T & A and the GS-20 Summit

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

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Last Wednesday Treasury Secretary Paulson announced the T&A would be taken out of TARP (the Wall Street bailout bill passed in early October). The raison d'etre given by the Bush administration to congress for passing TARP was that only by purchasing troubled assets on bank balance sheets could banks be freed up to lend again and get the economy going. After the legislation was passed, congressional leadership from both parties announced with great fanfare how they were saving the American economy with this program. The ink was barely dry on the bill however, before Paulson announced that preferred stock was going to be purchased in troubled financial institutions instead. While the first $250 billion will still be earmarked for that purpose, Paulson has now decided that the remaining funds should be used to support financial markets that supply credit for credit card debt, auto loans and student loans. Of course next week, there might be a better way to save the American economy and the six week old program could be changed even again. If all this looks like no one in Washington has the slightest idea what they are doing, it's because they don't.

This is not to say that the new ideas for TARP are not an improvement on the original provisions of the bill which were essentially a form of welfare for Wall Street. Unlike welfare for the poor though, welfare for the rich comes with fewer limitations. While TARP has a provision for 'restriction' of bonuses, it doesn't eliminate them, nor does it force companies that can't continue to exist without government support to pay their executives salaries that top government officials would get. Nevertheless, over the weekend seven top Goldman Sachs (Paulson's old firm) managers graciously renounced their bonuses for 2008. Why they would have been getting bonuses when the company's stock has fallen 70% in the last twelve months is not exactly clear. CEO Lloyd Blankfein received a Wall Street record $68 million bonus last year when he was making the decisions that lead to this year's disastrous performance.

Like everything else in the contemporary economy, lack of effective ideas for handling the credit crisis is global as well. The GS-20 meeting of world leaders this weekend in Washington produced mostly a commitment to free trade and further monetary and fiscal stimulus (in other words governments throughout the world are going to print more paper money which will be backed by nothing other than their leaders hot air). British PM Gordon Brown, who decided to sell half of Britain's gold at the bottom of the market in 1999 and has presided over a worse subprime crisis than in the U.S., led the charge for increased stimulus measures. Other ideas bandied about included multinational supervision for global banks, more oversight for credit rating agencies and regulation for hedge funds. These useful suggestions didn't get much beyond the bandying stage however. Essentially anything concrete was put off until the next meeting in April. The do-nothing summit was immediately declared a success by President Bush.

Shortly thereafter, Japan announced a second quarter of negative GDP confirming it was in recession as the euro zone did last Friday. Since this was not exactly surprising news, Asian markets were little changed overnight, even despite the drop in the U.S. on Friday. The out of the blue rally in American markets last Thursday faded almost as quickly as it arriveed with the Dow down 3.8% and the Nasdaq down 5.0%. Technically speaking this was another crash day on the Nasdaq, but as I have said many times, no one pays attention anymore to just a 5% or 6% drop - and that includes world leaders.

NEXT: Trojan Horse of Earnings Surprises

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

AIG - Bailing Out the Bailout... Again

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

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The New York Investing meetup has repeatedly said in its meetings that there is no such thing as one bailout for an insolvent financial company. If Fed Chair Bernanke or Treasury Secretary Paulson belonged to the group they might have realized that Dow stock AIG was likely to turn into the bailout black hole of taxpayer funding that it has become. AIG is now on its third government bailout in less than two months. In mid-September, it had originally requested a loan of $40 billion from the Fed which was turned down. Days later the Fed bought 80% of the company for $85 billion. (see our September 17th blog entry: The People's Republic of the U.S. - the AIG Bailout). The government had to throw in an additional $38 billion in October to keep the company afloat. AIG then reported a $24.5 billion loss, 80% owned by the American taxpayer, for the third quarter in early November and this necessitated the bailout to be totally restructured.

After the initial bailout, the federal government issued assurances that its actions had stabilized AIG - and indeed it did for a whole few weeks (the approximate see ahead time for the visionaries that currently run the U.S. Treasury department and Federal Reserve). Unfortunately, the way the government stabilized AIG helped destabilize the market. This occurred because there seems to have been a high interest attached to AIG's government funding, which was treated as a loan even though it involved the purchase of common stock. While this apparently makes no sense whatsoever, we are dealing with the government here so don't expect the ordinary rules of financial logic to apply. This high interest rate forced AIG to dump a lot of securities on to the market in late September and early October helping to exacerbate the post-Lehman bankruptcy meltdown that took place during that time.

In the $150 billion AIG bailout part 3, the amount of funding from the Fed will be reduced to $60 billion and the interest rate on this loan will be lowered as well. An additional $40 billion will come from TARP, aka the Wall Street welfare bill, for the purchase of preferred shares in AIG. The Treasury for once correctly stated that this would not increase the government's ownership in AIG, although Treasury has previously indicated that preferred stock, which is a perpetual loan, represented ownership rights in a company. Paulson has also indicated that funds from TARP would only go to 'healthy companies', not failing companies such as AIG (this of course begs the question of why a 'healthy company' would need government assistance). The government will also be funding a $20 billion dollar buy back of residential mortgage securities that AIG insures and $30 billion dollars for the purchase of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) for 5o cents on the dollar. It is CDO exposure that has financially ruined the company.

AIG has taken $100 billion or so in write downs so far. Its exposure to insurance for fixed-income investments fell from $441 billion to $372 billion after the governments first injection of $85 billion. Based on these figures, my guess is the the upper limit for bailing out the company is somewhere around $400 billion. Assuming of course they can cut down on using taxpayer funds for spa treatments for their executives and the one-million dollar a month payments they are making to former management who's decisions helped destroy the company.

NEXT: U.S. Market Tests Low as Global Recession Predicted

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Start Looking for Capitulation

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

Our Video Related to this Blog:

Another market bloodbath took place in Asia last night. The Nikkei fell a further 6.4% and took out its 2003 low of 7603 to close at 7162. This is now a 26 year low and it's not clear that even 18 years of selling has been enough to establish a long-term stock market bottom in Japan. The surging Yen is crushing exporters there. Drops were even bigger elsewhere, with the Hang Seng in Hong Kong falling 12.7% to close at 11,016. The 10,000 support level, broken during the Asian financial crisis in 1997, seems to be acting as a magnet for the index. The Philippines market, after dropping 12.3%, halted trading. Only Korea was up slightly after it cut interest rates three-quarters of a point, the largest cut ever there. The U.S. Fed, which is meeting this week, almost certainly took notice.

While the Yen is going up against the dollar, the euro continues its fall and hit 1.2461 in overnight trading. Oil hit 62.20 and is now down 57% from its mid-July high. The drop has been so sharp and so quick that gas prices in the U.S. have fallen 53 cents in only two weeks - just in time for the November election, where the high cost of fuel was a major issue eroding voter support for the Republican party. The U.S. dollar's strong rally against almost all currencies other than the Yen, engineered by central banks acting in concert starting this summer, is partially responsible for the fall in oil prices. Their dollar support activities have been so 'successful' that the trade weighted dollar was above 87.50 early this morning. If the rally continues, this could cause U.S. exports to drop off a cliff, as they did in the early stages of the Great Depression, and take the economy with them. The American financial media, which published one story after another about the beneficial effects of a falling dollar when the U.S. currency was sliding, has so far ignored the flip side of this story.

European markets, down in the 4% to 6% range in early trading, started paring their losses by mid-day. The U.S. markets did not open down that much, but it's the close that will be important. The Treasury announced today that it would begin distributing it gift bags of money from the Wall Street bailout bill to banks and this may be helping to limit selling. The U.S. Fed will be meeting this Tuesday and Wednesday and a 50 basis point rate cut is expected - more is possible and that would rally the market if it occurs. The New York Investing meetup predicted in fall 2007 that the Fed would move rates close to zero and this prediction seems to be coming to fruition.

Stocks are extremely oversold and resistance to further selling has been evident for the last few days of trading. Buying on any major drop should now be considered. It is likely that soon some event will take place that will rally the market and its beaten down segments. While the financials may still be overpriced (doesn't mean they can't rally substantially in the short term), sectors like the precious metal miners have been fallen to truly bargain level prices. Buying at a real discount is always a good way to make money in any market.

NEXT: Short Covering Rallies, Explosive and Brief

Daryl Montgomery

Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Landslide Elections and the U.S. Stock Market

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

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There seem to be only two things that Americans voters will not forgive their politicians for. In the case of the President it is a failed economy, which led to a Democratic landslide in 1932 and a Republican landslide in 1980. While congressional voting is strongly affected by the economy as well, there is an additional factor of failing to deliver on a political party's core promises. When the Democrats couldn't pass a health care bill (something they had campaigned on for almost 50 years) in 1993, the voters turned on them en mass. This year, there is not only economic turmoil going into the election, but many Republicans in congress abandoned one of their party's most fundamental principals, fiscal conservatism, by supporting the Wall Street bailout bill. Conditions are ripe for a major political shift.

Presidential landslides are usually preceded by shifts in Congress two years earlier. In 1930, the Republicans, who had totally controlled Washington for the proceeding 10 years, lost 52 House seats and 8 Senate seats as the economy started to fall headlong into the Depression. Even with these losses, Republicans still had slight control of the U.S. senate and only lost their majority in the House after further defeats in special elections. While the U.S. economy was allegedly in good shape in 2006 (at least according to the official highly manipulated government figures), Republicans lost 30 House seats and 6 Senate seats in the election that year. This gave Democrats solid control of the House and a bare majority in the senate.

As bad as 1930 was for the Republicans, it was nothing like the political bloodbath that followed in 1932 when they lost 101 seats in the House and 12 seats in the senate. Best guesstimates as of now is that Democrats will pick up another 30 House seats this November. Interestingly, as many as 12 senate seats could also shift from Republican to Democratic hands this year, although the Democrats would only need 9 seats to have a filibuster proof majority. There is probably a slightly less than 50% chance of this happening, so it isn't a done deal yet. Wall Street would not react positively to this outcome and it has almost certainly not been factored into stock prices as of yet.

As for the Presidential election, Obama is clearly ahead of McCain and some perennial Republican strongholds like Indiana, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Virginia may go his way in addition to almost every swing state. Obama has the advantage in ad spending and field operations. Most polls show him way ahead in the race. While there are a few that don't, closer examination of them reveal that they are as statistically suspect as the U.S. governments inflation and GDP figures.

So what has a major political shift said about the prospects for the U.S. stock market in the past? The stock market actually bottomed before the 1932 election and entered a multi-year rally period after FDR's inauguration in March. In 1980, Regan was elected while a recession was already underway (as is the case in 2008) and another recession immediately followed that one.
Two years later though, U.S. stocks started an 18 year secular bull market. Generally, things have to be very bad economically for there to be a large change in the previous U.S. political balance. By the time this happens, the worst is likely to be over soon thereafter.

NEXT: Start Looking for Capitulation

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Unlimited Liquidity Today, Unlimited Inflation Tomorrow

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

Our Video Related to this Blog:

The U.S. Federal Reserve, the ECB, and the central banks of England and Switzerland agreed over the weekend to "provide unlimited U.S. dollar funds to financial institutions" to support inter-bank lending. The Euro-zone will also guarantee bank debt until the end of 2009 and will assist its countries in buying preferred shares in failing banks in order to help recapitalize them. As this agreement was being worked out, Britain nationalized three of its major banks to prevent their failures. Meanwhile, the United States has altered the focus of its Wall Street bailout plan to concentrate on the purchase of non-voting bank shares and it looks like the American taxpayer won't be getting any equity in return (as the bill supposedly guaranteed).

The Euro-zone is essentially following the lead of Great Britain (the country that sold half of its gold in 1999 at the market bottom and which has a worse housing crisis than even the United States). Britain is now injecting $438 billion in loans to its banking sector - a sum that is proportionately much larger than the $700 billion U.S. bailout, but probably still not nearly enough. Its three bank nationalizations this weekend include the Royal Bank of Scotland (on the New York Investing meetup's likely bank failure list in September) where the taxpayers will get a majority 60% stake. Lloyds TSB and HBS were also merged by the government, which then bought a 40% ownership position in the new combined bank.

As the British banking system is being rapidly nationalized, the U.S. seems to be backing away from this socialist model. Instead of buying bad debt with the Wall Street bailout money, it now appears that preferred stock will be purchased (although media reports in this regard are garbled to say the least). Preferred stock is non-voting and represents no ownership rights in a company. It is merely a loan in perpetuity. Europe in general seems to be trying to adopt this approach as well. If there is any profit made on the government's money pumping (and there always is), none of it will be going to the respective taxpayers of any country that handles the banking crisis this way.

Where all the money is going to come from to pay for the 'unlimited' liquidity injections into the collapsing American/European financial system has not been stated. It is highly unlikely that it will dropping from the sky attached to a big balloon. Printing more money is the only possible option. This makes the inflation hedges gold and silver even better investment possibilities going forward. Amazingly they are both at particularly low prices - at least in the futures markets. While both had severe sell offs in the U.S. markets on Friday (sell offs for gold and silver that take place only in U.S trading have happened many times), anecdotal reports indicate that people were rushing coin shops and bullion dealers to purchase them.

NEXT: Stock Market Rallies Like It's 1932

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

The Third Crash is the Charm - Fed to the Rescue

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

Our Video Related to this Blog:

As predicted in earlier entries to this blog, there was a coordinated global interest rate this morning. The only mystery is why it didn't happen yesterday morning instead. Apparently two crash days in a row in the U.S. markets were needed to expedite this action. A G7 meeting is scheduled for this Friday in Washington and it was likely that the world central banks were waiting for the meeting to be over to show that it had resulted in them taking bold, decisive rate cutting action. The U.S. Fed also probably thought that its Monday/ Tuesday announcements of $900 billion increased lending from it various credit facilities and that it would buy up to a trilion plus dollars of commercail paper would be enough to bull the market up. Instead, U.S. stocks crashed again on Tuesday. So now the ever reliable 'cut interest rates to juice up the stock market' is being tried, not just in the U.S., but globally. Instead of bold, decisive action, it smacks of bold, decisive desperation.

Tuesday's market behavior in the U.S. indicated that the monetary authorities were losing their ability to impact stock prices with their usual bag of tricks. While the announcement of the Fed's massive liquidity injections did cause a major intraday rally on Monday and a strong opening on Tuesday morning, it didn't last. At the Monday low, the Dow, S&P500, and Nasdaq were down over 8.0% and because of the Fed's announcements they closed down only in the 3% to 4% range (still a pretty bad day). If you measure a crash by intraday action, there was most certainly a market crash on Monday. If you measure it only by a closing price drop of over 5.0% on the indices there was only a crash on Tuesday (as well as Monday a week ago). While stocks were up a good bit on Tuesday morning and everything looked like it was going according to plan, the market nevertheless quickly faded and selling accelerated toward the end of the day. By the close, the Dow had dropped 508 points or 5.1%, the S&P 500 61 points or 5.7%, the Nasdaq 108 points or 5.8%, and the Russell 2000 37 points or 6.2%.

So this morning the Fed has turned to more interest rate cuts to save the market. The funds rate was lowered by half a point to 1.5% and the discount rate by the same amount to 1.75%. The ECB also dropped rates by half a point, to 3.75%, as did the Bank of England, to 4.5% (the UK recently passed an $87 billion rescue package for its banks similar to the U.S. Wall Street bailout plan). Canada, Sweden and Switzerland also joined the rate cutting party (noticeably absent, at least so far, is Japan). China lowered a key interest rate for the second time in a month. Australia had cut rates a full percentage point on Monday. This was the U.S. Fed's second intermeeting rate cut this year (the next Fed meeting is October 28, 29th), following the large cuts that took place to prevent a market meltdown in January.

The reason that central banks have avoided rate cutting recently is because of the inflationary implications. The Fed itself has stated in the minutes from it recent meetings that it sees entrenched inflation as a danger in the current economic environment. It avoided lowering rates at its September 16th meeting because of this. The stock market which had been conditioned to expect automatic rate cuts during its bouts of weakness, starting selling off and entered a crash period. Like all addictive processes, if you don't keep feeding the addict the drug, painful withdrawal follows. Supplies of the rate cut drug are almost gone however.

NEXT: Meltdown Microcosm - U.S. Future Can be Seen in Iceland Today

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.