PrefBlog

OK, everybody! The end of the world, previously scheduled for Friday, has been cancelled. You are encouraged to make plans for the long weekend.

Loyal readers will know that I’ve become sufficiently irritated by calls for increased regulation to write a post on the topic (well, it’s really just a commentary on another essay) and even to initiate a category for what promises to be a series of posts. I don’t think the issue is going to go away any time soon … the New York Times has published an article with many interesting statements:

“In a globalized economy with hedge funds, leveraged buyouts and all these investment funds, we have to ask the question about more transparency,” said Claude Bébéar, the chairman of the supervisory board of the insurance company AXA

I have some free advice for M. Bébéar: ask these questions before investing.

Washington and London rebuffed the German government earlier when it pushed for an international code of conduct for hedge funds. Now some economic advisers to the German government are going further, suggesting that rating agencies should be nationalized, that large-scale loans be registered publicly and that minimum standards be developed for complex debt securities.

Super. “We’re from the German Government and we’re here to help you”. Can’t wait for that. Trouble is, the US national debt, fiscal deficit and trade deficit are all in such lousy shape that the US is not in a strong position to tell its creditors where to stuff their nationalized credit rating agencies. We shall see!

Christian de Boissieu, president of the group and a member of the Committee for Credit and Investment Institutions, which helps regulate French banks, is calling for a global register of hedge funds. In addition, he said, complex securities should be scrutinized before being sold to bank portfolios.

Is M. de Boissieu claiming that complex securities were not scrutinized before being bought by bank portfolios? Quick, tell me which banks! I want to buy a lot of puts on such poorly run stocks … except … um … French banks are halfway nationalized already aren’t they? And thoroughly scrutinized by … um … M. de Boissieu?

“It’s not just the U.S. regulators that failed, though they did fail,” Mr. Rosner said. International regulators have “thrown the keys to the rating agencies,” which have been left in charge of the safety and soundness of bank capital, insurance and pension money.

The article did not specify where the regulators are alleged to have failed. Pension money? Sorry, Mr. Rosner. Responsibility for pension money rests with the pension fund board. If they’ve been sleeping there are lots and lots of regulations on the books about that already.

Oooh, all this jockeying for regulatory power and salaries makes me angry! I do want to stress again, however, that my defense of the ratings agencies does not have an origin in any thought that they’re perfect. They’re not: Credit Anticipation is a perfectly good fixed income management strategy, one that Deutsche Bank has done very well with recently, although maybe that’s just because they’re German and have good connections with the German Government Credit Ratings Analysis Department.

However … in the first place, they offer investment advice. See that word? I’ll bold it. advice. If you don’t trust their advice, don’t take it. If you think their advice is sort-of usually OK but not perfect, then listen to it while checking it and staying diversified. If you believe so completely in their advice that you’re willing to lever up 15:1 (with all your money, not just a small chunk of it as your ‘hedge fund flutter’), on the basis that not only is it perfect but that everybody else will also always believe it’s perfect … then go home and play with your dollies.

In the second place, they major agencies have extremely good track records. Better than virtually all of their critics are willing to disclose, anyway.

And in the third place, I have yet to see any actual evidence that they’ve made any mistakes other than, possibly, the defaults on some ABCP issues. This is a black eye, definitely, but are due to market convulsions rather than actual deterioration of the underlying; market convulsions are very hard to predict. Shall we fault them, for instance, for the fact that 100-year floaters (e.g. Royal Bank) are now almost impossible to sell at a decent price [CUSIP# 780087AK8. Indicated at $94.50]? If recovery is (eventually) 100% it’s not the worst catastrophe finance has ever seen.

So there.

Return to my usual boring drone about economics, there is renewed discussion of the efficiacy of the yield curve in predicting recessions. Some of the data looks a little dated already:

The spread has turned negative with the 10-year rate at 4.79 percent and the 3-month rate at 4.83 percent (both for the week ending August 10).

With luck, however, the German government will soon regulate yield curve slopes and then we’ll never have a recession again. Econbrowser notes that the Fed Funds market is starting to look almost normal again. Tomorrow the US Treasury will release statistics on Commercial Paper Outstandings, which should be quite interesting. RAMS is liquidating as well as Cheyne, to name but two.

The US mortgage market is tightening, with banks both having less money to lend AND not being able to securitize as efficiently as they used to. The mortgage curve is now inverted, which seems very strange. All the short money has been sucked up by distressed ABCP issuers. Bernanke has opined that US Agencies should stick to securitization and not increase their leverage for the time being, which probably disappoints many.

US Equities roared back from the horror of yesterday and were accompanied by their Canadian cousins. Three-Month US T-Bills continued their wild ride (this is really strange, by the way) even as Treasury notes got whacked. Canadas were hurt as well, in what may be dubbed a Flight to Equity.

There has as yet been no comment from the German Government concerning the correct level of bond yields.

It took nine straight days of gains, but the PerpetualDiscount index is now up on the month, albeit marginally. Only floaters and splitShares are still under water.

There were eleven other $25-equivalent index-included issues trading over 10,000 shares today.

Whoosh!

Just when you thought you were safe …

I was most impressed today by the DG.UN suspension of redemptions, a made-in-Canada $1.4-billion whoopsee, when in comes news of S&P’s downgrade of Cheyne, a $6-billion oopsy-daisy. According to S&P’s actual release (emphasis added):

Cheyne Finance is a SIV structure managed by Cheyne Capital Management Ltd. who has responsibility for purchasing assets, managing the portfolio, and overseeing the issuance of CP and medium-term notes.
 
Current pressure on market prices and the associated recent deterioration in the net asset value (NAV) of this vehicle have reached a level where the ratings have come under pressure.
…
The portfolio is predominantly invested in real estate securitizations, and we note that the portfolio has not suffered any downgrades to these underlying assets.
 
We have been notified today that the vehicle breached its major capital loss
test and so an enforcement event has occurred. In accordance with the program documents, the portfolio manager upon consultation with the security trustee may begin an orderly liquidation of assets and by Aug. 30 it will estimate the expected proceeds from future liquidations.

Both the “Issuer Credit Rating” and the rating on the Senior Notes has been downgraded from AAA to A-[Watch Negative]. Those of you who are in furious disagreement with my defense of the ratings agencies and eager to see me with egg all over my face (which I know is practically all of you, you’re not fooling anybody) will be most pleased!

What makes this event notable is the bolded disclosure above that this event results from a decline in market prices of the underlying security, not simply an inability to roll the paper at sensible prices. I eagerly await more information regarding Euromoney’s Best CDO Manager of 2006.

The good part about these events with Cheyne is that some actual liquidation of the underlying portfolio will take place. This will lead to at least some delevering of the financial system – this calling on bank lines stuff merely transfers debt. Some equity guys will be wiped out, but that’s what equity guys are for.

There’s more ghoulish news about liquidity exposures, this time from the Times:

State Street, the American bank, has been identified as having $22 billion (£10.9 billion) of exposure to asset-backed commercial paper conduits, the off-balance sheet vehicles that have caused severe problems for rivals in recent weeks amid turmoil in credit markets.

According to regulatory filings, the Boston-based bank has credit lines to at least six conduits, which account for 17 per cent of its total assets. That proportion makes State Street the most highly exposed bank to conduits among its European and American peers.

17% of assets is a very lot. On a positive note, their most recent 10-Q filing discloses that the bank had a Tier 1 Capital ratio of 12%, which is quite good, equal to TD Bank’s ratio as of last year-end, which was the best of the big 5. Even if we divide their 12% by 1.17 to get a ballpark idea of capital adequacy in the event all their lines get called on, we’re still in excess of 10%, which is still quite reasonable. But holy smokes, that’s a lot of lines!

Meanwhile, credit card delinquencies are rising while housing prices are falling, not a great combination.

The Fed’s trying to help! More banks got an exemption allowing them to lend discount money to their broker subsidiaries and I think we can count on this sort of thing being earnestly debated at this weekend’s Jackson Hole conference.

However, I can now provide links to another panic: the Panic of ’07 (not this ’07, the last one), brought to my attention by the WSJ Economics blog, which has some interesting-sounding links to papers I haven’t yet read. If I do read them and they’re good, I’ll post again. Panics, panics panics! Collect them all at PrefBlog!

In other news, some brave Australians are putting together a $1.9-billion LBO, Brad Setser discusses a claim that sub-prime was dumped on the Chinese, jumbo mortgages have become much less available, which is hitting Californial real-estate where the average house needs a jumbo loan and European politicians are planning to do some credit-crunch grandstanding.

Given the gloomy tone of today’s post, nobody will be surprised that US Equities got hammered, mainly financials. Canadian equities got pasted as well, but here it was mainly commodity-related stocks. Treasuries steepened on a banner day with more of the same for Canadas.

Preferreds had quite a good day, ignoring the stock market and the credit concerns. But it’s always the way! No sooner do I point out what a lousy month the splitShares are having than they have a great day and make up half the difference between their returns and OpRet’s. It’s nice to see, but maybe I should just keep my mouth shut from now on.

BAM.PR.N had very high volume today, courtesy of two large blocks crossed by Scotia. I have no idea whether that’s cleaned out their inventory or not, but it’s about time we saw some big-time crosses! Volume in general picked up, which is good to see … equity refugees?

BMO.PR.G has been removed from the OpRet index because it no longer exists. It’s the end of an era … the world was different at the time of its first month-end in the index, February, 1998.

There were fifteen other $25-equivalent index-included issues trading over 10,000 shares today.

Another reasonably normal day, bearing in mind that we’re talking about financial markets here and the word “normal” needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Of great interest to me (I dare not say, “Of prime interest”, for fear of being misunderstood) was the Bank of Canada’s cash management bill, $2.5-billion of one-month bills to be auctioned tomorrow morning. They had to do something! The spread between 1-month bills and one-month CP as of the 24th had widened to 137bp (out 40bp just on the week) which I find just incredible … I mentioned on the 21st that I thought a 60bp three-month Bill/BA spread was amazing.”Cash Management Bill” is simply what they’re calling it – I’m not even sure if they can call it anything else, given that it’s not part of the regular auction routine.

I suspect that all the actual cash will be pushed right back into the money supply as loans against ABCP (maybe indirectly, e.g., National finances all the ABCP it suddenly owns by repo-ing more of its Canada holdings) … but I’m sure only a few people know that for sure at this point.

Bank of Canada deputy governor Pierre Duguay stated:

“Specifically, we are asking ourselves two questions: First, how much greater is the risk to the Canadian economy now posed by developments in the U.S. economy? And second, to what extent would the re-pricing of credit risk lead to a sustained tightening of credit conditions in Canada?”

In other words, they may have to ease considerably just to keep the commercial paper market (and the rest of the corporate curve) where they want it to be. We’ll see! The money-market quality spread has, maybe, stabilized in the US.

Speaking of the US, Brad Setser continues his probing of the current account deficit, Menzie Chinn highlights risks to the US deficit projections and Stephen Cecchetti reviews the Fed reaction to the crisis. He also includes the sentence

The sub-prime crisis made it clear that the rating agencies were doing a poor job of evaluating risks in securities that were backed by sub-prime mortgages.

but does not substantiate the charge that they’re doing a poor job. But that’s another post … and doubtless many more, as actual data start to come in to replace all this guessing.

I hope nobody thinks I’m totally indifferent to the situation, or that I’m carrying a torch for the ratings agencies. It’s just that … I’m not the oldest guy in the business, not by a long shot, but I’ve been around the block. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been told the world’s about to end (and a dime for each time it was the result of a conspiracy or massive negligence by big institutions) … I’d be too busy with my troupe of dancing girls to bother writing this blog.

A lot of hedgies are going to get wiped out and the sooner the better; a few pension funds are going to play blame the manager; credit squeezes and the sudden conversion of Money Market instruments to term debt a la Coventree may give a recessionary cast to the economy; the US may well enter a recession, since a lot of their deficit-fuelled growth in the past few years has been housing-related and there ain’t gonna be much more of that; a few real companies will probably get weak enough that they get taken over at prices that don’t make long-term shareholders very happy (like just happened to Sachsen, mentioned here on August 20); and we might even see a spectacular flame-out if a big institution’s risk-controls are found wanting  … but I’m not so sure that the solidly investment-grade tranches of sub-prime debt are as bad as they’re made out to be.

What I am sure of, is that if I was a hedgie myself, I’d be bidding … low. And telling the newspapers how awful everything is.

US Equities fell a bit, as did those in Canada. There is concern that the de facto easing will be bad for Treasuries; the Fed Fund Futures are pricing in an immediate ease to 5.00% (the current de facto rate) and another ease to the 4.75% area – and beyond – by November. Canadas had a good day, with a basically parallel shift.

Another quiet, directionless day in pref land. Split shares are getting hit this month … people appear to want direct investments in companies with recognizable names!

There were seven other $25-equivalent index-included issues trading over 10,000 shares today.