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FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

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  • FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

    FDIC R.I.P

    With the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve exhausted from lending to insolvent banks and non-bank financial firms, and polluted by hundreds of billions in risky assets taken on from all corners, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner put a hammer to the last uncompromised taxpayer financed piggy bank* yesterday, the one that guarantees said taxpayer’s bank deposits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. We will regret it.

    The FDIC, the only remaining credible bank regulatory institution left in the U.S., is about to dilute its balance sheet with high risk debt liabilities and in the process become entangled financially and politically in the financial fiasco.

    The FDIC will extend its Great Depression era mission to thwart bank runs by insuring 100% of bank deposits should the fractional reserve actually available to bank customers, often less than 5%, run out in a panic. As of yesterday the company engaged in a program to try to undo the run on non-bank financial institutions that happened when investors in securities backed by the incomes of the perpetually under- and unemployed, and collateralized with homes built in vast excess of demand and collapsing in price, were doomed to 80% to 99% declines even before the economy crashed. Soon your bank deposits will be insured by a company that insures hedge funds against losses on securities that ought to never exist in the first place.

    To understand the latest toxic debt recovery plan, we start with an analogy written by an author unknown to us. (If the author sees this and recognizes it, please send us a note so we can give you proper credit.)
    Sub-prime mortgage asset-backed securities primer: an apt analogy Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers - most of whom are unemployed alcoholics - to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans.Word gets around about Heidi's drink now pay later marketing strategy and as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar and soon she has the largest sale volume for any bar in Detroit

    By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.

    A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral. At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then traded on security markets worldwide. Naive investors don't really understand the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, their prices continuously climb, and the securities become the top-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.

    One day, although the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the bank (subsequently fired due his negativity), decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. Heidi demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Therefore, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy. DRINKBOND and ALKIBOND drop in price by 90 %. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 80 %. The decreased bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans. The suppliers of Heidi's bar, having granted her generous payment extensions and having invested in the securities are faced with writing off her debt and losing over 80% on her bonds. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 50 workers.
    With this as background, the latest toxic debt plan goes like this.

    The bank and brokerage houses claim that they must be bailed out of bad investments in asset-backed securities by the government at taxpayer expense or the economy will continue to collapse, unemployment will rise to 50%, and everyone who isn’t already living in cardboard box will be soon. President Obama himself makes the case on national television that the financial firms must be rescued to get the drinks flowing again, because alcohol is the lifeblood of the American economy.

    Politicians from both political parties, whose primary campaign contributors are the banking and brokerage firms now in peril, engage with heads of government banking and finance departments in dramatic round-the-clock negotiations, which government department heads used work for the very same troubled bank and brokerage houses.

    To no one’s surprise, they arrive at a solution to allow hedge funds, managed by men who used to work for the banks and brokerage houses, to gamble on the future rise in DRINKBOND, ALKIBOND, and PUKEBOND prices on the premise that the alcoholics whose incomes guarantee payment of the debts that are the assets behind the bonds will stop drinking and repay their debts. If they do, the hedge funds make money. If they do not then the government guarantees the loss with taxes levied on employed middle-class non-drinkers. Geithner and Bernanke call this arrangement a “public-private partnership” but taxpayers may see through that and call it a “racket.” And, as I said, now the FDIC is into it.

    The simple and obvious solution is to audit and declare insolvent banks and brokerages insolvent and put them into receivership, wipe out the shareholders, replace management, sell the assets, and put law breakers in the slammer as happened in the U.S. after the S&L crisis in the late 1980s, and in Norway in the early 1990s, and in fact anywhere and everywhere a government is politically independent of the nation’s financial industry. But wait, isn’t that what Geithner is proposing today?

    Ray of Hope or Stake Through the Heart?

    The latest toxic debt plan was yesterday. Today Geithner asked Congress empower “someone” (who?) to take over non-bank financial institutions much as the FDIC is authorized to take over insolvent banks.
    Geithner wants new financial wind-down authority
    March 24, 2009 (Reuters)

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday joined the Federal Reserve in calling for authority to wind down failing non-bank financial firms that threaten the financial system.

    Geithner, in prepared testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, said Congress should approve legislation giving the government the ability to step in to put a major institution under conservatorship and avoid a damaging bankruptcy.

    "As we have seen with AIG, distress at large, interconnected, non-depository financial institutions can pose systemic risks just as distress at banks can," Geithner said. "The administration proposes legislation to give the U.S. government the same basic set of tools for addressing financial distress at non-banks as it has in the bank context."
    On the surface this looks like the old Janszen plan from a year ago: create a Resolution Trust Corporation II, audit the banks and financial institutions, put the insolvent institutions into receivership, wipe out the shareholders, fire management, sell off the assets in an orderly way at market prices to prudent and well run institutions, and if the audits reveal evidence of criminal misconduct then charge and try the perpetrators. Is that what this new Geithner request is about? Of course not.

    I see at least four immediate problems with new expanded powers to take over non-bank financial firms.
    1. What institution is sufficiently independent and trustworthy to be given this new power? Not the FDIC; now it’s part of the bailout, with a vested interest in the outcome. The Treasury? The Fed? Who?
    2. Several non-financial institutions were, like Amex, turned -- abracadabra -- into banks in order to qualify them for bank bailout funds. Why not use the same principle to allow the FDIC to turn non-bank institutions in to banks, audit them, then put them into receivership if needed? Why does "abracadabra, you're a bank" only work to a financial institution's -- and shareholders' -- benefit?
    3. If the FDIC already has the power to take over regional insolvent banks, why not extend its charter to take over larger banks? Will new powers granted to a another institution accomplish with non-bank financial institutions what the FDIC has so far not accomplished with insolvent banks using established powers?
    4. How do we know that politically connected non-bank institutions will not get a pass, just as certain bank institutions apparently have, while those that lack connections are shut down? Even the threat such selectivity will cause otherwise well run financial institutions to change their behavior to reduce the risk of being shut down, such as by further building reserves and reducing lending even more.

    At this point not only should the market decide the fate of these institutions, it will. It will do so by taking down the stock market as the FIRE Economy continues to disintegrate.

    After a brief rally in stocks, the next shoe to drop will be in the corporate debt market. Remember the LBO bubble? While the de-leveraging may be over on a corporate credit market wide basis, the pricing in of business fundamentals – sans the miracle of debt securitization and leverage, and teetering atop a still over-priced mortgage debt market -- has just begun, and the stock market is lagging. An additional 30% to 40% drop from here is coming.

    * Of course, there is no "piggy bank." The FDIC is little more than an account of the Treasury Department, and all of the "money" committed is nothing more than claims on future cash flow of U.S. households and businesses, and -- if we're lucky -- the cash flow of households and businesses in other countries.

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    Last edited by EJ; March 24, 2009, 10:07 PM.

  • #2
    Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

    Agree.

    As for throwing people in jail. Far be it for me to pile on the AIG bandwagon. But if you sell insurance without adequate funds to pay off, don't you go to jail?

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

      and the stock market is lagging. An additional 30% to 40% drop from here is coming.
      If falls further 30%, it will over shoot to the downside, below 300 to 400 is expected range.

      Ouuch!

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

        Originally posted by icm63 View Post
        If falls further 30%, it will over shoot to the downside, below 300 to 400 is expected range.

        Ouuch!
        I don't understand. The S&P closed at 806 today. even 40% won't take it below 400??:confused:

        jim

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

          I'm not sure we can talk about RIP FDIC. I believe there may be more to it than killing the FDIC. In order to force the funneling of money from the taxpayer's pockets to the banksters, they tied the fraudulent guarantees to the FDIC, which is supposed to insure the bank accounts of ordinary Americans (mostly checking accounts because ordinary Americans have no savings anymore).

          So here is the core of the scam: when the private-public partnership contraptions will start to take losses, those losses will have to be covered by the taxpayer. The taxpayer cannot refuse to pay for the banksters' profit because they will be told: "OMG!! Are you crazy? If you refuse to pay the bankster tax, FDIC will go bankrupt and you will lose all your money in your bank account (401k savings etc)!!!"

          I was thinking about the proper term to describe this scam that goes beyond blackmail, extortion or racket.... "financial terrorism" maybe ?

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

            Hey EJ,
            Very nice as always, but I'd sure appreciate some guidance as to what direction to take -- both for protection and maybe positioning to take advantage of what you say is coming.
            Given some of the postings over the last few months I'd say you must have stock in whomever makes Xanax.....l

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

              On Monday's big rise, all of the financial commentators remarked that 1938 was the last time that the markets saw such a high one day increase! I'm amazed at how no one seemed to notice that this market turn was 9 years after the initial drop in 1929 and that there was a lot of volatility and pain experienced in between!!

              If you look at the period between 1929 and 1932, there were numerous periods where the market rose and fell by 40%+. I have little doubt that we will see S&P 500 at 600 or lower. That doesn't mean though that it couldn't get up to the 900-1000 range before then! This leads me to the two phrases that all investors should remember...

              1) The path is just as important as the destination, and
              2) In investing, being early is the same as being wrong.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

                Now that's about as direct a call as can be made! ITulip saved my 401K last year, I'll stick with ITulip this year as well.

                Now forgive me for asking: Every stock permabear and permabull is an expert at one time or another. The question is when do we get back in????

                I don't accuse ITullip as either, but there has to be a time to buy sometime....... right???

                right???
                Scott

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

                  A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets
                  It is a lot worse than that. The "dynamic vice-president" knows that "these customer debts as valuable future assets" are really worthless. So he purchases CDS against the certain default of "these future assets."

                  He rakes it in in commissions, fees, bonuses, stocks selling this derivatives. Then when hell breaks loose, he collects 100 cents on the Dollar of the maximum value. AIG was that conduit to turn trash into cash.
                  Of course, AIG never had the money to cover this debts. As we just saw, AIG did not need to have the money, because the taxpayers did.

                  Why wait for the monthly payments, risks, etc. Get 100% of that money in one lump sum courtesy of the US taxpayer.

                  As long as there is taxpayers' money to be taken, there will be no end to this heist.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

                    Originally posted by $#* View Post
                    I'm not sure we can talk about RIP FDIC. I believe there may be more to it than killing the FDIC. In order to force the funneling of money from the taxpayer's pockets to the banksters, they tied the fraudulent guarantees to the FDIC, which is supposed to insure the bank accounts of ordinary Americans (mostly checking accounts because ordinary Americans have no savings anymore).

                    So here is the core of the scam: when the private-public partnership contraptions will start to take losses, those losses will have to be covered by the taxpayer. The taxpayer cannot refuse to pay for the banksters' profit because they will be told: "OMG!! Are you crazy? If you refuse to pay the bankster tax, FDIC will go bankrupt and you will lose all your money in your bank account (401k savings etc)!!!"

                    I was thinking about the proper term to describe this scam that goes beyond blackmail, extortion or racket.... "financial terrorism" maybe ?
                    It is almost the same as the Joker's plan in "Dark Knight."

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

                      Originally posted by $#* View Post
                      I'm not sure we can talk about RIP FDIC. I believe there may be more to it than killing the FDIC. In order to force the funneling of money from the taxpayer's pockets to the banksters, they tied the fraudulent guarantees to the FDIC, which is supposed to insure the bank accounts of ordinary Americans (mostly checking accounts because ordinary Americans have no savings anymore).

                      So here is the core of the scam: when the private-public partnership contraptions will start to take losses, those losses will have to be covered by the taxpayer. The taxpayer cannot refuse to pay for the banksters' profit because they will be told: "OMG!! Are you crazy? If you refuse to pay the bankster tax, FDIC will go bankrupt and you will lose all your money in your bank account (401k savings etc)!!!"

                      I was thinking about the proper term to describe this scam that goes beyond blackmail, extortion or racket.... "financial terrorism" maybe ?

                      Absolutely. I was wondering why the FDIC needed to be involved. This tells me they don't think it's going to work.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

                        Originally posted by Scott4139 View Post
                        Now that's about as direct a call as can be made! ITulip saved my 401K last year, I'll stick with ITulip this year as well.
                        I also moved to cash last year because of reading blogs (not this one, though, I found out about this one much later). However, I have bought GLD based on the recommendation of this site.

                        Most other blogs don't seem to be taking a stand as strong as this one that everything will turn to dust. But judging by the looting going on, I would have to agree. However, that the timing has been set as being some time in the next 3 quarters is scary. I thought they would pull of the looting charade for a much longer time.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

                          Originally posted by Scott4139 View Post
                          Now that's about as direct a call as can be made! ITulip saved my 401K last year, I'll stick with ITulip this year as well.

                          Now forgive me for asking: Every stock permabear and permabull is an expert at one time or another. The question is when do we get back in????

                          I don't accuse ITullip as either, but there has to be a time to buy sometime....... right???

                          right???
                          Sure sometime in the future will be the time to buy, but don't you think the feelings of the posts here will start to turn a lot more positive long in advance of that call? Does it even remotely feel like this is the bottom and it's "champagne time, baby" from here on out!?

                          Not from what I see and hear. I have friends still getting their pink slips all around me.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

                            Originally posted by cjppjc View Post
                            Absolutely. I was wondering why the FDIC needed to be involved. This tells me they don't think it's going to work.
                            This tells me it is designed to fail, and leave the taxpayer with the financial party bill.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: FDIC R.I.P - Eric Janszen

                              when the average joe started flipping houses in 2006 the the feelings were positive too. Problem is when the average joe gets in he gets crushed.

                              I think the lesson is that when everyone gets overly optimistic or pessimistic its a sign that a turn is about to happen.

                              But for now I'm sitting out for a little longer ... just in case.
                              Scott

                              Comment

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