WEF 2009: Global crisis 'has destroyed 40pc of world wealth'
The past five quarters have seen 40pc of the world's wealth destroyed and business leaders expect the global economic crisis can only get worse.
By Edmund Conway in Davos
Last Updated: 5:42AM GMT 29 Jan 2009
Steve Schwarzman, chairman of private equity giant Blackstone, said an "almost incomprehensible" amount of cash had evaporated since the financial crisis took hold.
"Business will be very different," he added.
His comments came on a day of the World Economic Forum characterised by the gloom of its participants and warnings that the crisis will endure for some time. News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch kicked off the meetings by warning that the atmosphere was worsening – despite global economic confidence plumbing the lowest depths on record.
"The crisis is getting worse," he said. "It's going to take drastic action to turn it around, if it can be turned around, quickly. I believe it will take a long time."
Executives participating in an economic brainstorming session said that despite the trauma caused by the economic and financial problems, another crisis at some point in the future was inevitable.
Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics and a former Bank of England policymaker said: "The outlook is pretty grim. Things are not good and business surveys are coming out showing they're getting even worse."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/davos/4374492/WEF-2009-Global-crisis-has-destroyed-40pc-of-world-wealth.html
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Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Australia faces worse crisis than America
Australia faces worse crisis than America
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business EditorLast Updated: 3:24PM BST 22 Sep 2008
Comments 51 Comment on this article
Many fear the economic party in Australia will end badly
The world's financial storm has swept through Australia and New Zealand this week amid mounting signs of contagion across the Pacific region.
Financial shares were pummelled in Sydney on Tuesday after investor flight forced National Australia Bank (NAB) to slash a £400m bond sale by two thirds. The retreat comes days after the Melbourne lender shocked the markets by announcing a 90pc write-down on its £550m holdings of US mortgage debt, an admission that it AAA-rated securities are virtually worthless. In New Zealand, Guardian Trust said it was suspending withdrawals from its mortgage fund owing to "liquidity difficulties in the market".
Global economy is at a danger point
More Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Hanover Finance - the country' third biggest operator - last week froze repayments to investors. The company said its "industry model has collapsed" as the housing market goes into a nose dive. Some 23 finance companies have gone bankrupt in New Zealand over the last year.
It is now clear that the Antipodes are tipping into a serious downturn. Australia's NAB business confidence index fell to its lowest level in seventeen years in June. New Zealand's central bank began to cut interest rates last week on fears that the economy may have contracted in the second quarter, and is now entering recession. Housing starts slumped 20pc in June to the lowest since 1986.
Gabriel Stein, from Lombard Street Research, said Australia could prove vulnerable once the global commodity cycle turns down. It has racked up a current account deficit of 6.2pc of GDP despite enjoying a coal, wheat, and metals boom, effectively spending its resources bonanza in advance. Household debt has reached 177pc of GDP, almost a world record.
"It is amazing that in the midst of the biggest commodity boom ever seen they have still been unable to get a current account surplus. They have been living beyond their means for 10 years. What worries me is that productivity growth has been very low: they have coasting after their reforms in the 1990s," he said.
Australia's Reserve Bank has had to grapple with vast inflows of Asian capital, especially Japanese money fleeing near zero rates at home. Short of imposing currency controls, it would have been almost impossible to stop the inflows.
"The easy money went straight into real estate," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.
"Australia will now have to generate 4pc of GDP to meet payments to foreign holders of its assets," he said. This is twice as high as the burden faced by the US.
Both the Australian and New Zealand dollars have fallen hard in recent days and now appear to be breaking down through key technical support against major currencies, including the US dollar. "The Aussie is going down, big time," said Mr Redeker.
The picture is darkening across the Pacific Rim. The Bank of Japan's deputy governor, Kiyohiko Nishimura, said its economy may now be falling into a "technical recession". Household income dropped 2.1pc in June compared to a year earlier and manufacturers are the gloomiest since the deflation crunch in 2003.
The decision by National Australia Bank to make drastic provisions on its US mortgage debt could have ramifications in the US itself. It opted for a 100pc write-off on a clutch of "senior strips" of collateralized debt obligations (CDO) worth £450m - even though they were all rated AAA. No US bank has admitted to such fearsome loss rates.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/2794032/Australia-faces-worse-crisis-than-America.html
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business EditorLast Updated: 3:24PM BST 22 Sep 2008
Comments 51 Comment on this article
Many fear the economic party in Australia will end badly
The world's financial storm has swept through Australia and New Zealand this week amid mounting signs of contagion across the Pacific region.
Financial shares were pummelled in Sydney on Tuesday after investor flight forced National Australia Bank (NAB) to slash a £400m bond sale by two thirds. The retreat comes days after the Melbourne lender shocked the markets by announcing a 90pc write-down on its £550m holdings of US mortgage debt, an admission that it AAA-rated securities are virtually worthless. In New Zealand, Guardian Trust said it was suspending withdrawals from its mortgage fund owing to "liquidity difficulties in the market".
Global economy is at a danger point
More Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Hanover Finance - the country' third biggest operator - last week froze repayments to investors. The company said its "industry model has collapsed" as the housing market goes into a nose dive. Some 23 finance companies have gone bankrupt in New Zealand over the last year.
It is now clear that the Antipodes are tipping into a serious downturn. Australia's NAB business confidence index fell to its lowest level in seventeen years in June. New Zealand's central bank began to cut interest rates last week on fears that the economy may have contracted in the second quarter, and is now entering recession. Housing starts slumped 20pc in June to the lowest since 1986.
Gabriel Stein, from Lombard Street Research, said Australia could prove vulnerable once the global commodity cycle turns down. It has racked up a current account deficit of 6.2pc of GDP despite enjoying a coal, wheat, and metals boom, effectively spending its resources bonanza in advance. Household debt has reached 177pc of GDP, almost a world record.
"It is amazing that in the midst of the biggest commodity boom ever seen they have still been unable to get a current account surplus. They have been living beyond their means for 10 years. What worries me is that productivity growth has been very low: they have coasting after their reforms in the 1990s," he said.
Australia's Reserve Bank has had to grapple with vast inflows of Asian capital, especially Japanese money fleeing near zero rates at home. Short of imposing currency controls, it would have been almost impossible to stop the inflows.
"The easy money went straight into real estate," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.
"Australia will now have to generate 4pc of GDP to meet payments to foreign holders of its assets," he said. This is twice as high as the burden faced by the US.
Both the Australian and New Zealand dollars have fallen hard in recent days and now appear to be breaking down through key technical support against major currencies, including the US dollar. "The Aussie is going down, big time," said Mr Redeker.
The picture is darkening across the Pacific Rim. The Bank of Japan's deputy governor, Kiyohiko Nishimura, said its economy may now be falling into a "technical recession". Household income dropped 2.1pc in June compared to a year earlier and manufacturers are the gloomiest since the deflation crunch in 2003.
The decision by National Australia Bank to make drastic provisions on its US mortgage debt could have ramifications in the US itself. It opted for a 100pc write-off on a clutch of "senior strips" of collateralized debt obligations (CDO) worth £450m - even though they were all rated AAA. No US bank has admitted to such fearsome loss rates.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/2794032/Australia-faces-worse-crisis-than-America.html
Australia steps up recession fight with new stimulus plan and interest rate cut
Australia steps up recession fight with new stimulus plan and interest rate cut
The Australian government has unveiled a second multi-billion dollar stimulus package that it hopes will lift the country out of a deepening slowdown and protect-against a full-blown recession.
By Bonnie Malkin in Sydney
Last Updated: 8:37AM GMT 03 Feb 2009
Kevin Rudd, the prime minister, announced the $42bn plan just hours before the country's central bank, citing the grimmest global outlook in many years, cut interest rates by 1 per cent to 3.25 per cent - its lowest level in 45 years.
The stimulus package, which includes $28bn for infrastructure projects and school improvements, will send the budget into the red for the first time in nearly a decade.
Mr Rudd's government is mirroring the action of most across the world as politicians increase their collective efforts to prevent what's already a deep and global downturn getting worse.
The package comes on top of one launched late last year worth A$10.4 billion ($7.4 billion) and underscores the threat to Australia's resources-based economy, which has shuddered to a near halt since the worldwide financial turmoil began.
Many analysts believe the economy will enter a recession in the next quarter and not start to show signs of recovery until the end of the year. Mass job losses are expected, especially in the vulnerable mining sector.
"The combination of expansionary monetary and fiscal policies now in place will help to cushion the Australian economy from the contractionaru forces coming from abroad, " Glenn Stevens, the Governor of Australia's central bank said in explaining the decision to lower the key interest rate to 3.25pc.
The news prompted the Australian dollar to rise against the US dolar and saw the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index clim almost 1pc to 3522.6.
Those gains were seem across Asian stock markets as news of Australia's new measures were added to by Japanese plans to buy shares held by Japanese banks. In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 was up 2.3pc on the prospect that the Bank of Japan would help Japanese banks improve the state of their balance sheets. It said it would purchase up to one trillion yen worth of stocks through April 2010.
The Australian initiatives, spread over four years, include building thousands of new houses and school rooms, and environmentally friendly measures such as providing householders with free home roof insulation. It also features cash bonuses to low and middle-income earners that the government hope will be ploughed back into the economy, rather than saved.
In a move aimed at getting Australians to spend some money, more than half Australia's population of 21 million will be eligible for A$950 ($600) tax bonuses or grants. The spending will plunge the annual budget into a A$22.5 billion ($14.2 billion) deficit — 1.9 percent of gross domestic product — for the current fiscal year ending June 30, the prime minister said.
"Nobody likes being in deficit and I don't like being in deficit at all," Mr Rudd said. "This is not a question of choice. This is what we are required to do."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/4443093/Australia-steps-up-recession-fight-with-new-stimulus-plan-and-interest-rate-cut.html
The Australian government has unveiled a second multi-billion dollar stimulus package that it hopes will lift the country out of a deepening slowdown and protect-against a full-blown recession.
By Bonnie Malkin in Sydney
Last Updated: 8:37AM GMT 03 Feb 2009
Kevin Rudd, the prime minister, announced the $42bn plan just hours before the country's central bank, citing the grimmest global outlook in many years, cut interest rates by 1 per cent to 3.25 per cent - its lowest level in 45 years.
The stimulus package, which includes $28bn for infrastructure projects and school improvements, will send the budget into the red for the first time in nearly a decade.
Mr Rudd's government is mirroring the action of most across the world as politicians increase their collective efforts to prevent what's already a deep and global downturn getting worse.
The package comes on top of one launched late last year worth A$10.4 billion ($7.4 billion) and underscores the threat to Australia's resources-based economy, which has shuddered to a near halt since the worldwide financial turmoil began.
Many analysts believe the economy will enter a recession in the next quarter and not start to show signs of recovery until the end of the year. Mass job losses are expected, especially in the vulnerable mining sector.
"The combination of expansionary monetary and fiscal policies now in place will help to cushion the Australian economy from the contractionaru forces coming from abroad, " Glenn Stevens, the Governor of Australia's central bank said in explaining the decision to lower the key interest rate to 3.25pc.
The news prompted the Australian dollar to rise against the US dolar and saw the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index clim almost 1pc to 3522.6.
Those gains were seem across Asian stock markets as news of Australia's new measures were added to by Japanese plans to buy shares held by Japanese banks. In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 was up 2.3pc on the prospect that the Bank of Japan would help Japanese banks improve the state of their balance sheets. It said it would purchase up to one trillion yen worth of stocks through April 2010.
The Australian initiatives, spread over four years, include building thousands of new houses and school rooms, and environmentally friendly measures such as providing householders with free home roof insulation. It also features cash bonuses to low and middle-income earners that the government hope will be ploughed back into the economy, rather than saved.
In a move aimed at getting Australians to spend some money, more than half Australia's population of 21 million will be eligible for A$950 ($600) tax bonuses or grants. The spending will plunge the annual budget into a A$22.5 billion ($14.2 billion) deficit — 1.9 percent of gross domestic product — for the current fiscal year ending June 30, the prime minister said.
"Nobody likes being in deficit and I don't like being in deficit at all," Mr Rudd said. "This is not a question of choice. This is what we are required to do."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/4443093/Australia-steps-up-recession-fight-with-new-stimulus-plan-and-interest-rate-cut.html
Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz
Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz
The Government should allow every distressed bank to go bankrupt and set up a fresh banking system under temporary state control rather than cripple the country by propping up a corrupt edifice, according to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Davos
Last Updated: 8:29AM GMT 02 Feb 2009
Comments 40 Comment on this article
Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz
Professor Stiglitz, the former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told The Daily Telegraph that Britain should let the banks default on their vast foreign operations and start afresh with new set of healthy banks.
"The UK has been hit hard because the banks took on enormously large liabilities in foreign currencies. Should the British taxpayers have to lower their standard of living for 20 years to pay off mistakes that benefited a small elite?" he said.
"There is an argument for letting the banks go bust. It may cause turmoil but it will be a cheaper way to deal with this in the end. The British Parliament never offered a blanket guarantee for all liabilities and derivative positions of these banks," he said.
Mr Stiglitz said the Government should underwrite all deposits to protect the UK's domestic credit system and safeguard money markets that lubricate lending. It should use the skeletons of the old banks to build a healthier structure.
"The new banks will be more credible once they no longer have these liabilities on their back."
Mr Stiglitz said the City of London would survive the shock of such a default because it would uphold the principle of free market responsibility. "Counter-parties entered into voluntary agreements with the banks and they must accept the consequences," he said.
Such a drastic course of action would be fraught with difficulties and risks, however. It would leave healthy banks in an untenable position since they would have to compete for funds in the markets with state-run entities.
Mr Stiglitz's radical proposal is a "Chapter 11" scheme for households to allow them to bring their debts under control without having to go into bankruptcy. "Families matter just as much as firms. The US government can borrow at 1pc so why can't it lend directly to poor people for mortgages at 4pc. ," he said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4424418/Let-banks-fail-says-Nobel-economist-Joseph-Stiglitz.html
The Government should allow every distressed bank to go bankrupt and set up a fresh banking system under temporary state control rather than cripple the country by propping up a corrupt edifice, according to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Davos
Last Updated: 8:29AM GMT 02 Feb 2009
Comments 40 Comment on this article
Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz
Professor Stiglitz, the former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told The Daily Telegraph that Britain should let the banks default on their vast foreign operations and start afresh with new set of healthy banks.
"The UK has been hit hard because the banks took on enormously large liabilities in foreign currencies. Should the British taxpayers have to lower their standard of living for 20 years to pay off mistakes that benefited a small elite?" he said.
"There is an argument for letting the banks go bust. It may cause turmoil but it will be a cheaper way to deal with this in the end. The British Parliament never offered a blanket guarantee for all liabilities and derivative positions of these banks," he said.
Mr Stiglitz said the Government should underwrite all deposits to protect the UK's domestic credit system and safeguard money markets that lubricate lending. It should use the skeletons of the old banks to build a healthier structure.
"The new banks will be more credible once they no longer have these liabilities on their back."
Mr Stiglitz said the City of London would survive the shock of such a default because it would uphold the principle of free market responsibility. "Counter-parties entered into voluntary agreements with the banks and they must accept the consequences," he said.
Such a drastic course of action would be fraught with difficulties and risks, however. It would leave healthy banks in an untenable position since they would have to compete for funds in the markets with state-run entities.
Mr Stiglitz's radical proposal is a "Chapter 11" scheme for households to allow them to bring their debts under control without having to go into bankruptcy. "Families matter just as much as firms. The US government can borrow at 1pc so why can't it lend directly to poor people for mortgages at 4pc. ," he said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4424418/Let-banks-fail-says-Nobel-economist-Joseph-Stiglitz.html
Monday, 2 February 2009
How she owed more than her home was worth?
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
by Laura Rowley
Posted on Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 12:00AM
Eve Pidgeon, communications director for a nonprofit credit counseling service in Michigan, says she'll never forget the day she realized she owed more than her home was worth.
"I was at work, saying, 'Can you believe I can't refinance my house?'" recalls Pidgeon, who had made timely payments on her 30-year mortgage for nine years and has a credit score over 800. "Then a [colleague] said, ‘You're upside down -- like our clients.' I thought, ‘My God -- I am?' I thought that happened to people who had $50,000 on credit cards and refinanced into adjustable-rate mortgages."
A Canadian immigrant who became a U.S. citizen, Pidgeon bought her home in 1999. Her mortgage broker said she qualified for a $240,000 loan -- on her then-salary of $33,000 per year and her husband's volatile income as a freelance photographer.
Passing Up the Big, Fabulous House
"Calculations for insurance, escrow for property taxes -- none of that was considered," recalls Pidgeon, who has two children. "Of course we wanted a big, fabulous house, but when I crunched the numbers, I thought, 'If the cost of any one thing in our [budget] goes up, we're going to be in a deficit every month.' It put a lot of pressure on my marriage because my husband said, ‘You're terrible at math; this is a professional who knows what he's doing, and we should get this house.'"Instead they bought a quaint 1918 Victorian for $135,000. Pidgeon, who eventually divorced and navigated a job layoff without ever missing a mortgage payment or accumulating high-interest credit card debt, has refinanced twice -- from 8 percent to 6.8 percent, and then again to 6.3 percent, always locking in for 30 years. She wanted to refinance again when rates slipped under 5 percent, but widespread foreclosures have depressed her home's value; comparable dwellings are selling at or below the $117,000 she still owes.
Pidgeon is emblematic of the financial insecurity afflicting millions of Americans who are being punished despite doing all the right things with their money. Hard work, steady savings, and thoughtful sacrifices haven't protected their jobs, nest eggs, or home values from an economy twisted by fraud and stupidity, coldly indifferent to responsibility and productivity.
Homeowners Underwater
By one estimate, 12 million homeowners -- one in six -- are underwater on their mortgages. In 20 major metropolitan areas, home prices dropped an average 18 percent in November compared to the year-earlier period, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Index, released earlier this week.
Unemployment rose in all 50 states in December and surpassed 10 percent in two -- Rhode Island and Pidgeon's home state of Michigan. Moreover, in the year following October 2007 -- the stock market's peak -- more than $1 trillion of stock held in 401(k)s and other defined-contribution plans evaporated, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
"The new insecurity doesn't look like the old insecurity -- grainy Dorthea Lange photos of Depression-era men and women, their weathered faces projecting despair and helplessness," writes Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker in his book ‘The Great Risk Shift'. "Those who experience it have homes, cars, families, degrees. They've usually tasted the fruits of success, if sometimes only fleetingly. They very rarely end up on the streets or in shelters. For most, insecurity is a private experience, hidden away behind closed doors, felt in quiet despair."
A Fair Question in Unfair Times
Consider a reader's comment last week following my column on the difference between optimism and magical thinking. The poster wrote that he was a computer programmer who had been employed for 25 years, worked hard, lived frugally, and was now laid off. His 401(k) had lost half its value and his home equity had declined sharply.
"Please tell me again why you believe I should be optimistic?" he wrote. "Is it that you expect folks (suckers) in my situation to get up, brush off, and once again toil to accumulate wealth that will be seized from me in one way or another?"
That's a fair question in unfair times. At the very least, we can mitigate the risks of having our hard-earned cash seized in the future by asking ourselves a series of questions:
1. Do you live within your means? How long could you live without your current income if you lost your job? Do you know exactly how much money comes in and where it goes each month? What areas of your budget could you slash immediately? What expenses can you cut back for the next year and reallocate toward a cash cushion?
2. If you consistently ratchet up your lifestyle to match rising income, can you divert half of any raise, bonus, or other increase you receive into savings instead?
3. Have you considered a strategy to obtain severance or other benefits in the event you're laid off? How up-to-date is your resume and network of contacts, and what would be the first five steps you would take to find a new position? Have you investigated your options for continuing or obtaining health insurance?
4. If you are living on two incomes, how can you shift your lifestyle and spending to rely on one for needs and the other for wants?
5. How well do your insurance policies protect you and the people you love? Have you shopped around for the lowest premiums?
6. If you carry high-interest, revolving debt, what is your plan for eliminating it, and how long will it take?
7. Do you have written goals -- short-, medium- and long-term -- for your money that reflect what you value most, with specific dollar amounts and time frames? Do you know how fast the cost of your goal is rising?
8. Do you understand how your money is invested, how much risk you're taking, and what expenses and fees you are paying? Do you understand the tax implications of your financial decisions (and your geographic choices)? If not, are you making an effort to learn about these critical areas of your portfolio?
9. Are you taking good care of your health to reduce the risk of financially devastating medical costs?10. Do you give as much energy to your family and friends as you do to your finances? (Losing your shirt is a lot more painful when you go through it alone.)
The Risks We Face
"Studies consistently suggest that we are good at some kinds of risk assessments and very bad at others," Hacker writes. "And unfortunately, the kinds of risks that we face today -- diffuse, interwoven, mounting, uncertain -- are precisely those we are most likely to overlook. Economic losses for families are often like system failures in engineering -- they cascade from seemingly small events into major crises. Yet few of us worry much about the small events that can set off the chain."
Pidgeon says she never imagined she'd be in her first home nearly a decade after she bought it, but she is focused on the positive. "If I could [refinance], I could gain a few hundred dollars in my monthly surplus and use it to stimulate the sagging local economy," she says. "But my priority was to move to the States and make the most of my education and my career, and raise a wonderful family in a safe, comfortable, and loving environment. Whether I'm paying 6.3 percent or 4.5 percent, I feel very proud that I accomplished that."
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/moneyhappy/137398;_ylt=ArMJDpteaSKgQNT6eQGJXB27YWsA
by Laura Rowley
Posted on Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 12:00AM
Eve Pidgeon, communications director for a nonprofit credit counseling service in Michigan, says she'll never forget the day she realized she owed more than her home was worth.
"I was at work, saying, 'Can you believe I can't refinance my house?'" recalls Pidgeon, who had made timely payments on her 30-year mortgage for nine years and has a credit score over 800. "Then a [colleague] said, ‘You're upside down -- like our clients.' I thought, ‘My God -- I am?' I thought that happened to people who had $50,000 on credit cards and refinanced into adjustable-rate mortgages."
A Canadian immigrant who became a U.S. citizen, Pidgeon bought her home in 1999. Her mortgage broker said she qualified for a $240,000 loan -- on her then-salary of $33,000 per year and her husband's volatile income as a freelance photographer.
Passing Up the Big, Fabulous House
"Calculations for insurance, escrow for property taxes -- none of that was considered," recalls Pidgeon, who has two children. "Of course we wanted a big, fabulous house, but when I crunched the numbers, I thought, 'If the cost of any one thing in our [budget] goes up, we're going to be in a deficit every month.' It put a lot of pressure on my marriage because my husband said, ‘You're terrible at math; this is a professional who knows what he's doing, and we should get this house.'"Instead they bought a quaint 1918 Victorian for $135,000. Pidgeon, who eventually divorced and navigated a job layoff without ever missing a mortgage payment or accumulating high-interest credit card debt, has refinanced twice -- from 8 percent to 6.8 percent, and then again to 6.3 percent, always locking in for 30 years. She wanted to refinance again when rates slipped under 5 percent, but widespread foreclosures have depressed her home's value; comparable dwellings are selling at or below the $117,000 she still owes.
Pidgeon is emblematic of the financial insecurity afflicting millions of Americans who are being punished despite doing all the right things with their money. Hard work, steady savings, and thoughtful sacrifices haven't protected their jobs, nest eggs, or home values from an economy twisted by fraud and stupidity, coldly indifferent to responsibility and productivity.
Homeowners Underwater
By one estimate, 12 million homeowners -- one in six -- are underwater on their mortgages. In 20 major metropolitan areas, home prices dropped an average 18 percent in November compared to the year-earlier period, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Index, released earlier this week.
Unemployment rose in all 50 states in December and surpassed 10 percent in two -- Rhode Island and Pidgeon's home state of Michigan. Moreover, in the year following October 2007 -- the stock market's peak -- more than $1 trillion of stock held in 401(k)s and other defined-contribution plans evaporated, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
"The new insecurity doesn't look like the old insecurity -- grainy Dorthea Lange photos of Depression-era men and women, their weathered faces projecting despair and helplessness," writes Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker in his book ‘The Great Risk Shift'. "Those who experience it have homes, cars, families, degrees. They've usually tasted the fruits of success, if sometimes only fleetingly. They very rarely end up on the streets or in shelters. For most, insecurity is a private experience, hidden away behind closed doors, felt in quiet despair."
A Fair Question in Unfair Times
Consider a reader's comment last week following my column on the difference between optimism and magical thinking. The poster wrote that he was a computer programmer who had been employed for 25 years, worked hard, lived frugally, and was now laid off. His 401(k) had lost half its value and his home equity had declined sharply.
"Please tell me again why you believe I should be optimistic?" he wrote. "Is it that you expect folks (suckers) in my situation to get up, brush off, and once again toil to accumulate wealth that will be seized from me in one way or another?"
That's a fair question in unfair times. At the very least, we can mitigate the risks of having our hard-earned cash seized in the future by asking ourselves a series of questions:
1. Do you live within your means? How long could you live without your current income if you lost your job? Do you know exactly how much money comes in and where it goes each month? What areas of your budget could you slash immediately? What expenses can you cut back for the next year and reallocate toward a cash cushion?
2. If you consistently ratchet up your lifestyle to match rising income, can you divert half of any raise, bonus, or other increase you receive into savings instead?
3. Have you considered a strategy to obtain severance or other benefits in the event you're laid off? How up-to-date is your resume and network of contacts, and what would be the first five steps you would take to find a new position? Have you investigated your options for continuing or obtaining health insurance?
4. If you are living on two incomes, how can you shift your lifestyle and spending to rely on one for needs and the other for wants?
5. How well do your insurance policies protect you and the people you love? Have you shopped around for the lowest premiums?
6. If you carry high-interest, revolving debt, what is your plan for eliminating it, and how long will it take?
7. Do you have written goals -- short-, medium- and long-term -- for your money that reflect what you value most, with specific dollar amounts and time frames? Do you know how fast the cost of your goal is rising?
8. Do you understand how your money is invested, how much risk you're taking, and what expenses and fees you are paying? Do you understand the tax implications of your financial decisions (and your geographic choices)? If not, are you making an effort to learn about these critical areas of your portfolio?
9. Are you taking good care of your health to reduce the risk of financially devastating medical costs?10. Do you give as much energy to your family and friends as you do to your finances? (Losing your shirt is a lot more painful when you go through it alone.)
The Risks We Face
"Studies consistently suggest that we are good at some kinds of risk assessments and very bad at others," Hacker writes. "And unfortunately, the kinds of risks that we face today -- diffuse, interwoven, mounting, uncertain -- are precisely those we are most likely to overlook. Economic losses for families are often like system failures in engineering -- they cascade from seemingly small events into major crises. Yet few of us worry much about the small events that can set off the chain."
Pidgeon says she never imagined she'd be in her first home nearly a decade after she bought it, but she is focused on the positive. "If I could [refinance], I could gain a few hundred dollars in my monthly surplus and use it to stimulate the sagging local economy," she says. "But my priority was to move to the States and make the most of my education and my career, and raise a wonderful family in a safe, comfortable, and loving environment. Whether I'm paying 6.3 percent or 4.5 percent, I feel very proud that I accomplished that."
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/moneyhappy/137398;_ylt=ArMJDpteaSKgQNT6eQGJXB27YWsA
How Wall Street Continues To Doom Itself
How Wall Street Continues To Doom Itself
Rick Newman
Friday January 30, 2009, 12:29 pm EST
We've arrived at an ah-ha moment.
Virtually everybody who butters their own bread is outraged that Wall Street, which is becoming a de facto government agency thanks to billions in bailout money, found $18.4 billion in bonuses for bankers who nearly wrecked the world's financial system in 2008. President Obama's criticism - "shameful" - is mild compared to what many of us think.
The bankers are bellyaching about a 44 percent decline in bonuses from 2007 levels. That's like complaining about being served a 40-ounce porterhouse instead of a 70-ounce one.
[See why "Wall Street talent" is an oxymoron.]
Here's a bit more perspective: Charles Payne, CEO of the research firm Wall Street Strategies, points out that in 1985, Wall Street bonuses totaled $1.9 billion. The average recipient got $13,970. Since 1985, inflation has run 97 percent in total, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means that something worth $1 in 1985 would be worth $1.97 today. So follow the math:
Wall Street bonus pool in 1985: $1.9 billion
Value in 2008, if indexed for inflation: $3.75 billion
Actual 2008 bonus pool: $18.4 billion
Amount by which bonus pool exceeded inflation: 490 percent
Average Wall Street bonus, 1985: $13,970
Value in 2008, if indexed for inflation: $27,580
Actual average bonus, 2008: $112,000
Amount by which average bonus exceeded inflation: 406 percent
So pay for top Wall Streeters has risen 4 to 5 times as much as the rate of inflation since 1985. Of course those bankers are worth it, because of all the great things they've done for America during that time, like engineer the Long-Term Capital Management meltdown in 1998, the tech bubble that burst in 2001, the housing bubble that's still bursting, a credit freeze that's producing hypothermia at hundreds of real companies that actually make stuff, and the near collapse of the financial markets.
[See why it was a good move to let Lehman Brothers fail.]
If there's a crowning absurdity, it's that Wall Street mustered any bonuses at all in a year when the industry lost $34 billion. Does anybody else in America get a bonus when their company tanks? "Rewarding cataclysmic failure like this has to be what led to the fall of the Roman Empire," Payne wrote in a recent note to clients.
It's worth pointing out that not all Wall Street firms are as wayward as big offenders like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and Bank of America. Many made money in 2008, and any firm that isn't asking for taxpayer handouts should be allowed to pay its people whatever it wants.
[See five pieces missing from Obama's stimulus plan.]
But the bonus brouhaha reveals so many disconnects in the financial industry that it could end up being a pivotal moment in the dismantling of the old Wall Street. Derivatives and "funding facilities" are hard for most people to understand. But gimme gimme gimme is a corruption we all understand. If the politicians didn't have a clear rallying cry for going after Wall Street before, they sure do now.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/How-Wall-Street-Continues-To-usnews-14209399.html
Rick Newman
Friday January 30, 2009, 12:29 pm EST
We've arrived at an ah-ha moment.
Virtually everybody who butters their own bread is outraged that Wall Street, which is becoming a de facto government agency thanks to billions in bailout money, found $18.4 billion in bonuses for bankers who nearly wrecked the world's financial system in 2008. President Obama's criticism - "shameful" - is mild compared to what many of us think.
The bankers are bellyaching about a 44 percent decline in bonuses from 2007 levels. That's like complaining about being served a 40-ounce porterhouse instead of a 70-ounce one.
[See why "Wall Street talent" is an oxymoron.]
Here's a bit more perspective: Charles Payne, CEO of the research firm Wall Street Strategies, points out that in 1985, Wall Street bonuses totaled $1.9 billion. The average recipient got $13,970. Since 1985, inflation has run 97 percent in total, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means that something worth $1 in 1985 would be worth $1.97 today. So follow the math:
Wall Street bonus pool in 1985: $1.9 billion
Value in 2008, if indexed for inflation: $3.75 billion
Actual 2008 bonus pool: $18.4 billion
Amount by which bonus pool exceeded inflation: 490 percent
Average Wall Street bonus, 1985: $13,970
Value in 2008, if indexed for inflation: $27,580
Actual average bonus, 2008: $112,000
Amount by which average bonus exceeded inflation: 406 percent
So pay for top Wall Streeters has risen 4 to 5 times as much as the rate of inflation since 1985. Of course those bankers are worth it, because of all the great things they've done for America during that time, like engineer the Long-Term Capital Management meltdown in 1998, the tech bubble that burst in 2001, the housing bubble that's still bursting, a credit freeze that's producing hypothermia at hundreds of real companies that actually make stuff, and the near collapse of the financial markets.
[See why it was a good move to let Lehman Brothers fail.]
If there's a crowning absurdity, it's that Wall Street mustered any bonuses at all in a year when the industry lost $34 billion. Does anybody else in America get a bonus when their company tanks? "Rewarding cataclysmic failure like this has to be what led to the fall of the Roman Empire," Payne wrote in a recent note to clients.
It's worth pointing out that not all Wall Street firms are as wayward as big offenders like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and Bank of America. Many made money in 2008, and any firm that isn't asking for taxpayer handouts should be allowed to pay its people whatever it wants.
[See five pieces missing from Obama's stimulus plan.]
But the bonus brouhaha reveals so many disconnects in the financial industry that it could end up being a pivotal moment in the dismantling of the old Wall Street. Derivatives and "funding facilities" are hard for most people to understand. But gimme gimme gimme is a corruption we all understand. If the politicians didn't have a clear rallying cry for going after Wall Street before, they sure do now.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/How-Wall-Street-Continues-To-usnews-14209399.html
Intervening to prop up pound is 'recipe for failure', says Brown
Intervening to prop up pound is 'recipe for failure', says Brown
PM expected to admit today that he should have been tougher with 'freewheeling bankers'
By Sean O'Grady, Jane Merrick and Brian BradySunday, 1 February 2009
'We do not target our exchange rate': Gordon Brown at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday
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Gordon Brown has indicated that he will not intervene to prevent the pound sinking still further against the dollar, the euro and other major currencies.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Prime Minister suggested that the fate of sterling was a matter for the markets alone: "We do not target our exchange rate." That, he added, would be a "recipe for failure", as it had been when governments tried to "shadow the Deutschmark" and joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Mr Brown's comments seem certain to push sterling lower, and may see it hit parity with the euro.
At the same time, Caroline Flint, the Europe minister, appeared to rule out British entry into the single currency, even in the long term. She told The Independent on Sunday: "We are prepared to look at the issues around the euro. This doesn't mean, in principle, that we think we have a journey to the euro. It's about whether it would work for the British economy." Her remarks appeared to be at odds with the position of the Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, who he said this month that joining the euro remained a long-term policy objective.
Mr Brown will today take some responsibility for failing to get tough with freewheeling banks when he was Chancellor – but he will stop short of a full apology for his role in the recession. "We're toughening up the regulatory system," he will tell BBC1's Politics Show, a move No 10 hopes will tackle claims that he refuses to accept any blame for Britain's plight. "That is an acceptance that it wasn't strong enough to meet what was, effectively... a global financial freezing up."
Market fears centre on the scale of the Government's debts now being piled up, and the possibility that the Treasury will have to take on trillions of pounds-worth of liabilities if the banking system continues to falter. Many liabilities are in foreign currency and large in relation to the UK's GDP, prompting comparison with Iceland, which in effect went bust because of its overextended banks. Economist Willem Buiter has joked about London becoming "Reykjavik-on-Thames".
There are also worries about the state of the economy, and the accumulating bad debts that will accumulate as the UK enters its worst recession in 60 years. The IMF last week forecast that the British economy would shrink by 2.8 per cent in 2009, its worst showing since the Second World War, although Bank of England and Treasury officials seem relaxed about the decline of the pound, in the hope this will boost exports, although there is little evidence of that so far.
Showing considerable irritation about remarks from international investors such as Jim Rogers, who have sold sterling and declared the UK "finished", the Prime Minister said: "We are not going to build our policies around self-interested speculators."
Mr Rogers said recently that he has sold all his sterling assets. And on Tuesday, the billionaire investor George Soros, who "broke the Bank of England" during the 1992 ERM crisis, said he too had been selling, sterling over the past 12 months: "Sterling did fall from around $2 to about $1.40 and at that level the risk-reward balance is no longer compelling. I'm not saying it won't fall any more though – it will continue to fluctuate." Against a basket of currencies, the pound has lost about a third of its value in a year.
There are also concerns in some European circles that the British Government is using the hefty depreciation in the pound against the euro as a sort of stealth protectionism. Mr Brown and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel have warned in Davos about the "retreat to protectionism".
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/intervening-to-prop-up-pound-is-recipe-for-failure-says-brown-1522528.html
PM expected to admit today that he should have been tougher with 'freewheeling bankers'
By Sean O'Grady, Jane Merrick and Brian BradySunday, 1 February 2009
'We do not target our exchange rate': Gordon Brown at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday
Related Articles
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John Rentoul: We all throw a tantrum once in a while
Hamish McRae: The recovery will be slow, difficult and unlike any we've known before
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Union urges Government to take utilities away from private equity and hedge funds
So hip, it hurts. Can Puma leave the recession for dead?
An army of altruists: VSO boosted by record rise in recruits
It's an ill wind... UK tourism finds recession is so bracing!
Margareta Pagano: Obama is the one to lead us out of this mess
Lenders cite squeeze on savers as they seek to limit mortgage cuts
Price falls open the door for first-time buyers
Editor-At-Large: Look who's worst off in recession – women, of course
Gordon Brown has indicated that he will not intervene to prevent the pound sinking still further against the dollar, the euro and other major currencies.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Prime Minister suggested that the fate of sterling was a matter for the markets alone: "We do not target our exchange rate." That, he added, would be a "recipe for failure", as it had been when governments tried to "shadow the Deutschmark" and joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Mr Brown's comments seem certain to push sterling lower, and may see it hit parity with the euro.
At the same time, Caroline Flint, the Europe minister, appeared to rule out British entry into the single currency, even in the long term. She told The Independent on Sunday: "We are prepared to look at the issues around the euro. This doesn't mean, in principle, that we think we have a journey to the euro. It's about whether it would work for the British economy." Her remarks appeared to be at odds with the position of the Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, who he said this month that joining the euro remained a long-term policy objective.
Mr Brown will today take some responsibility for failing to get tough with freewheeling banks when he was Chancellor – but he will stop short of a full apology for his role in the recession. "We're toughening up the regulatory system," he will tell BBC1's Politics Show, a move No 10 hopes will tackle claims that he refuses to accept any blame for Britain's plight. "That is an acceptance that it wasn't strong enough to meet what was, effectively... a global financial freezing up."
Market fears centre on the scale of the Government's debts now being piled up, and the possibility that the Treasury will have to take on trillions of pounds-worth of liabilities if the banking system continues to falter. Many liabilities are in foreign currency and large in relation to the UK's GDP, prompting comparison with Iceland, which in effect went bust because of its overextended banks. Economist Willem Buiter has joked about London becoming "Reykjavik-on-Thames".
There are also worries about the state of the economy, and the accumulating bad debts that will accumulate as the UK enters its worst recession in 60 years. The IMF last week forecast that the British economy would shrink by 2.8 per cent in 2009, its worst showing since the Second World War, although Bank of England and Treasury officials seem relaxed about the decline of the pound, in the hope this will boost exports, although there is little evidence of that so far.
Showing considerable irritation about remarks from international investors such as Jim Rogers, who have sold sterling and declared the UK "finished", the Prime Minister said: "We are not going to build our policies around self-interested speculators."
Mr Rogers said recently that he has sold all his sterling assets. And on Tuesday, the billionaire investor George Soros, who "broke the Bank of England" during the 1992 ERM crisis, said he too had been selling, sterling over the past 12 months: "Sterling did fall from around $2 to about $1.40 and at that level the risk-reward balance is no longer compelling. I'm not saying it won't fall any more though – it will continue to fluctuate." Against a basket of currencies, the pound has lost about a third of its value in a year.
There are also concerns in some European circles that the British Government is using the hefty depreciation in the pound against the euro as a sort of stealth protectionism. Mr Brown and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel have warned in Davos about the "retreat to protectionism".
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/intervening-to-prop-up-pound-is-recipe-for-failure-says-brown-1522528.html
Rio in talks with Chinalco over £10bn cash injection
Rio in talks with Chinalco over £10bn cash injection
$40bn debt forces miner to consider link-up with China's state-owned giant
By Nick ClarkMonday, 2 February 2009
Rio Tinto is preparing for further talks with China's state-owned mining giant Chinalco over a potential £10bn cash injection to ease its mountain of debts.
FTSE 100-listed Rio, which admitted for the first time last week that it could consider a rights issue, has held negotiations over a potential investment from the Chinese in recent weeks. The group hopes that a deal could be announced as early as its full-year results next week as the latest step in its programme to reduce debts of $40bn. The group has pledged to cut that by $10bn this year.
It is understood that the talks have gone beyond preliminary negotiations, but nothing has been finalised. Details are unclear, but beyond lifting its existing stake, Chinalco could be issued with a convertible bond by Rio. Chinalco could also be interested in taking on some of its mines or take minority positions in some of its more valuable assets.
Rio declined to comment yesterday.
Chinalco has enjoyed a close relationship with Rio since it bought an 11 per cent stake in the group in a dawn raid last February, and it was thought to be keen to up its stake. Rio's boss, Tom Albanese, is interested in teaming up with the Chinese over iron ore projects, and there was talk of the two companies developing infrastructure in Australia last year.
The group is trying to raise funds to cope with its debts. Rio is the most highly leveraged of the mining giants on the London Stock Exchange's blue-chip index. The brunt of the debt was brought on with the $38bn acquisition of the US aluminium group Alcan at the top of the market in 2007. It has to refinance $9bn of debt in October.
Rio launched its planned asset fire sale last week as it offloaded two mines to Brazilian rival Vale in a deal worth $1.6bn. It announced on Friday that it had agreed to sell its Potasio Rio Colorado project in Argentina, and the Corumba iron mine in Brazil. Yet the group has struggled to raise enough interest for its assets as credit remains scarce and potential sellers have failed to come up with adequate offers. Insiders have said it is even willing to listen to bids for its 30 per cent stake in Escondida, the world's largest copper mine.
As well as the sale of "non-core" assets, the company is looking to bolster its savings with a dramatic cost-cutting plan and curb on spending. It intends to cut 14,000 jobs and reduce capital expenditure by $5bn next year.
On Wednesday, for the first time, the group announced it could raise money from shareholders. "In order to preserve maximum flexibility for the group, the boards do not rule out the potential to issue equity as one of the options it has available," it said.
The sector has been hit by the falling demand for commodities, especially from China. Rio's share price had been buoyed in the wake of a hostile takeover attempt by BHP Billiton in 2007, which would have been one of the biggest deals in corporate history. The $58bn merger collapsed in November when BHP walked away, blaming the worsening economic conditions and the fall in commodity prices. The shares plunged and are 76 per cent off their peak in May.
Rival Xstrata announced it would turn to shareholders to raise $5.9bn in a heavily discounted rights issue, to pay down its debts and buy a coal mine. Xstrata has $16.3bn of debt, but it does not need refinancing until 2011.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/rio-in-talks-with-chinalco-over-16310bn-cash-injection-1523111.html
$40bn debt forces miner to consider link-up with China's state-owned giant
By Nick ClarkMonday, 2 February 2009
Rio Tinto is preparing for further talks with China's state-owned mining giant Chinalco over a potential £10bn cash injection to ease its mountain of debts.
FTSE 100-listed Rio, which admitted for the first time last week that it could consider a rights issue, has held negotiations over a potential investment from the Chinese in recent weeks. The group hopes that a deal could be announced as early as its full-year results next week as the latest step in its programme to reduce debts of $40bn. The group has pledged to cut that by $10bn this year.
It is understood that the talks have gone beyond preliminary negotiations, but nothing has been finalised. Details are unclear, but beyond lifting its existing stake, Chinalco could be issued with a convertible bond by Rio. Chinalco could also be interested in taking on some of its mines or take minority positions in some of its more valuable assets.
Rio declined to comment yesterday.
Chinalco has enjoyed a close relationship with Rio since it bought an 11 per cent stake in the group in a dawn raid last February, and it was thought to be keen to up its stake. Rio's boss, Tom Albanese, is interested in teaming up with the Chinese over iron ore projects, and there was talk of the two companies developing infrastructure in Australia last year.
The group is trying to raise funds to cope with its debts. Rio is the most highly leveraged of the mining giants on the London Stock Exchange's blue-chip index. The brunt of the debt was brought on with the $38bn acquisition of the US aluminium group Alcan at the top of the market in 2007. It has to refinance $9bn of debt in October.
Rio launched its planned asset fire sale last week as it offloaded two mines to Brazilian rival Vale in a deal worth $1.6bn. It announced on Friday that it had agreed to sell its Potasio Rio Colorado project in Argentina, and the Corumba iron mine in Brazil. Yet the group has struggled to raise enough interest for its assets as credit remains scarce and potential sellers have failed to come up with adequate offers. Insiders have said it is even willing to listen to bids for its 30 per cent stake in Escondida, the world's largest copper mine.
As well as the sale of "non-core" assets, the company is looking to bolster its savings with a dramatic cost-cutting plan and curb on spending. It intends to cut 14,000 jobs and reduce capital expenditure by $5bn next year.
On Wednesday, for the first time, the group announced it could raise money from shareholders. "In order to preserve maximum flexibility for the group, the boards do not rule out the potential to issue equity as one of the options it has available," it said.
The sector has been hit by the falling demand for commodities, especially from China. Rio's share price had been buoyed in the wake of a hostile takeover attempt by BHP Billiton in 2007, which would have been one of the biggest deals in corporate history. The $58bn merger collapsed in November when BHP walked away, blaming the worsening economic conditions and the fall in commodity prices. The shares plunged and are 76 per cent off their peak in May.
Rival Xstrata announced it would turn to shareholders to raise $5.9bn in a heavily discounted rights issue, to pay down its debts and buy a coal mine. Xstrata has $16.3bn of debt, but it does not need refinancing until 2011.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/rio-in-talks-with-chinalco-over-16310bn-cash-injection-1523111.html
House prices 'could fall 40 per cent without loan boost'
House prices 'could fall 40 per cent without loan boost'
By Sean Farrell, Financial EditorMonday, 2 February 2009
House prices could drop by a total of 40 per cent unless the Government steps in to boost lending, a report says today. The extreme scenario painted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) would see prices plunge by a record 25 per cent this year after last year's 16 per cent slide.
If the Government's banking bailout is able to boost mortgage approvals to 50,000 a month from the current level of about 32,000, the price fall from peak to trough could be limited to 32 per cent with values bottoming out in the first quarter of 2010, CEBR said. But without effective intervention to increase lending, the total fall would be 40 per cent with prices stagnating until 2012 and not getting above 2003 levels until the following year.
As part of a range of measures to get banks lending again, the Government intends to guarantee mortgage-backed securities to restart the market for securitisation – packaging up of loans for sale to investors. Securitisation provided £200bn of finance for banks in 2007 before the market was paralysed by fears stemming from the sub-prime crisis in the US.
The plan was recommended by Sir James Crosby, the former chief executive of HBOS, who predicted in November that, without action, net lending for house purchases could fall below zero as fewer loans are made than are paid off. Bank of England figures on Friday showed a rise in mortgage approvals to 31,000 in December from 27,000 a month earlier. The surprise increase followed data from the Royal Institution of Chartered surveyors that showed new buyer enquiries beginning to rise.
Halifax, the country's biggest mortgage lender, has pointed out that prices for first-time buyers are now more affordable than for years but potential buyers remain wary of further falls while banks are limiting their lending as bad debts rise.
Benjamin Williamson, an economist at CEBR, said: "The glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for the beleaguered housing market is that prices and interest rates are now at levels whereby any improvement in lending is likely to lead to substantially increased activity and at the very least a bottoming out in house prices. However, if lending remains close to current very low levels, the spectre of the biggest annual drop in UK GDP since post-war demobilisation in 2009, with concomitant rises in unemployment and collapsing confidence, will likely lead to an acceleration in house price falls."
CEBR said that the crisis in the housing market lay at the heart of the credit crunch and that direct intervention to shore up the supply of mortgages would stimulate activity. The research unit added that a recovering housing market might play a part in a broader boost to consumer confidence that would help revive the economy.
Interesting? Click here to explore further
http://www.independent.co.uk/money/mortgages/house-prices-could-fall-40-per-cent-without-loan-boost-1523110.html
By Sean Farrell, Financial EditorMonday, 2 February 2009
House prices could drop by a total of 40 per cent unless the Government steps in to boost lending, a report says today. The extreme scenario painted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) would see prices plunge by a record 25 per cent this year after last year's 16 per cent slide.
If the Government's banking bailout is able to boost mortgage approvals to 50,000 a month from the current level of about 32,000, the price fall from peak to trough could be limited to 32 per cent with values bottoming out in the first quarter of 2010, CEBR said. But without effective intervention to increase lending, the total fall would be 40 per cent with prices stagnating until 2012 and not getting above 2003 levels until the following year.
As part of a range of measures to get banks lending again, the Government intends to guarantee mortgage-backed securities to restart the market for securitisation – packaging up of loans for sale to investors. Securitisation provided £200bn of finance for banks in 2007 before the market was paralysed by fears stemming from the sub-prime crisis in the US.
The plan was recommended by Sir James Crosby, the former chief executive of HBOS, who predicted in November that, without action, net lending for house purchases could fall below zero as fewer loans are made than are paid off. Bank of England figures on Friday showed a rise in mortgage approvals to 31,000 in December from 27,000 a month earlier. The surprise increase followed data from the Royal Institution of Chartered surveyors that showed new buyer enquiries beginning to rise.
Halifax, the country's biggest mortgage lender, has pointed out that prices for first-time buyers are now more affordable than for years but potential buyers remain wary of further falls while banks are limiting their lending as bad debts rise.
Benjamin Williamson, an economist at CEBR, said: "The glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for the beleaguered housing market is that prices and interest rates are now at levels whereby any improvement in lending is likely to lead to substantially increased activity and at the very least a bottoming out in house prices. However, if lending remains close to current very low levels, the spectre of the biggest annual drop in UK GDP since post-war demobilisation in 2009, with concomitant rises in unemployment and collapsing confidence, will likely lead to an acceleration in house price falls."
CEBR said that the crisis in the housing market lay at the heart of the credit crunch and that direct intervention to shore up the supply of mortgages would stimulate activity. The research unit added that a recovering housing market might play a part in a broader boost to consumer confidence that would help revive the economy.
Interesting? Click here to explore further
http://www.independent.co.uk/money/mortgages/house-prices-could-fall-40-per-cent-without-loan-boost-1523110.html
Russia and China Blame Crisis on Debt Binge
Russia and China Blame Crisis on Debt Binge
Topics:Stock Market Banking European Central Bank Credit Economy (U.S.) Economy (Global)
By: Reuters 29 Jan 2009 02:20 AM ET
China and Russia blamed debt-fueled consumption on Wednesday for massive financial collapse and called for global cooperation to repair the world economy.
"The existing financial system has failed," Putin told business and political leaders holding their annual World Economic Forum in this Swiss ski resort.
Growth was based on greed where one center printed money without respite and consumed wealth, and another manufactured cheap goods and saved money, he said.
His clear swipe at the United States was echoed by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who said the bad macroeconomic policies and unsustainable growth models of some countries "characterized by prolonged low savings and high consumption" were primary reasons for the crisis.
Wen also blamed the "blind pursuit of profit."
Despite the criticism of Western policies, both China and Russia pledged their support for open markets, refuted protectionism and called for the Group of 20 major economies to work swiftly toward a global regulatory system that would put world markets and financial institutions on a safer footing.
Certainly government solutions are in the driver's seat at meetings of business leaders and politicians in the Swiss mountain resort, a reversal from the usual gathering where Wall Street tycoons rule.
European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet joined the call for profound reforms to drag the economy back to health and said the G20, whose leaders hold a summit in April, was doing "good work" on policies.
"Everybody can see the present system is too fragile, and we have to reintroduce an element of resilience ... and we need to do that without any consideration of any kind of vested interest," he told Reuters Television.
Grim Mood
Crisis-hit bankers are thin on the ground at the meeting, and the few who did express concerns that governments would stretch too far on the regulatory front and stifle growth got scant hearing. They were promptly reminded that governments are bailing many of them out.
The mood among business people was grim. The International Monetary Fund forecast the world economy would slow to a near standstill this year, warning that deflation risks were rising.
A poll by PricewaterhouseCoopers of more than 1,100 CEOs found that just 21 percent of CEOs said they were very confident of growing revenue in the next 12 months, down from 50 percent a year ago.
Most business leaders said they expected no more than a slow and gradual recovery over the next three years.
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Current DateTime: 02:00:32 02 Feb 2009LinksList Documentid: 28901357
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"There are no silver bullets. My sense is 18 to 24 months of a very tough economic environment," Maria Ramos, chief executive of Transnet, South Africa's rail and logistics company, told Reuters.
Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley's Asia chairman, agreed it would be "a long slog" over the next three years.
"Forty percent of the world's wealth was destroyed in the last five quarters. It is an almost incomprehensible number," said Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the leading private equity company Blackstone Group. "Business will be very different."
Currency Row
Before Wen's speech, a row intensified over Beijing's exchange rate policy after new U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner branded China a currency manipulator last week, using a term the previous administration avoided for years.
A Chinese diplomat said Washington had enough evidence to know China does not manipulate its exchange rate.
"I don't think it's fair all of a sudden to change the position of the U.S. government," the diplomat said in London, one of the European capitals Wen will visit after Davos.
Wen did not address the row directly in his speech, although his comment on the low savings rate was an indirect reminder that China is financing the United States.
Slideshow: Who's Who in Davos
He expects China to post 8 percent growth this year -- not much different from 2008 but down from 13 percent in 2007. The China slowdown coupled with recession in the major developed economies has pushed the global economy into severe recession.
That grim scenario has left sovereign fund Dubai International Capital wary of making big long-term investments even though it sees asset prices at reasonable levels.
"We're still very nervous about making some big bets -- we see the financial crisis getting worse. There's not going to be a magic wand solution to the problem," Chief Executive Sameer al-Ansari told Reuters.
Copyright 2009 Reuters.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28901277
Topics:Stock Market Banking European Central Bank Credit Economy (U.S.) Economy (Global)
By: Reuters 29 Jan 2009 02:20 AM ET
China and Russia blamed debt-fueled consumption on Wednesday for massive financial collapse and called for global cooperation to repair the world economy.
"The existing financial system has failed," Putin told business and political leaders holding their annual World Economic Forum in this Swiss ski resort.
Growth was based on greed where one center printed money without respite and consumed wealth, and another manufactured cheap goods and saved money, he said.
His clear swipe at the United States was echoed by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who said the bad macroeconomic policies and unsustainable growth models of some countries "characterized by prolonged low savings and high consumption" were primary reasons for the crisis.
Wen also blamed the "blind pursuit of profit."
Despite the criticism of Western policies, both China and Russia pledged their support for open markets, refuted protectionism and called for the Group of 20 major economies to work swiftly toward a global regulatory system that would put world markets and financial institutions on a safer footing.
Certainly government solutions are in the driver's seat at meetings of business leaders and politicians in the Swiss mountain resort, a reversal from the usual gathering where Wall Street tycoons rule.
European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet joined the call for profound reforms to drag the economy back to health and said the G20, whose leaders hold a summit in April, was doing "good work" on policies.
"Everybody can see the present system is too fragile, and we have to reintroduce an element of resilience ... and we need to do that without any consideration of any kind of vested interest," he told Reuters Television.
Grim Mood
Crisis-hit bankers are thin on the ground at the meeting, and the few who did express concerns that governments would stretch too far on the regulatory front and stifle growth got scant hearing. They were promptly reminded that governments are bailing many of them out.
The mood among business people was grim. The International Monetary Fund forecast the world economy would slow to a near standstill this year, warning that deflation risks were rising.
A poll by PricewaterhouseCoopers of more than 1,100 CEOs found that just 21 percent of CEOs said they were very confident of growing revenue in the next 12 months, down from 50 percent a year ago.
Most business leaders said they expected no more than a slow and gradual recovery over the next three years.
RELATED LINKS
Current DateTime: 02:00:32 02 Feb 2009LinksList Documentid: 28901357
Stocks Could Drop 20%, No Safe Haven: Dr. Doom
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Putin calls financial crisis a 'perfect storm'
"There are no silver bullets. My sense is 18 to 24 months of a very tough economic environment," Maria Ramos, chief executive of Transnet, South Africa's rail and logistics company, told Reuters.
Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley's Asia chairman, agreed it would be "a long slog" over the next three years.
"Forty percent of the world's wealth was destroyed in the last five quarters. It is an almost incomprehensible number," said Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the leading private equity company Blackstone Group. "Business will be very different."
Currency Row
Before Wen's speech, a row intensified over Beijing's exchange rate policy after new U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner branded China a currency manipulator last week, using a term the previous administration avoided for years.
A Chinese diplomat said Washington had enough evidence to know China does not manipulate its exchange rate.
"I don't think it's fair all of a sudden to change the position of the U.S. government," the diplomat said in London, one of the European capitals Wen will visit after Davos.
Wen did not address the row directly in his speech, although his comment on the low savings rate was an indirect reminder that China is financing the United States.
Slideshow: Who's Who in Davos
He expects China to post 8 percent growth this year -- not much different from 2008 but down from 13 percent in 2007. The China slowdown coupled with recession in the major developed economies has pushed the global economy into severe recession.
That grim scenario has left sovereign fund Dubai International Capital wary of making big long-term investments even though it sees asset prices at reasonable levels.
"We're still very nervous about making some big bets -- we see the financial crisis getting worse. There's not going to be a magic wand solution to the problem," Chief Executive Sameer al-Ansari told Reuters.
Copyright 2009 Reuters.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28901277
Australian House Prices Fall, More Rate Cuts Coming
Australian House Prices Fall, More Rate Cuts Coming
Topics:Banking Interest Rates Inflation Economy (Global) Australia & New Zealand
Sectors:Banks
By: Reuters 01 Feb 2009 11:58 PM ET
Australian house prices fell last year as tightening credit conditions and a sharp downturn in the economy put paid to the double-digit growth enjoyed in 2007, dealing a further blow to household wealth and pointing towards more rate cuts.
Government data out on Monday showed prices of established houses fell 3.3 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2007, when they were running hot at 14.0 percent.
The drop in wealth, already undermined by sliding equity and pension values, only added to expectations of another big cut in interest rates when the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) holds its monthly policy meeting on Tuesday.
Investors are pricing in a cut of 100 basis points in the key cash rate to a record low of 3.25 percent, bringing its easing since September to a massive 4 percentage points.
"The news has been so dismal that they almost have to cut by 100 basis points, and an even bigger move can't be ruled out," said Michael Workman, a senior economist at Commonwealth Bank. "That won't be the end either," he added. "The market's already pricing in rates under 2 percent."
The Australian government is also expected to announce a second package of fiscal stimulus measures, perhaps as soon as this week, in an attempt to limit any rise in unemployment.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Monday told a news conference the government would "move heaven and earth" to support the economy even as the global recession blew a hole in its tax take.
Warning of a return to budget deficits after years of plenty, Rudd said tax revenues over the next four years were expected to be lower by a staggering A$115 billion ($73 billion). That is equivalent to over a third of annual tax revenues, or 10 percent of gross domestic product.
RELATED LINKS
Current DateTime: 01:43:09 02 Feb 2009LinksList Documentid: 28967073
Obama to Unveil CEO Pay Plan
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Banks Sought Foreign Workers As System Crashed
More Asia Pacific News
"But this government will leave no stone unturned when it comes to taking all necessary measures to continue to support growth and jobs," he said.
The depth of the trouble was illustrated by a monthly survey of 200 manufacturers, which showed activity contracted for the eighth straight month in January.
The Australian Industry Group/PriceWaterhouseCoopers Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI) edged up a seasonally adjusted 2.9 points to 36.6, but remained far below the 50 threshold separating growth from contraction.
Relatively Resilient
The steep cuts in interest rates seemed to be offering some support to house prices as the pace of decline slowed on a quarter-to-quarter basis.
Prices dipped a smaller-than-expected 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter, compared to the third quarter when they sank 2.4 percent.
In any case, the annual losses of 3.3 percent in Australia are relatively modest compared to declines of 15 to 20 percent suffered in the United States and Britain.
More From CNBC.com
Wall Street Looks To Stimulus After Bad January
South Korea Suffers Record Fall in Exports
Wen Sees Signs of Chinese Economy Reviving
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More Asia Pacific News
This was partly thanks to still high levels of skilled migration and a rising population. There are also far fewer unsold homes in Australia, which had never gone though the huge building boom that left so much stock in the United States.
Monetary policy was having more of an impact as the main variable mortgage in Australia is benchmarked off the central bank's cash rate, unlike in the U.S. where the most popular fixed rate mortgages are tied to Treasury yields.
Rory Robertson, interest rate strategist at Macquarie, noted that the headline variable mortgage rate had fallen to around 6.85 percent, from 9.6 percent before the central bank began easing.
"Big RBA-driven mortgage rate reductions obviously have provided major support for local home prices through recent global gloom and doom," he said.
Should the central bank cut as expected on Tuesday, the mortgage rate could drop to 6.0 percent or less, near its lowest since 1970.
"House prices will come under further pressure as unemployment trends higher," Robertson added. "But mortgage rates will continue to be reduced to new generational lows, providing great support to most homebuyers."
Copyright 2009 Reuters.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28971613
Topics:Banking Interest Rates Inflation Economy (Global) Australia & New Zealand
Sectors:Banks
By: Reuters 01 Feb 2009 11:58 PM ET
Australian house prices fell last year as tightening credit conditions and a sharp downturn in the economy put paid to the double-digit growth enjoyed in 2007, dealing a further blow to household wealth and pointing towards more rate cuts.
Government data out on Monday showed prices of established houses fell 3.3 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2007, when they were running hot at 14.0 percent.
The drop in wealth, already undermined by sliding equity and pension values, only added to expectations of another big cut in interest rates when the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) holds its monthly policy meeting on Tuesday.
Investors are pricing in a cut of 100 basis points in the key cash rate to a record low of 3.25 percent, bringing its easing since September to a massive 4 percentage points.
"The news has been so dismal that they almost have to cut by 100 basis points, and an even bigger move can't be ruled out," said Michael Workman, a senior economist at Commonwealth Bank. "That won't be the end either," he added. "The market's already pricing in rates under 2 percent."
The Australian government is also expected to announce a second package of fiscal stimulus measures, perhaps as soon as this week, in an attempt to limit any rise in unemployment.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Monday told a news conference the government would "move heaven and earth" to support the economy even as the global recession blew a hole in its tax take.
Warning of a return to budget deficits after years of plenty, Rudd said tax revenues over the next four years were expected to be lower by a staggering A$115 billion ($73 billion). That is equivalent to over a third of annual tax revenues, or 10 percent of gross domestic product.
RELATED LINKS
Current DateTime: 01:43:09 02 Feb 2009LinksList Documentid: 28967073
Obama to Unveil CEO Pay Plan
US Bailout Talks Go Beyond 'Bad Bank'
Wall Street Looks To Stimulus After Bad January
Banks Sought Foreign Workers As System Crashed
More Asia Pacific News
"But this government will leave no stone unturned when it comes to taking all necessary measures to continue to support growth and jobs," he said.
The depth of the trouble was illustrated by a monthly survey of 200 manufacturers, which showed activity contracted for the eighth straight month in January.
The Australian Industry Group/PriceWaterhouseCoopers Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI) edged up a seasonally adjusted 2.9 points to 36.6, but remained far below the 50 threshold separating growth from contraction.
Relatively Resilient
The steep cuts in interest rates seemed to be offering some support to house prices as the pace of decline slowed on a quarter-to-quarter basis.
Prices dipped a smaller-than-expected 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter, compared to the third quarter when they sank 2.4 percent.
In any case, the annual losses of 3.3 percent in Australia are relatively modest compared to declines of 15 to 20 percent suffered in the United States and Britain.
More From CNBC.com
Wall Street Looks To Stimulus After Bad January
South Korea Suffers Record Fall in Exports
Wen Sees Signs of Chinese Economy Reviving
Rio Tinto Is Talking with Chinalco, No Deal Yet
More Asia Pacific News
This was partly thanks to still high levels of skilled migration and a rising population. There are also far fewer unsold homes in Australia, which had never gone though the huge building boom that left so much stock in the United States.
Monetary policy was having more of an impact as the main variable mortgage in Australia is benchmarked off the central bank's cash rate, unlike in the U.S. where the most popular fixed rate mortgages are tied to Treasury yields.
Rory Robertson, interest rate strategist at Macquarie, noted that the headline variable mortgage rate had fallen to around 6.85 percent, from 9.6 percent before the central bank began easing.
"Big RBA-driven mortgage rate reductions obviously have provided major support for local home prices through recent global gloom and doom," he said.
Should the central bank cut as expected on Tuesday, the mortgage rate could drop to 6.0 percent or less, near its lowest since 1970.
"House prices will come under further pressure as unemployment trends higher," Robertson added. "But mortgage rates will continue to be reduced to new generational lows, providing great support to most homebuyers."
Copyright 2009 Reuters.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28971613
All Big US Banks Must Go to Fix Crisis: Economist
All Big US Banks Must Go to Fix Crisis: Economist
By: Kim Khan 30 Jan 2009 12:55 PM ET
The creation of a government bad bank to buy toxic assets is necessary, but then the government will need to take control of and restructure major banks to fix the system, one economist at the World Economic Forum in Davos told CNBC.com.
"They have to do a bad bank," Harvard Economics Professor Ken Rogoff said. But "if that's all they do then it's idiotic."
Institutions like Citi and Bank of America will have to go, boards will have to be fired and equity stakeholders will be wiped out, Rogoff said.
The plan could mirror the one Sweden implemented, where all troubled banks were nationalized, their balance sheets were cleaned up and the good parts of the businesses were sold to the private sector.
That solution was "much cleaner," he said.
Sweden’s banks were effectively bankrupt in the early 1990s, but the government pulled off a rapid recovery that actually helped taxpayers make money in the long run.
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Current DateTime: 01:40:34 02 Feb 2009LinksList Documentid: 28928698
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The government placed banks with troubled assets into a so-called bad bank, where they could be held and then sold when market and economic conditions improved.
In the meantime, it used taxpayer money to provide enough capital to allow banks to resume normal lending, but wiped shareholders out in the process.
Officials from the Obama administration are holding around the clock meetings with senior Wall Street executives on how to create a new government bank to buy bad assets from major financial firms.
However, people with direct knowledge of the talks tell CNBC there is no consensus on how such an entity would work or whether a plan could materialize any time soon or possibly ever.
Jobs Won't Come Back this Year
Looking to the overall economy, it unlikely the job market will improve this year, Rogoff told CNBC.
"I'm afraid unemployment is going to keep rising until at least 2010," he said.
The US is in "a very deep financial recession" and in those situations unemployment rises for almost five years, he added.
US housing and jobless claims data on Thursday showed there was no end in sight for the gloomy economy, while Japan's industrial outlook plunged by a record pace in December, contributing to the bleak picture of the world slowdown.
Baccardax: Bad Banks Are Good ... Aren't They?
© 2009 CNBC.com
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28928650?__source=yahoorelatedstorytext&par=yahoo
By: Kim Khan 30 Jan 2009 12:55 PM ET
The creation of a government bad bank to buy toxic assets is necessary, but then the government will need to take control of and restructure major banks to fix the system, one economist at the World Economic Forum in Davos told CNBC.com.
"They have to do a bad bank," Harvard Economics Professor Ken Rogoff said. But "if that's all they do then it's idiotic."
Institutions like Citi and Bank of America will have to go, boards will have to be fired and equity stakeholders will be wiped out, Rogoff said.
The plan could mirror the one Sweden implemented, where all troubled banks were nationalized, their balance sheets were cleaned up and the good parts of the businesses were sold to the private sector.
That solution was "much cleaner," he said.
Sweden’s banks were effectively bankrupt in the early 1990s, but the government pulled off a rapid recovery that actually helped taxpayers make money in the long run.
RELATED LINKS
Current DateTime: 01:40:34 02 Feb 2009LinksList Documentid: 28928698
Time to Can Bonus System?
Bonuses Hard to Recover
Obama's First 100 Days
Dimon: JPMorgan Has "Plenty of Capital"
The government placed banks with troubled assets into a so-called bad bank, where they could be held and then sold when market and economic conditions improved.
In the meantime, it used taxpayer money to provide enough capital to allow banks to resume normal lending, but wiped shareholders out in the process.
Officials from the Obama administration are holding around the clock meetings with senior Wall Street executives on how to create a new government bank to buy bad assets from major financial firms.
However, people with direct knowledge of the talks tell CNBC there is no consensus on how such an entity would work or whether a plan could materialize any time soon or possibly ever.
Jobs Won't Come Back this Year
Looking to the overall economy, it unlikely the job market will improve this year, Rogoff told CNBC.
"I'm afraid unemployment is going to keep rising until at least 2010," he said.
The US is in "a very deep financial recession" and in those situations unemployment rises for almost five years, he added.
US housing and jobless claims data on Thursday showed there was no end in sight for the gloomy economy, while Japan's industrial outlook plunged by a record pace in December, contributing to the bleak picture of the world slowdown.
Baccardax: Bad Banks Are Good ... Aren't They?
© 2009 CNBC.com
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28928650?__source=yahoorelatedstorytext&par=yahoo
The Market's Latest Victim: 'Buy-And-Hold' Strategy
The Market's Latest Victim: 'Buy-And-Hold' Strategy
Friday January 30, 2009, 1:25 pm EST
As traditional market signposts lose their relevance, so does the traditional "buy-and-hold" strategy that investors have followed for decades.
Market pros in increasing numbers are eschewing the usual investing strategies and watching technical levels as their guides for making money. They examine temporary market tops and bottoms as guidelines when to sell and buy, and are in many cases utilizing funds rather than individual stocks to make their plays.
Earnings and economic data have proven unreliable to gauge the long-term prospects for the market, which has become a trader's battlefield. Money that once stayed put for three to five years can now get moved in three to five days or sooner.
"What's happening is people have learned that if you don't take a profit it goes away," says Kathy Boyle, president of Chapin Hill Advisors in New York. "Even somebody who's really biased towards buy-and-hold is giving up."
The phenomenon has been on display markedly since earnings season kicked into gear this month.
More than half the company's in the Standard & Poor's 500 have beaten earnings expectations, yet the stock index has dropped nearly 7 percent.
The economic data, meanwhile, have been close to expectations.
Friday's report on fourth-quarter GDP was actually better than what Wall Street predicted-though at a 3.7 percent drop, the numbers were hardly encouraging.
But investors seem to be ignoring the data.
Instead, they've turned towards more of a trader's mentality, pushing the Dow back up when it approaches 8,000 and the S&P when it falls near 800. It's a trend that bucks the traditional long-term horizon most investors are supposed to take, but for many it's working.
"The idea of saying valuations are historically low so we're just going to buy and hold, that comes at great peril over the next year or two," says Lee Schultheis, founder and chief investment strategist at AIP Funds in Harrison, N.Y. "But also being overly bearish might also come at peril if the government's able to get ahead of the curve on the liquidity-credit issue. Once that gets solved equities will have the opportunity to advance."
Indeed, Boyle has moved nimbly in and out of positions in exchange-traded funds--these days mostly those with a bullish look on the market. She expects a run higher for the market to last into mid-February, when stocks will move lower and Boyle will quit or reverse her positions.
Dealing with the market's intense moodiness is all part of the job these days.
"People get hopeful and say, 'oh good,' and pile in, or they get depressed and they hit the support level," Boyle says. "It certainly makes for an interesting day every day."
A Better Mood-For Now
Even as the market was surrendering the gains it saw earlier in the week, there was plenty of enthusiasm for the market to go higher.
Ben Lichtenstein, a long-time bear who had been warning through much of 2008 about the pressures facing the market, reiterated on CNBC that he thinks stocks are in for a nice gain, with the S&P 500 flirting with the mid-900s if it breaks through 880.
"Everybody expected the worst to happen and it's slowly starting to fade out a little bit," he said. "I think the energy's only to the upside right now." See full comments in video.
Lichtenstein, of Tradersaudio.com, could be expected to follow technical levels.
But those with a traditional investors' horizon of 18 months and beyond are following suit, moving through positions in a way that would be discouraged in a normal market.
Some advisors are disturbed at the trend.
"If the time frame is 18 months to two years I'm very bullish. If the time frame is this afternoon your guess is as good as mine, but unfortunately that seems to be what people are looking at," says Randy Carver, president of Carver Financial Services/Raymond James in Mentor, Ohio. "I think the public is just kind of beat down, at the point of capitulation. People are just resigned to the fact that it's bad."
Some Companies Take a Hit
One case in point for the strange logic in trading is Caterpillar.
The Dow component and construction manufacturing behemoth would seem well poised for a good year considering President Obama's stress on infrastructure programs in his stimulus plan that the House recently passed.
Yet Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT - News) shares have been under intense pressure, dropping about 9 percent this week, as it announced 22,000 layoffs and
Goldman Sachs added the company to its conviction sell list
. Under other circumstances, such a stock might be considered a solid long-term hold, but with all the uncertainty in the economy it's being sold off aggressively.
"Everybody's afraid to trust the fundamentals. Everybody's afraid of what these numbers are going to mean," Boyle says. "You have this continued slew of layoffs as the earnings come out. Everybody's getting used to lowered expectations but at the same time they're throwing in 'we're laying off another 20,000 people.' That hurts the economy."
For protection against the whipsaw turns in the market while capitalizing on a long-term bullish philosophy, Carver is playing a battery of ETFs that follow individual sector movements as well as gains in the broad market.
He likes several of those in the iShares family: the S&P 500 Index (NYSEArca:IVV - News), the Russell Midcap Index (NYSEArca:IWR - News) and the S&P SmallCap 600 Index (NYSEArca:IJR - News), and outside that group, the Vanguard Total Stock Market (NYSEArca:VTI - News), which essentially is a play on everything, even Over The Counter companies not listed on the major exchanges.
Such enthusiasm isn't universal, with a level of caution also prevalent that accompanies technical trading.
With all of the obstacles facing the market, regaining investor confidence will be critical before buy-and-hold positions become popular again.
"You need that confidence, that psychology to be restored," Schultheis says. "We need to know government's ahead of the curve, that they're not playing whack-a-mole, that we can now act and spend in a more normal fashion because we have a more reasonable expectation of what we see coming down the road. Then and only then will there be an opportunity for a sustained advance in equities."
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/The-Markets-Latest-Victim-cnbc-14210150.html
Friday January 30, 2009, 1:25 pm EST
As traditional market signposts lose their relevance, so does the traditional "buy-and-hold" strategy that investors have followed for decades.
Market pros in increasing numbers are eschewing the usual investing strategies and watching technical levels as their guides for making money. They examine temporary market tops and bottoms as guidelines when to sell and buy, and are in many cases utilizing funds rather than individual stocks to make their plays.
Earnings and economic data have proven unreliable to gauge the long-term prospects for the market, which has become a trader's battlefield. Money that once stayed put for three to five years can now get moved in three to five days or sooner.
"What's happening is people have learned that if you don't take a profit it goes away," says Kathy Boyle, president of Chapin Hill Advisors in New York. "Even somebody who's really biased towards buy-and-hold is giving up."
The phenomenon has been on display markedly since earnings season kicked into gear this month.
More than half the company's in the Standard & Poor's 500 have beaten earnings expectations, yet the stock index has dropped nearly 7 percent.
The economic data, meanwhile, have been close to expectations.
Friday's report on fourth-quarter GDP was actually better than what Wall Street predicted-though at a 3.7 percent drop, the numbers were hardly encouraging.
But investors seem to be ignoring the data.
Instead, they've turned towards more of a trader's mentality, pushing the Dow back up when it approaches 8,000 and the S&P when it falls near 800. It's a trend that bucks the traditional long-term horizon most investors are supposed to take, but for many it's working.
"The idea of saying valuations are historically low so we're just going to buy and hold, that comes at great peril over the next year or two," says Lee Schultheis, founder and chief investment strategist at AIP Funds in Harrison, N.Y. "But also being overly bearish might also come at peril if the government's able to get ahead of the curve on the liquidity-credit issue. Once that gets solved equities will have the opportunity to advance."
Indeed, Boyle has moved nimbly in and out of positions in exchange-traded funds--these days mostly those with a bullish look on the market. She expects a run higher for the market to last into mid-February, when stocks will move lower and Boyle will quit or reverse her positions.
Dealing with the market's intense moodiness is all part of the job these days.
"People get hopeful and say, 'oh good,' and pile in, or they get depressed and they hit the support level," Boyle says. "It certainly makes for an interesting day every day."
A Better Mood-For Now
Even as the market was surrendering the gains it saw earlier in the week, there was plenty of enthusiasm for the market to go higher.
Ben Lichtenstein, a long-time bear who had been warning through much of 2008 about the pressures facing the market, reiterated on CNBC that he thinks stocks are in for a nice gain, with the S&P 500 flirting with the mid-900s if it breaks through 880.
"Everybody expected the worst to happen and it's slowly starting to fade out a little bit," he said. "I think the energy's only to the upside right now." See full comments in video.
Lichtenstein, of Tradersaudio.com, could be expected to follow technical levels.
But those with a traditional investors' horizon of 18 months and beyond are following suit, moving through positions in a way that would be discouraged in a normal market.
Some advisors are disturbed at the trend.
"If the time frame is 18 months to two years I'm very bullish. If the time frame is this afternoon your guess is as good as mine, but unfortunately that seems to be what people are looking at," says Randy Carver, president of Carver Financial Services/Raymond James in Mentor, Ohio. "I think the public is just kind of beat down, at the point of capitulation. People are just resigned to the fact that it's bad."
Some Companies Take a Hit
One case in point for the strange logic in trading is Caterpillar.
The Dow component and construction manufacturing behemoth would seem well poised for a good year considering President Obama's stress on infrastructure programs in his stimulus plan that the House recently passed.
Yet Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT - News) shares have been under intense pressure, dropping about 9 percent this week, as it announced 22,000 layoffs and
Goldman Sachs added the company to its conviction sell list
. Under other circumstances, such a stock might be considered a solid long-term hold, but with all the uncertainty in the economy it's being sold off aggressively.
"Everybody's afraid to trust the fundamentals. Everybody's afraid of what these numbers are going to mean," Boyle says. "You have this continued slew of layoffs as the earnings come out. Everybody's getting used to lowered expectations but at the same time they're throwing in 'we're laying off another 20,000 people.' That hurts the economy."
For protection against the whipsaw turns in the market while capitalizing on a long-term bullish philosophy, Carver is playing a battery of ETFs that follow individual sector movements as well as gains in the broad market.
He likes several of those in the iShares family: the S&P 500 Index (NYSEArca:IVV - News), the Russell Midcap Index (NYSEArca:IWR - News) and the S&P SmallCap 600 Index (NYSEArca:IJR - News), and outside that group, the Vanguard Total Stock Market (NYSEArca:VTI - News), which essentially is a play on everything, even Over The Counter companies not listed on the major exchanges.
Such enthusiasm isn't universal, with a level of caution also prevalent that accompanies technical trading.
With all of the obstacles facing the market, regaining investor confidence will be critical before buy-and-hold positions become popular again.
"You need that confidence, that psychology to be restored," Schultheis says. "We need to know government's ahead of the curve, that they're not playing whack-a-mole, that we can now act and spend in a more normal fashion because we have a more reasonable expectation of what we see coming down the road. Then and only then will there be an opportunity for a sustained advance in equities."
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/The-Markets-Latest-Victim-cnbc-14210150.html
Saturday, 24 January 2009
Having A Plan: The Basis Of Success
Having A Plan: The Basis Of Success
by Chad Langager (Contact Author Biography)
"To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework." Warren E. Buffett (Preface to "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham)
Any veteran market player will tell you, it's vital to have a plan of attack. Formulating the plan is not particularly difficult, but sticking to it, especially when all other indicators seem to be against you, can be. This article will show why a plan is crucial, including what can happen without one, what to consider when formulating one as well as the investment vehicle options that best suit you and your needs.
The Benefits
As the "Sage of Omaha" says, if you can grit your teeth and stay the course regardless of popular opinion, prevailing trends or analysts' forecasts, and focus on the long-term goals and objectives of your investment plan, you will create the best circumstances for realizing solid growth for your investments.
Maintain Focus
By their very nature, financial markets are volatile. Throughout the last century, they have seen many ups and downs, caused by inflation, interest rates, new technologies, recessions and business cycles. In the late 1990s, a great bull market pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) up 300% from the start of the decade. This was a period of low interest rates and inflation and increased usage of computers - all of these fueled economic growth. The period between 2000 and 2002, on the other hand, saw the DJIA drop 38%. It began with the bursting of the internet bubble, which saw a massive sell-off in tech stocks and kept indexes depressed until mid-2001, during which there was a flurry of corporate accounting scandals as well as the September 11th attacks, all contributing to weak market sentiment.
Amid such a fragile and shaky environment, it's crucial for you to keep your emotions in check and stick to your investment plan. By doing so, you maintain a long-term focus and thus assume a more objective view of current price fluctuations. If an investor had let their emotions be their guide near the end of 2002 and sold off all their positions, they'd have missed a 44% rise in the Dow from late-2002 to mid-2005.
Sidestepping the Three Deadly Sins
The three deadly sins in investing play off three major emotions: fear, hope and greed.
Fear has to do with selling too low - when prices plunge, you get alarmed and sell without re-evaluating your position. In such times, it is better to review whether your original reasons (i.e. sound company fundamentals) for investing in the security have changed. The market is fickle and, based on a piece of news or a short-term focus, it can irrationally oversell a stock so its price falls well below its intrinsic value. Selling when the price is low, which causes it to be undervalued, is a bad choice in the long run because the price may recover.
The second emotion is hope, which, if it is your only motivator, can spur you to buy stock based on its price appreciation in the past. Buying on the hope that what has happened in the past will happen in the future is precisely what occurred with internet plays in the late '90s - people bought nearly any tech stock, regardless of its fundamentals. It is important that you look less at the past return and more into the company's fundamentals to evaluate the investment's worth. Basing your investment decisions purely on hope may leave you with an overvalued stock, with which there is a higher chance of loss than gain.
The third emotion is greed. If you are under its influence, you may hold onto a position for too long, hoping for a few extra points. By holding out for that extra point or two, you could end up turning a large gain into a loss. During the internet boom investors who were already achieving double-digit gains held on to their positions hoping the price would inch up a few more points instead of scaling back the investment. Then when prices began to tank, many investors didn't budge and held out in the hopes that their stock would rally. Instead, their once large gains turned into significant losses.
An investment plan that includes both buying and selling criteria helps to manage these three deadly sins of investing. (For further reading, see When Fear And Greed Take Over, The Madness of Crowds and How Investors Often Cause The Market's Problems.)
The Key Components
Determine Your Objectives
The first step in formulating a plan is to figure out what your investment objective is.
Without a goal in mind, it is hard to create an investment strategy that will get you somewhere. Investment objectives often fall into three main categories: safety, income and growth. Safety objectives focus on maintaining the current value of a portfolio. This type of strategy would best fit an investor who cannot tolerate any loss of principal and should avoid the risks inherent in stocks and some of the less secure fixed-income investments.
If the goal is to provide a steady income stream, then your objective would fall into the income category. This is often for investors who are living in retirement and relying on a stream of income. These investors have less need for capital appreciation and tend to be adverse to stock market risks.
Growth objectives focus on increasing the portfolio's value over a long-term time horizon. This type of investment strategy is for relatively younger investors who are focused on capital appreciation. It's important to take into account your age, your investment time frame and how far you are from your investment goal. Objectives should be realistic, taking into account your tolerance for risk.
Risk Tolerance
Most people want to grow their portfolio to increase wealth. But there remains one major consideration - risk. How much, or how little, of it can you take? If you are unable to stomach the constant volatility of the market, your objective is likely to be safety or income focused. However, if you are willing to take on volatile stocks then a growth objective may suit you. Taking on more risk means you are increasing your chances of realizing a loss on investments, as well as creating the opportunity of greater profits. However, it is important to remember that volatile investments don't always make investors money. The risk component of a plan is very important and requires you to be completely honest with yourself about how much potential loss you are willing to take. (For further reading, see Determining Risk And The Risk Pyramid and our tutorial on Risk and Diversification.)
Asset Allocation
Once you know your objectives and risk tolerance, you can start to determine the allocation of the assets in your portfolio. Asset allocation is the dividing up of different types of assets in a portfolio to match the investor's goals and risk tolerance. An example of an asset allocation for a growth-oriented investor could be 20% in bonds 70% in stocks and 10% in cash equivalents.
It is important that your asset allocation is an extension of your objectives and risk tolerance. Safety objectives should comprise the safest fixed-income assets available like money market securities, government bonds and high-quality corporate securities with the highest debt ratings. Income portfolios should focus on safe fixed-income securities, including bonds with lower ratings, which provide higher yields, preferred shares and high-quality dividend-paying stocks. Growth portfolios should have a large focus on common stock, mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It is important to continually review your objectives and risk tolerance and to adjust your portfolio accordingly.
The importance of asset allocation in formulating a plan is that it provides you with guidelines for diversifying your portfolio, allowing you to work towards your objectives with a level of risk that is comfortable for you. (For further reading, see The Importance of Diversification and The Dangers of Over-Diversification, as well as Five Things To Know About Asset Allocation and Asset Allocation Strategies.)
The Choices
Once you formulate a strategy, you need to decide on what types of investments to buy as well as what proportion of each to include in your portfolio. For example if you are growth oriented, you might pick stocks, mutual funds or ETFs that have the potential to outperform the market. If your goal is wealth protection or income generation, you might buy government bonds or invest in bond funds that are professionally managed.
If you want to choose your own stocks it is vital to institute trading rules for both entering and exiting positions. These rules will depend on your plan objectives and investment strategy. One stock trading rule - regardless of your approach - is to use stop-loss orders as protection from downward price movements. While the exact price at which you set your order is your own choice, the general rule of thumb is 10% below the purchase price for long-term investments and 3-5% for shorter-term plays. Here's a reason to use stops to cut your losses: if your investment plummets 50%, it needs to increase 100% to break even again. (For further reading, see Ten Steps To A Winning Trading Plan.)
You may also consider professionally managed products like mutual funds, which give you access to the expertise of professional money managers. If your aim is to increase the value of a portfolio through mutual funds, look for growth funds that focus on capital appreciation. If you're income-orientated, you'll want to choose funds with dividend-paying stocks or bond funds that provide regular income. Again, it is important to ensure that the allocation and risk structure of the fund is aligned with your desired asset mix and risk tolerance.
Other investment choices are index funds and ETFs. The growing popularity of these two passively managed products is largely due to their low fees and tax efficiencies; both have significantly lower management expenses than actively managed funds. These low-cost, well-diversified investments are baskets of stocks that represent an index, a sector or country, and are an excellent way to implement your asset allocation plan.
Summary
An investment plan is one of the most vital parts for reaching your goals - it acts as a guide and offers a degree of protection. Whether you want to be a player in the market or build a nest egg, it's crucial to build a plan and adhere to it. By sticking to those defined rules, you'll be more likely to avoid emotional decisions that can derail your portfolio, and keep a calm, cool and objective view even in the most trying of times.
However, if all of the above seems like too tall an order, you might want to engage the services of an investment advisor, who will help you create and stick to a plan that will meet your investment objectives and risk tolerance.
by Chad Langager, (Contact Author Biography)
Chad Langager is the Senior Financial Editor for Investopedia.com. Chad graduated from the University of Alberta Business School with a degree in finance.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/05/061005.asp?partner=WBW
by Chad Langager (Contact Author Biography)
"To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework." Warren E. Buffett (Preface to "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham)
Any veteran market player will tell you, it's vital to have a plan of attack. Formulating the plan is not particularly difficult, but sticking to it, especially when all other indicators seem to be against you, can be. This article will show why a plan is crucial, including what can happen without one, what to consider when formulating one as well as the investment vehicle options that best suit you and your needs.
The Benefits
As the "Sage of Omaha" says, if you can grit your teeth and stay the course regardless of popular opinion, prevailing trends or analysts' forecasts, and focus on the long-term goals and objectives of your investment plan, you will create the best circumstances for realizing solid growth for your investments.
Maintain Focus
By their very nature, financial markets are volatile. Throughout the last century, they have seen many ups and downs, caused by inflation, interest rates, new technologies, recessions and business cycles. In the late 1990s, a great bull market pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) up 300% from the start of the decade. This was a period of low interest rates and inflation and increased usage of computers - all of these fueled economic growth. The period between 2000 and 2002, on the other hand, saw the DJIA drop 38%. It began with the bursting of the internet bubble, which saw a massive sell-off in tech stocks and kept indexes depressed until mid-2001, during which there was a flurry of corporate accounting scandals as well as the September 11th attacks, all contributing to weak market sentiment.
Amid such a fragile and shaky environment, it's crucial for you to keep your emotions in check and stick to your investment plan. By doing so, you maintain a long-term focus and thus assume a more objective view of current price fluctuations. If an investor had let their emotions be their guide near the end of 2002 and sold off all their positions, they'd have missed a 44% rise in the Dow from late-2002 to mid-2005.
Sidestepping the Three Deadly Sins
The three deadly sins in investing play off three major emotions: fear, hope and greed.
Fear has to do with selling too low - when prices plunge, you get alarmed and sell without re-evaluating your position. In such times, it is better to review whether your original reasons (i.e. sound company fundamentals) for investing in the security have changed. The market is fickle and, based on a piece of news or a short-term focus, it can irrationally oversell a stock so its price falls well below its intrinsic value. Selling when the price is low, which causes it to be undervalued, is a bad choice in the long run because the price may recover.
The second emotion is hope, which, if it is your only motivator, can spur you to buy stock based on its price appreciation in the past. Buying on the hope that what has happened in the past will happen in the future is precisely what occurred with internet plays in the late '90s - people bought nearly any tech stock, regardless of its fundamentals. It is important that you look less at the past return and more into the company's fundamentals to evaluate the investment's worth. Basing your investment decisions purely on hope may leave you with an overvalued stock, with which there is a higher chance of loss than gain.
The third emotion is greed. If you are under its influence, you may hold onto a position for too long, hoping for a few extra points. By holding out for that extra point or two, you could end up turning a large gain into a loss. During the internet boom investors who were already achieving double-digit gains held on to their positions hoping the price would inch up a few more points instead of scaling back the investment. Then when prices began to tank, many investors didn't budge and held out in the hopes that their stock would rally. Instead, their once large gains turned into significant losses.
An investment plan that includes both buying and selling criteria helps to manage these three deadly sins of investing. (For further reading, see When Fear And Greed Take Over, The Madness of Crowds and How Investors Often Cause The Market's Problems.)
The Key Components
Determine Your Objectives
The first step in formulating a plan is to figure out what your investment objective is.
Without a goal in mind, it is hard to create an investment strategy that will get you somewhere. Investment objectives often fall into three main categories: safety, income and growth. Safety objectives focus on maintaining the current value of a portfolio. This type of strategy would best fit an investor who cannot tolerate any loss of principal and should avoid the risks inherent in stocks and some of the less secure fixed-income investments.
If the goal is to provide a steady income stream, then your objective would fall into the income category. This is often for investors who are living in retirement and relying on a stream of income. These investors have less need for capital appreciation and tend to be adverse to stock market risks.
Growth objectives focus on increasing the portfolio's value over a long-term time horizon. This type of investment strategy is for relatively younger investors who are focused on capital appreciation. It's important to take into account your age, your investment time frame and how far you are from your investment goal. Objectives should be realistic, taking into account your tolerance for risk.
Risk Tolerance
Most people want to grow their portfolio to increase wealth. But there remains one major consideration - risk. How much, or how little, of it can you take? If you are unable to stomach the constant volatility of the market, your objective is likely to be safety or income focused. However, if you are willing to take on volatile stocks then a growth objective may suit you. Taking on more risk means you are increasing your chances of realizing a loss on investments, as well as creating the opportunity of greater profits. However, it is important to remember that volatile investments don't always make investors money. The risk component of a plan is very important and requires you to be completely honest with yourself about how much potential loss you are willing to take. (For further reading, see Determining Risk And The Risk Pyramid and our tutorial on Risk and Diversification.)
Asset Allocation
Once you know your objectives and risk tolerance, you can start to determine the allocation of the assets in your portfolio. Asset allocation is the dividing up of different types of assets in a portfolio to match the investor's goals and risk tolerance. An example of an asset allocation for a growth-oriented investor could be 20% in bonds 70% in stocks and 10% in cash equivalents.
It is important that your asset allocation is an extension of your objectives and risk tolerance. Safety objectives should comprise the safest fixed-income assets available like money market securities, government bonds and high-quality corporate securities with the highest debt ratings. Income portfolios should focus on safe fixed-income securities, including bonds with lower ratings, which provide higher yields, preferred shares and high-quality dividend-paying stocks. Growth portfolios should have a large focus on common stock, mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It is important to continually review your objectives and risk tolerance and to adjust your portfolio accordingly.
The importance of asset allocation in formulating a plan is that it provides you with guidelines for diversifying your portfolio, allowing you to work towards your objectives with a level of risk that is comfortable for you. (For further reading, see The Importance of Diversification and The Dangers of Over-Diversification, as well as Five Things To Know About Asset Allocation and Asset Allocation Strategies.)
The Choices
Once you formulate a strategy, you need to decide on what types of investments to buy as well as what proportion of each to include in your portfolio. For example if you are growth oriented, you might pick stocks, mutual funds or ETFs that have the potential to outperform the market. If your goal is wealth protection or income generation, you might buy government bonds or invest in bond funds that are professionally managed.
If you want to choose your own stocks it is vital to institute trading rules for both entering and exiting positions. These rules will depend on your plan objectives and investment strategy. One stock trading rule - regardless of your approach - is to use stop-loss orders as protection from downward price movements. While the exact price at which you set your order is your own choice, the general rule of thumb is 10% below the purchase price for long-term investments and 3-5% for shorter-term plays. Here's a reason to use stops to cut your losses: if your investment plummets 50%, it needs to increase 100% to break even again. (For further reading, see Ten Steps To A Winning Trading Plan.)
You may also consider professionally managed products like mutual funds, which give you access to the expertise of professional money managers. If your aim is to increase the value of a portfolio through mutual funds, look for growth funds that focus on capital appreciation. If you're income-orientated, you'll want to choose funds with dividend-paying stocks or bond funds that provide regular income. Again, it is important to ensure that the allocation and risk structure of the fund is aligned with your desired asset mix and risk tolerance.
Other investment choices are index funds and ETFs. The growing popularity of these two passively managed products is largely due to their low fees and tax efficiencies; both have significantly lower management expenses than actively managed funds. These low-cost, well-diversified investments are baskets of stocks that represent an index, a sector or country, and are an excellent way to implement your asset allocation plan.
Summary
An investment plan is one of the most vital parts for reaching your goals - it acts as a guide and offers a degree of protection. Whether you want to be a player in the market or build a nest egg, it's crucial to build a plan and adhere to it. By sticking to those defined rules, you'll be more likely to avoid emotional decisions that can derail your portfolio, and keep a calm, cool and objective view even in the most trying of times.
However, if all of the above seems like too tall an order, you might want to engage the services of an investment advisor, who will help you create and stick to a plan that will meet your investment objectives and risk tolerance.
by Chad Langager, (Contact Author Biography)
Chad Langager is the Senior Financial Editor for Investopedia.com. Chad graduated from the University of Alberta Business School with a degree in finance.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/05/061005.asp?partner=WBW
Financial crisis: just how big is Britain's toxic debt?
Financial crisis: just how big is Britain's toxic debt?
An army of accountants is combing through the books, trying to establish just how much the toxic assets of the bailed-out banks are actually worth. At stake, says the Government, is the future of Britain's economy.
By Gordon Rayner
Last Updated: 7:27PM GMT 23 Jan 2009
Toxic asset: Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS has seen his reputation collapse Photo: REUTERS
Toxic asset: Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS has seen his reputation collapse Photo: REUTERS
Before he was unceremoniously fired as chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin often said that he had turned the 280-year-old institution into "a sausage machine".
RBS, like other banks, was buying and selling pre-packaged parcels of debt, which started out as mortgages and loans but were put through a corporate mincer and wrapped into packages containing small pieces of hundreds, if not thousands, of loans. Rather like sausages, no one could be entirely sure what was in them – but as long as they paid a decent rate of interest and the bonuses kept flowing, no one cared.
As we all now know, those parcels had been bulked up with sub-prime loans, which became effectively worthless "toxic assets" when the US housing market crashed.
Confirmation yesterday that the bankers' avarice has officially plunged Britain into recession added to the growing bewilderment as to exactly why we are on the hook for almost £1 trillion in bail-outs and guarantees.
No one even knows exactly how many of these toxic assets British banks are holding, and how much more it might cost the taxpayer to get out of this unholy mess – which is why an army of accountants is about to begin the daunting, if not downright impossible, task of tracking down and putting a value on all the debts of all the banks in which the taxpayer has taken a stake.
In effect, to borrow Sir Fred's analogy, the Government-appointed debt hunters will be carrying out the accounting equivalent of dissecting all of those sausages and turning the constituent parts back into pigs. It will be a laborious, thankless task which is likely to take at least six months. But according to the Government, nothing less than the future of Britain's economy depends on it.
The reason all the rescue packages have failed is that no one has yet calculated the full extent of these toxic assets – and nothing spooks the City so much as uncertainty. Lord Myners, the minister organising the hunt, says his sleuths will have to deal with "well over a billion items of individual data for each bank".
The desperate need for some hard and fast facts was underlined on Monday, when the value of banking shares collapsed, despite the announcement of a raft of new measures. Gordon Brown is said to have been taken aback by the City's panicked reaction to RBS's announcement of a £28 billion loss, the largest in British corporate history.
Experts say the losses reveal the markets' fear of more bad news to come. Despite the Government pledging £954 billion so far – or £31,800 per taxpayer – some analysts believe another £200 billion in insurance may be needed to protect the banks fully against future losses. But no one is willing to predict that it won't be more, just as no one can be sure that our children, or even our grandchildren, won't still be paying off the debts the nation is accruing, as this economic black hole swallows a seemingly limitless amount of our money.
In other words, until the number-crunching is done, there is no prospect of an end to the crisis. "The problem is that we don't really know just where these bad assets are, and the banks are not going to 'fess up," explains Peter Spencer, professor of economics at York University. "As things stand, it is a near-bottomless pit, and no one knows how smelly the stuff at the bottom is."
The Prime Minister is pinning his hopes on the Asset Protection Scheme, announced this week, which will assess the exact extent of the toxic assets (currently estimated at £200-350 billion). The theory goes that once the banks know the worst-case scenario, and are insured against it by the taxpayer, they will be able to start lending again.
But the Government-appointed investigators, drawn mainly from Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, will be entering uncharted waters when they set up shop in the offices of banks such as RBS. Few people on the planet understand the complexities of such opaque instruments as collateralised debt obligations (the technical term for those minced-up sausages of debt, of which £2 trillion were traded in 2006, £188 billion of it in the UK). In some cases they were dreamed up by real-life rocket scientists, poached by Wall Street from Nasa's labs in California.
Until as recently as 2000, British banks lent only as much money as they held on deposit. But the availability of cheap financing on the money markets enabled banks such as Northern Rock to lend up to seven times the amount in their coffers.
Rather than holding on to people's mortgages, the banks packaged them up with other loans and sold them on to investors, who could repackage and sell them on again and again. Unpicking these bundles of debt may involve tracking down and valuing the assets on which they are based – such as houses or commercial properties, or even part-shares of them.
Nor will the vastly complex, and vastly expensive, hunt be confined to Britain. To pick just one example, RBS acquired 26 other companies during Sir Fred's eight-year reign, leaving it with £250 billion of foreign loans in the more than 50 countries where it has offices. These include Vietnam, Columbia, Uzbekistan and Pakistan, where RBS is the second-largest foreign bank – there are even seven branches in Kazakhstan, all of which are now 70 per cent owned by the British taxpayer.
Many of those loans will be sound, but the investigators must sniff out those that are not. "It will be a very intensive job and we will need to get professional support," one Treasury source says. "It's complicated, but if you didn't have these complicated problems, there wouldn't be a crisis in the first place."
But how could the banks lose control to such an extent?
"Greed is part of the answer," says Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman. "We have had a bonus culture in which profits were the only motivating factor, and bankers were getting enormous bonuses on the back of very highly leveraged deals. It's also the case that even some of the bosses didn't understand the things they were trading in, because they had become so complicated. The banking regulators knew this and should have put a stop to it, but they didn't."
It wasn't just the executives who failed to understand what was going on – the Prime Minister and his team were equally clueless. Treasury officials who began going through the books of RBS when the Government took a majority share last year were horrified at the way the bank had been run, as it borrowed more and more money to fund more ambitious deals, such its share of the £49 billion takeover of Dutch bank ABN-Amro in 2007.
The previously lionised Sir Fred has now been labelled "the world's worst banker", with growing calls for him to be stripped of his knighthood. Although the Financial Services Authority insists that there is no evidence he broke any rules, many investors who have lost money believe he was less than candid about the state of the bank's finances and recklessly overstretched himself in the battle for ABN-Amro.
In America, RBS's subsidiaries are already the subject of two separate investigations. The Securities and Exchange Commission and New York's attorney general are both looking into the exposure of RBS-owned companies to the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Although he has said he is "angry" with Sir Fred, Mr Brown refused to be drawn this week on what action, if any, should be taken against his former friend, who was a valued adviser during his time as Chancellor.
Nor has anyone at the Treasury offered an estimate of how much it will cost to work out the value of the toxic assets.
Yet many of the country's leading economists believe that there is an alternative to the scheme: to nationalise the entire banking system to restore confidence, and take control of lending once and for all.
George Magnus, chief economic adviser to UBS Investment Bank, and the man credited with being the first to predict the current global recession, says: "There is a danger that a few months down the line further measures will be needed to shore up the banks. It would be cleaner, neater and cheaper just to call a spade a spade and take them into public ownership.
"That would enable the Government to set up a 'bad bank' that could take on these toxic assets and hold on to them for 50 years if necessary, until their value rose and the taxpayer saw a return.
"In the meantime, once the crisis is over, they could refloat the banks, as they did in Sweden in 1992. I just don't understand the hang-up the Government has with nationalisation."
Professor Tim Congdon, a former adviser to the Treasury, agrees. "The idea of having these civil servants poring over the banks' books is barmy. There are much simpler solutions, such as the Government borrowing from the banks to increase the amount of money in the system."
One thing all sides are agreed on is the need for a return to old-fashioned banking, preferably without so much as a rocket scientist – or sausage machine – in sight.
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