008 when Bank of New York Mellon Corp., BlackRock Inc. (BLK) and Northern Trust Corp. (NTRS) reported requests for “billions in redemptions” from their money funds. Such requests exacerbated a credit crisis that began earlier that month, he wrote.
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Schapiro initially proposed requiring money-market firms float their $1 net asset value along with mandating more capital and preventing customers from withdrawing all of their funds for 30 days. The so-called holdback provision has been particularly controversial in the industry and Schapiro is said to be open to replacing it with a fee that would be imposed on customers who take out their money during a liquidity crisis.

Money-market firms have also fought the effort to move the industry to a floating net asset value. Paulson’s letter highlights a passage in his book that supports the floating value.

How is one to square the circle? MMFs invest in risky assets – corporate paper. No amount of rules will eliminate the credit risk. Only capital will do that – all MMFs must have either a second class of securities that will take the first loss following a credit event or a credible guarantee from their sponsors … nothing else will do. All together folks … MMFs ARE BANKS IN FUNDS’ CLOTHING! They should be regulated as such! And – importantly – since they are banks, they should hold more capital against holdings of bank paper – any bank paper, from any bank – than should be the case for non-bank paper!

It was a rotten day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualPremiums off 16bp, FixedResets down 26bp and DeemedRetractibles losing 41bp. To make things more interesting, Floaters got whacked for 431bp, so it is not enough to speak glibly about ‘rising interest rates’! A very lengthy list of losers in the Performance Highlights table was comprised almost entirely of insurance issues. Volume was below average.

Berlusconi is hardly considered an elder statesman, but he’s indicative of the mood:

Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Italy should say “ciao, euro” if the European Central Bank doesn’t start printing money to tackle the debt crisis and Germany should quit the single currency if it won’t back a bolder role for ECB.

“The economic crisis can’t be solved” in Italy, Berlusconi said in comments posted on his party’s website today. He called on Prime Minister Mario Monti to “change his political line” and lobby European leaders to back a money- printing campaign by the Frankfurt-based ECB. If the central bank doesn’t become a “lender of last resort,” Italy should say “ciao, euro,” the former premier said.

The malaise may spread to America:

U.S. stocks tumbled, erasing the 2012 advance in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, as employers added the fewest workers in a year, the unemployment rate rose while manufacturing output shrank in Europe and slowed in China.
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Equities slumped as American employers in May added the fewest workers in a year and the unemployment rate unexpectedly increased as job-seekers re-entered the workforce. Payrolls climbed by 69,000 last month, less than the most-pessimistic forecast in a Bloomberg News survey, after a revised 77,000 gain in April that was smaller than initially estimated. The median estimate called for a 150,000 May advance. The jobless rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent, while hours worked declined.

The Treasury market was pleased:

The benchmark 10-year yield fell nine basis points, or 0.09 percentage point, to 1.47 percent in New York time, according to Bloomberg Bond Traders prices. Thirty-year bond yields declined nine basis points to 2.55 percent, reaching 2.5089 percent, below the record 2.5090 percent on Dec. 18, 2008, according to Federal Reserve figures beginning in 1953.

Things are going the other way in Spain:

Spain’s campaign to cajole the European Central Bank into buying its bonds is backfiring.

The nation’s 10-year borrowing cost has jumped more than half a point to 6.62 percent since Jaime Garcia-Legaz, the deputy minister for trade, became the country’s first official to urge the ECB to support its bonds on April 13. Yield increases accelerated after May 24 when Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy signalled that Spain’s debt sustainability may be in danger, and peaked at 6.70 percent on May 30, moving closer to the 7 percent level that forced Greece, Portugal and Ireland to seek outside aid.

The morons at the Toronto Water department have given the city another black eye:

Subway service around Toronto’s Union Station remains suspended Friday evening after an apparent sewer back-up or break sent water gushing into Canada’s busiest rail hub.
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The flooding has spread to the PATH system, closing the portion of the underground retail concourse south of Wellington Street, Mr. Ross added.

The scene around Union Station Friday was chaotic. Toronto police cars with lights flashing shut down the section of Front Street from York to Yonge streets.

Will wonders never cease? There’s a prominent Republican speaking halfway reasonably:

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, in a break with his party, said he could support tax increases to help reduce the federal government’s budget deficit.

The brother of former President George W. Bush told a congressional panel in Washington today that he could back a theoretical deficit-reduction package that would include $1 in tax increases for every $10 in spending cuts.

Fortunately, there are other Republicans maintaining the party’s reputation by supporting Al-Qaeda’s thesis that there’s some kind of religious war going on:

The opponents of the Tennessee mosque have fought for two years to stop construction. During lengthy hearings in 2010, they presented testimony that in effect put Islam on trial. A string of witnesses questioned whether Islam is a legitimate religion and promoted a theory that American Muslims want to replace the Constitution with extremist Islamic law and the mosque was a part of that plot.
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The mosque also became an issue in a local congressional race, with Republican candidate Lou Ann Zelenik calling it a threat to the state’s moral and political foundation.

Later, a dump truck on the site was burned in what federal officials determined was arson.

It was a mixed day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualPremiums gaining 10bp, FixedResets up 3bp and DeemedRetractibles down 14bp. Volatility was good. Volume was light.

It would appear that it is the banks who shave the Spanish barber:

Bankia group risks dragging the rest of Spain into its vortex

As Spain’s third-biggest bank asks Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government for 19 billion euros ($24 billion), international investors are tallying the potential cost for the rest of the industry and betting he won’t be able to foot the bill. With foreign investors shunning Spanish debt, leaving national banks to fund the government, the nation’s 10-year borrowing costs compared with Germany’s are near a record.

Spain needs to bail out lenders still reeling from the collapse of the real-estate boom while its own access to funding increasingly depends on domestic banks being kept afloat by the European Central Bank’s refinancing operations. Rising borrowing costs are putting pressure on Rajoy’s five month-old government to join Greece, Portugal and Ireland in seeking a rescue that would be the European Union’s biggest.

There’s capital flight in Spain:

More than €97-billion in capital fled Spain in the first quarter of the year as the country’s crisis escalated along with the troubles of the euro zone.

That stunning number, published today by the country’s central bank and reported in The Financial Times, represents almost 10 per cent of Spain’s gross domestic product.

I recall William Shirer stressed capital flight as a destabilizing factor of the French Third Republic. But that’s just panic.

There is NO PANIC. Let me repeat that: there is NO PANIC! There is absolutely NO PANIC anywhere and anybody who might panic will be shot, not that anybody would panic:

The International Monetary Fund said it is not preparing financial aid for Spain and the country denied any talks about a bailout even as its borrowing costs approach euro-era records.

“There’s been no request for financial assistance from Spain and the IMF is not making plans for financial assistance to Spain,” Gerry Rice, the IMF’s director of external relations, told reporters in Washington today.

Hate your neighbors? Want to take revenge for that time their cat peed on your lawn? The good folks of the federal government are offering a new way to denounce your neighbors!

The Copyright Board of Canada has, for the first time, decided to charge fees to anyone who uses recorded music as part of a public event. That means anyone who plans on using tunes to get the party started will need to dig a little deeper before hitting play on the iPod.

The new rules include any event in which music is played – weddings, ice shows, street parties, circuses, parades and karaoke bars are all named in the official notice from the country’s copyright board.
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Re:Sound does employ inspectors, but would only undertake an inspection if complaints were received.

Denounce your neighbor today and help to bring back Stalinism!

S&P affirmed CSE.PR.A:

• We are affirming our ratings, including our ‘BB+’ long-term corporate credit rating, on Capstone Infrastructure Corp.
• In addition, we are removing the ratings from CreditWatch with developing implications.
• The affirmation and CreditWatch removal reflects our view of the progress that the company has made in regard to the various initiatives to address its liquidity.
• The stable outlook reflects our view that Capstone benefits from contracted revenue and insulation from electricity demand and price risks
  provided by power purchase agreements with investment-grade off-takers.

We could raise the ratings if the company takes steps to improve its liquidity (for example, through a reduction in its common share dividend) such that it is consistent with our criteria description of “adequate” and demonstrates concrete steps in recontracting the expiring PPAs while maintaining or improving its significant financial risk profile. We expect the company to continue to focus its growth strategy on assets with cash-flow predictability supported by either favorable contracts or regulation.

We could consider lowering the ratings should Capstone’s overall cash flow quality weaken materially from its moderate level of stability. This could come from major operational disruptions in its generation facilities or acquisition of assets with materially higher cash flow variability. In addition, we could consider a negative rating action if we expect the company’s cash-flow coverage measures to weaken materially, with partially consolidated cash flow to interest falling below 2.7x or partially consolidated cash flow to total recourse debt falling below 20% on a sustained basis, in accordance with our criteria for project developers. This could happen if it increases its reliance on debt financing to support its growth initiatives or its distribution. In addition, failure to renew expiring PPAs or replace them with acquisitions of other contracted assets could also lead to a downgrade in the medium term.

DBRS affirmed DGS.PR.A at Pfd-3:

DBRS has today confirmed the rating of the Preferred Shares of Dividend Growth Split Corp. (the Company) at Pfd-3. In December 2007, the Company issued approximately 1.5 million Preferred Shares (at $10 each) and an equal number of Class A Shares (at $15 each). The scheduled redemption date for both classes of shares issued is November 30, 2014.
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Since the rating was last confirmed in May 2011, following the completion of a merger of the Company with Brompton Equity Split Corp., the net asset value (NAV) of the Company has remained fairly stable, with downside protection fluctuating between 38% and 47%. The current downside protection (as of April 26, 2012) is approximately 42%. Based on the current yields of the underlying securities in the Portfolio, the dividend coverage ratio is approximately 1.43 times as of April 30, 2012, so the dividends received on the Portfolio fully cover the Preferred Share distributions.

The Canadian preferred share market closed the month with a mildly negative day, with PerpetualPremiums flat, FixedResets off 4bp and DeemedRetractibles down 6bp. Volatility was good. Volume was average.