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Very interesting comments from Institutional Risk Analyst:
We salute Senator Dick Shelby and the House Republicans for digging in their heels and saying no to the ridiculous proposal from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. The Paulson Plan, which was vigorously supported by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, never had a chance to work because it starts from a false premise, namely that by allowing banks to swap illiquid assets for Treasury bonds, banks will sell or finance this collateral to make room for new loans.
Just look at the accomplishments of the team of Paulson and Bernanke ("P&B"), the latter of whom has been the craven lap dog of the former GS CEO from day one. The Bear, Stearns fiasco was bad enough, but failing to find a smooth transition to the troubles at Lehman Brothers makes a complete mockery of Paulson's claims to be trying to restore liquidity to the US financial system. Indeed, with friends like Paulson, Bernanke and Barney "Napoleon" Frank (D-MA), why should the American people be afraid of Al-Qaida?
You see, when P&B let Lehman be forced into a bankruptcy filing last week, more was lost than just thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in losses to shareholders and creditors. These losses are, at the end of the day, attributable to SEC Chairman Christopher Cox and the happy squirrels at the FASB. As our friend Brian Wesbury from FT Advisors in Chicago wrote:
"It seems clear that much of the current crisis has been exacerbated by mark-to-market accounting, which has created massive, and unnecessary, losses for financial firms. These losses, caused because the current price of many illiquid securities are well below the true hold-to-maturity value, could have been avoided. The current crisis is actually smaller than the 1980s and 1990s bank and savings and loan crisis, but is being made dramatically worse by the current accounting rules." Amen brother Wesbury.
When Lehman failed, what was left of the CP market, mostly paper issued by prime borrowers, got flushed down the dumper as well. We hear from the channel that once Lehman filed, nearly every prime CP issuer in the US hit their standby lines of credit with various commercial banks. So much for recapitalizing the banking system. We expect that when the Q3 data from the FDIC is released, it will show a precipitous drop in unused credit lines at some of the major domestic and foreign banks domiciled in the US. You think P&B understand this? Dream on.
But there is more. We also hear from some very well-placed sources on Capitol Hill that when the Fed's Board of Governors was presented with an $80 billion price tag for supporting Lehman the day before the bankruptcy filing, there were not five votes at the big Fed table to support the loan. When the Board does not take action, there is no record of the meeting, no transcript, no tape. Several member of the House familiar with the details reportedly will be calling for a forensic investigation of the Fed's internal records, phone and email regarding this non-decision by the central bank. But they key fact is that Ben Bernake could not make the other governors take necessary action to forestall the uncontrolled collapse of Lehman. Recalling the "leadership" role played by every Fed chairman since Arthur Burns, what use is a Fed chairman who can't get five votes when absolutely required?
As a result, it is further suggested, when JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) presented an ultimatum to Lehman management that weekend, the only choice was bankruptcy. We hear that JPM told Lehman that if they did not file, then JPM was going to put them out of business by closing down their clearing account. To get a sense for the conversation which reportedly occurred between JPM and the doomed broker dealer, recall the scene from the film The Godfather when Robert Duval gives an imprisoned capo under federal protection the option of picking the manner of his own death. Unfortunately and unlike the movie, as JPM eliminated a major investment banking competitor by compelling the suicide of a long-time clearing customer, no surety was provided for the members of the Lehman family.
The tragedy of the failure of Lehman is that by failing to obtain Fed support for an expenditure of $80 billion needed to manage an orderly sale or bank holding company conversion of the still-solvent broker dealer, P&B have created the very crisis of confidence that they now seek to solve via a $700 billion bailout of truly insolvent financial institutions. If this very public act of grotesque incompetence is not sufficient reason for President Bush immediately to demand the resignation of both Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke, then what actions would be sufficient? How much more damage must P&B commit before President Bush and the republicans in Congress demand their heads?
From: http://us1.institutionalriskanalytic...ry.asp?tag=311
We salute Senator Dick Shelby and the House Republicans for digging in their heels and saying no to the ridiculous proposal from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. The Paulson Plan, which was vigorously supported by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, never had a chance to work because it starts from a false premise, namely that by allowing banks to swap illiquid assets for Treasury bonds, banks will sell or finance this collateral to make room for new loans.
Just look at the accomplishments of the team of Paulson and Bernanke ("P&B"), the latter of whom has been the craven lap dog of the former GS CEO from day one. The Bear, Stearns fiasco was bad enough, but failing to find a smooth transition to the troubles at Lehman Brothers makes a complete mockery of Paulson's claims to be trying to restore liquidity to the US financial system. Indeed, with friends like Paulson, Bernanke and Barney "Napoleon" Frank (D-MA), why should the American people be afraid of Al-Qaida?
You see, when P&B let Lehman be forced into a bankruptcy filing last week, more was lost than just thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in losses to shareholders and creditors. These losses are, at the end of the day, attributable to SEC Chairman Christopher Cox and the happy squirrels at the FASB. As our friend Brian Wesbury from FT Advisors in Chicago wrote:
"It seems clear that much of the current crisis has been exacerbated by mark-to-market accounting, which has created massive, and unnecessary, losses for financial firms. These losses, caused because the current price of many illiquid securities are well below the true hold-to-maturity value, could have been avoided. The current crisis is actually smaller than the 1980s and 1990s bank and savings and loan crisis, but is being made dramatically worse by the current accounting rules." Amen brother Wesbury.
When Lehman failed, what was left of the CP market, mostly paper issued by prime borrowers, got flushed down the dumper as well. We hear from the channel that once Lehman filed, nearly every prime CP issuer in the US hit their standby lines of credit with various commercial banks. So much for recapitalizing the banking system. We expect that when the Q3 data from the FDIC is released, it will show a precipitous drop in unused credit lines at some of the major domestic and foreign banks domiciled in the US. You think P&B understand this? Dream on.
But there is more. We also hear from some very well-placed sources on Capitol Hill that when the Fed's Board of Governors was presented with an $80 billion price tag for supporting Lehman the day before the bankruptcy filing, there were not five votes at the big Fed table to support the loan. When the Board does not take action, there is no record of the meeting, no transcript, no tape. Several member of the House familiar with the details reportedly will be calling for a forensic investigation of the Fed's internal records, phone and email regarding this non-decision by the central bank. But they key fact is that Ben Bernake could not make the other governors take necessary action to forestall the uncontrolled collapse of Lehman. Recalling the "leadership" role played by every Fed chairman since Arthur Burns, what use is a Fed chairman who can't get five votes when absolutely required?
As a result, it is further suggested, when JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) presented an ultimatum to Lehman management that weekend, the only choice was bankruptcy. We hear that JPM told Lehman that if they did not file, then JPM was going to put them out of business by closing down their clearing account. To get a sense for the conversation which reportedly occurred between JPM and the doomed broker dealer, recall the scene from the film The Godfather when Robert Duval gives an imprisoned capo under federal protection the option of picking the manner of his own death. Unfortunately and unlike the movie, as JPM eliminated a major investment banking competitor by compelling the suicide of a long-time clearing customer, no surety was provided for the members of the Lehman family.
The tragedy of the failure of Lehman is that by failing to obtain Fed support for an expenditure of $80 billion needed to manage an orderly sale or bank holding company conversion of the still-solvent broker dealer, P&B have created the very crisis of confidence that they now seek to solve via a $700 billion bailout of truly insolvent financial institutions. If this very public act of grotesque incompetence is not sufficient reason for President Bush immediately to demand the resignation of both Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke, then what actions would be sufficient? How much more damage must P&B commit before President Bush and the republicans in Congress demand their heads?
From: http://us1.institutionalriskanalytic...ry.asp?tag=311
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