Soros: This Is Act 2 of the Crisis

I’ve been a Soros fan ever since reading “The Alchemy of Finance” in the early ’90s and an even bigger fan since seeing him speak at the “Secretary’s Open Forum” at the U.S. Department of State in 2003.  The following is a clear, concise, and up-to-date explanation of his main theories and their implications for financial markets and their participants and regulators.

This Is “Act 2″ of the Crisis
George Soros
2010-6-14

In the week following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15, 2008 — global financial markets actually broke down, and by the end of the week, they had to be put on artificial life support. The life support consisted of substituting sovereign credit for the credit of financial institutions, which ceased to be acceptable to counterparties.

As Mervyn King of the Bank of England brilliantly explained, the authorities had to do in the short term the exact opposite of what was needed in the long term: they had to pump in a lot of credit to make up for the credit that disappeared, and thereby reinforce the excess credit and leverage that had caused the crisis in the first place. Only in the longer term, when the crisis had subsided, could they drain the credit and re-establish macroeconomic balance.

This required a delicate two-phase maneuver just as when a car is skidding. First you have to turn the car into the direction of the skid and only when you have regained control can you correct course.

The first phase of the maneuver has been successfully accomplished — a collapse has been averted. In retrospect, the temporary breakdown of the financial system seems like a bad dream. There are people in the financial institutions that survived who would like nothing better than to forget it and carry on with business as usual. This was evident in their massive lobbying effort to protect their interests in the Financial Reform Act that just came out of Congress. But the collapse of the financial system as we know it is real, and the crisis is far from over.

Indeed, we have just entered Act II of the drama, when financial markets started losing confidence in the credibility of sovereign debt.  Greece and the euro have taken center stage, but the effects are liable to be felt worldwide.

Couple of Good Roubini and Einhorn Articles

As some of you know, Nouriel Roubini and David Einhorn are, IMHO, two of the best minds in their fields and I’ve been posting some of their stuff on here since at least 2006 (list of posts here).  Here are their latest articles:

New Plan Ties College Loan Payments to Income

This is an important article for anyone who has student loan debt. The more your debt, and lower your imcome, the more important the article.

The new repayment option — the Income Based Repayment (IBR) plan — went into effect on July 1, 2009. It limits what borrowers have to pay to “15% of the difference between their gross income and 150% of federal poverty guidelines.”

What exactly that means, is up to your lender to determine, as I understand it. But it does appear that payments can be as low as $0.00. That’s bad, because interest accrues and is added to the outstanding balance, but it’s good because after borrowers “make payments on loans” for 25 years, the balance is forgiven.  (But what does “make payments on loans” mean?  What if those “payments” are $0.00?)

Bottom line is that everyone who feels burdened by their student loans should read this article, and its links, and figure out if this new plan is something for them. If it is, take action.

Problem is, how to figure all this stuff out? It may be so important, and complicated, that some people might want/need professional advice. That’s actually something I’ve long been interested in, but it’s been low on the priority list compared with my other projects. I would love to hear from any of you with the relevant knowledge, experience, and drive to setup a web- and phone-based business providing student loan consulting (in partnership with me). I’ve already got a good domain name: StudentLoanConsulting.com. I guess I could always sell or license that name as well. If you’re interested in any of this, just contact me.

Now on to the article:

Unity of Greater New Orleans

Unity of Greater New Orleans is a group of amazing people working to end homelessness (in New Orleans).

We all want to help reduce homelessness everywhere, so this is just one charity of interest in that department, but it’s a good one.  We have to help each other, one person at a time.

Read the following article and let me know what you think: New Orleans Times-Picayune: “Squatters hidden in N.O.’s abandoned houses often need more help than other homeless people”: http://bit.ly/TT3V1 (Google Doc) or http://bit.ly/gh72s (PDF).

So did you read that article? That’s why I just made a donation to them through the Network For Good. Here’s the link to Unity of Greater New Orleans’s donation page in case you’re inspired, too. Either way, maybe re-share this post? Thanks.

PS: Pics and video from my latest trip to New Orleans, in April 2009.

Barack Obama:
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Ten Principles for a Black Swan-proof World

A year and a half ago, Nouriel Roubini gave us his recipe for financial meltdown, The Twelve Steps to Financial Disaster, each of which unfolded in sequence. Now Nassim Nicholas Taleb gives us his “Ten Steps for a Black Swan-proof World” (below).

Roubini’s steps were the inevitable outcome of a flawed system. Sadly, perhaps, Taleb’s steps are not inevitable.

Additional reading:

• Selected Roubini articles on this blog
• Nouriel Roubini’s Global EconoMonitor blog
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness blog

Now on to the article:

Article: The Quiet Coup

A long, but interesting and important article.

The Quiet Coup
By Simon Johnson
2009-05
The Atlantic

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

One thing you learn rather quickly when working at the International Monetary Fund is that…

First Post From the USA and First Post From the New MacBook

Just time for a quickie:

1. NYT: Bailout Plan: $2.5 Trillion and a Strong U.S. Hand
2. NYT Graphic: The Government’s $8.8 Trillion Bailout Tab
3. Nouriel Roubini: Treasury’s Financial Stability Plan: Will It Work?
4. Nouriel Roubini: It Is Time to Nationalize Insolvent Banking Systems
5. Video and My Comments: Obama and Henrietta Hughes at Town Hall Meeting

UPDATE: Two additional articles:

1. NYT: Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way
   (September 2008)
2. Matthew Richardson and Nouriel Roubini: Nationalize the Banks! We’re all Swedes Now (current)

Two Excellent Michael Lewis and David Einhorn Articles

I’ve posted a bunch of stuff from these guys over the years:

• Here’s an especially good David Einhorn speech from October 2007: What’s Wrong With the Credit Ratings System?
• And at the end of my 11/21/08 market update are two Michael Lewis articles: Hank, Let Me Help You Help This Great Country and The End.

Here’s the latest:

Titles:

1. The End of the Financial World as We Know It
2. How to Repair a Broken Financial World

By Michael Lewis and David Einhorn
2009-1-4
New York Times

In the past year there have been at least seven different government bailouts, and six different strategies. And none of them seem to have pleased anyone except a handful of financiers.

Market Update: Good News/Bad News

Just time for a quick post before a busy afternoon of prep work for our Thanksgiving dinner party tomorrow night (we’re in Sweden, so the Saturday before the official Thanksgiving Day is when we do it).

Ok, the post got a little long when I used Fred Wilson’s tweets  (links below) to launch into some of my investment philosophy.  I like Fred a lot, and his tweets and blog, it’s just that I’ve been watching him buy Google from above $400 down into the $200s.  It’s been painful, but he will eventually catch that oh so sweet bottom!  More below.

Bonus! At the end I tagged on two great pieces by Michael Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street.

First, some market stats:

• Thursday: Summary and volume leaders. Look at that volume! Over 10 billion shares on the NYSE and 3 billion on the Naz. That is people saying “I can’t take the pain any longer, get me out, I don’t care about the price, just make the pain stop!” Margin calls, mutual and hedge fund redemptions, portfolio insurance (see The Anatomy of a Crash), and delta hedging by put sellers, like Warren Buffett, have forced a lot of sales, of course. Call it a perfect storm, a rare glimpse at the naked and ugly side of human emotions, greed into panic. The story never changes, just the names, faces, and dates.  Of course, great opportunities also come at times of extreme emotions.  That will be the same this time, as well.

Article: Europe on Brink of Currency Crisis Meltdown

Ok, this answers my question from a few weeks ago about “what about the ROW (‘rest of world’) subprime mess? Where is it?? It’s not mortgages, it’s this (see article). And it’s [probably] going to make USA subprime look like a walk in the park:

Europe on the brink of currency crisis meltdown
The crisis in Hungary recalls the heady days of the UK’s expulsion from the ERM.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
2008-10-26
telegraph.co.uk

The financial crisis spreading like wildfire across the former Soviet bloc threatens to set off a second and more dangerous banking crisis in Western Europe, tipping the whole Continent into a fully-fledged economic slump.

Currency pegs are being tested to destruction on the fringes of Europe’s monetary union in a traumatic upheaval that recalls the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.

“This is the biggest currency crisis the world has ever seen,” said Neil Mellor, a strategist at Bank of New York Mellon.

Experts fear the mayhem may soon trigger a chain reaction within the eurozone itself. The risk is a surge in capital flight from Austria – the country, as it happens, that set off the global banking collapse of May 1931 when Credit-Anstalt went down – and from a string of Club Med countries that rely on foreign funding to cover huge current account deficits.

Web 2.0 Expo Next Week, First Doing Market Update

Susanne and I just got back from a great 4-day trip to Berlin for the Web 2.0 Expo. Met a lot of interesting people and startups there and will report on it next week. First, however, a quick market update.

The reprieve rally I blogged about here is over, with new lows being set Thursday. See the 18 comments I added to that blog post for a number of interesting articles. Also see Nouriel Roubini’s video from yesterday in London: “It’s going to be a financial and economic wreak.”

What Bank Run? See This Google Search Trends Chart

True it’s only anecdotal evidence, but I’m pretty sure people search Google about FDIC insurance when they’re worried about their bank going bust.

What you see on this chart is a bank run precursor, the starting gun getting cocked.  All someone has to do now is blink and the run is on.  Doesn’t matter if it’s a false start or not once a run starts, the outcome becomes inevitable.

As discussed for months by Nouriel Roubini (see here for some of his articles and references on my blog and see here for a Bloogberg radio interview with him last week).

Note, there are solutions to this problem, as discussed by Roubini. It starts with the government increasing FDIC insurance immediately (a temporary increase to $250,000 FDIC insurance was signed into law on Friday) and also recapitalizing banks (more than buying bad assets).

Bailout “Hope Rally” = Eye of the Storm

(just time for a quick, somewhat unpolished update)

What I mean by “hope rally” is the rally off a (bear-market) low that is driven by the hope that some specified thing (the Bailout legislation in this case) is going to make everything all better. That is never the case, of course, otherwise it would be called the start of a new bull market.  Also, in the current situation, it’s almost certainly (effectively certainly) too early (time and price) in the bear market for a new bull market to start.

That’s why I make the eye of the hurricane analogy, because any “Bailout Reprieve” will (almost certainly) be only temporary.

Last week’s…

Nouriel Roubini’s Latest – Must Read

(NOTE: There are many more NR articles on this blog, going back to 2006, just use the search box at the top of the right-hand sidebar (or click here).  Here’s one from January.  I have been writing about the coming crisis myself since 2004, when I sold my co-op in DC and started renting, and also started liquidating my other real estate investments.  The asset and credit bubbles were obvious to all who had their eyes open and thought for themselves.  Sadly, most people do not think for themselves, maybe that’s why we have the term sheeple.)

The US and global financial crisis is becoming much more severe in spite of the Treasury rescue plan. The risk of a total systemic meltdown is now as high as ever

The next step of this panic could become the mother of all bank runs…

By Nouriel Roubini
2008-9-29

It is obvious that the current financial crisis is becoming more severe in spite of the Treasury rescue plan (or maybe because of it as this plan it totally flawed). The severe strains in financial markets (money markets, credit markets, stock markets, CDS and derivative markets) are becoming more severe rather than less severe in spite of the nuclear option (after the Fannie and Freddie $200 billion bazooka bailout failed to restore confidence) of a $700 billion package: interbank spreads are widening (TED spread, swap spreads, Libo-OIS spread) and are at level never seen before; credit spreads (such as junk bond yield spreads relative to Treasuries are widening to new peaks; short-term Treasury yields are going back to near zero levels as there is flight to safety; CDS spread for financial institutions are rising to extreme levels (Morgan Stanley ones at 1200 last week) as the ban on shorting of financial stock has moved the pressures on financial firms to the CDS market; and stock markets around the world have reacted very negatively to this rescue package (US market are down about 3% this morning at their opening).

Let me explain now in more detail why we are now back to the risk of a total systemic financial meltdown…

USA Bailout: So, How Much Is $700+ Billion, Anyway? And What Would Sweden Do?

UPDATE #1: See the comments to this post for updated numbers and links.

UPDATE #2: See updates and articles on my 2009-2-12 blog post. Also see this New York Times graphic: The tab is now $8.8 trillion, equivalent to the second largest economy in the world, behind USA at $13+ trillion.

The chart above shows the world’s largest economies (measured by GDP), ranked by size.  Assuming the US bailout is only $700 billion, the bailout is larger than all the economies highlighted in yellow.

Note: The bailout is actually already well over $950 billion if you count $150 billion stimulus package (checks to individual tax payers this spring), Bear Stearns, FannieMae, FreddieMac, and AIG.  If you add in the cost to bail out insured bank depositors and all the others who are lining up, it’s going to be well over $1 trillion. But let’s just call it $700-$800 billion for now.  How much is that?

As shown on the chart above (Wikipedia page here), it’s about the size of the Dutch economy, the 15th largest economy in the world (it shows as #16 on the list because the list counts the EU as #1). That’s a lot of “coffee”!

Remember, GDP (the “economy”) is the total value of ALL goods and services produced by ALL people and entities in a country in a year. All that money, down the drain.  Well, not actually down the drain, but into the pockets of those who profited on the way up (privatize the profits) and will profit and/or not lose as much on the way down (socialize the losses).  Nice.  Ok, I better nip that rant in the bud ’cause I gotta hop in a minute.

Real quick, lets say the bailout cost climbs to $1 trillion, how much is that? Larger than Mexican, Australian, and South Korean economies, getting close to the size of Inda’s and not far from Rusia, Brazil, and Canada.

Yeah, it’s that big…

Quick Updates: Stock Market, London, BuzzPal, Nouriel Roubini

2008-9-24 UPDATE: See here for pics and a complete debrief of me week in London.

Some interesting events since my most recent post (“The End of an Era“) and market update, when I said “it’s time to allocate some [brain] CPU and bandwidth, primarily for the purpose of monitoring the sentiment as it works towards its next extreme (and reversal).”

This is exactly what happened.  Unfortunately (for my trading), BuzzPal and I were in London for Seedcamp week, where we went to events, held meetings, and co-sponsored the first-ever TechCrunch Tech Talk, which was a smashing success and a great party, including after hours with some people you might recognize (see pic, below).

The End of an Era

Just a quick post to note today’s taxpayer bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which was inevitable given the system of corruption, which has been discussed on this blog since its inception over four years ago, such as in this April 2004 post, where I said:

What we have here is the greed-fed denial of a flawed system whereby real estate sales people, mortgage brokers, appraisers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and investment banks are driven to originate volume, earn their fees, and pass off the risk to others. It’s a great game in a booming market, but after markets boom there is another phase that ain’t so pretty.

One day this will unwind and besides creating some surprised and upside-down homeowners and burnt bond and asset-backed securities investors there could easily be enough carnage to carry beyond Capitol Hill and to U.S. taxpayers. Could even be enough to make the S&L crisis of the ‘80’s look like child’s play.

The man who said it best, and who thinks and articulates most clearly, is Nouriel Roubini:

‘Dot-Corn’ Shares Mirror Dot-Com Stocks Bubble

Just a quick post that ties in with my related April posts. Click on the image for a larger image in new window. Note the sharp decline, which sets the stage for an upcoming dot-corn bear-market rally.