Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
There is one inviting conclusion out there. There is no way to know for sure which banks are broke, so it is better to consider they all are.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
You mean the Japanese question the strength of the US dollar just because trillions of new dollars are created regularly in non-transparent use?
Japan economists call for ‘Obama bonds’
By Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO – Japanese economists, increasingly concerned that the United States might seek to pay its enormous and growing debt obligations in a weakened US dollar, are looking to the possibility of US Treasuries being issued in yen.
The US government needs to borrow at least US$1 trillion in the coming year, excluding the US Treasury’s $700 billion plan to bail out the financial and other industries, said Kazuo Mizuno, chief economist in Tokyo at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Co, a unit of Japan’s largest publicly traded lender by assets. That amount is likely to grow as the US government continues to rescue failed parts of the economy and has to raise more debt – that is, issue government bonds, or Treasuries – to fund such rescues.
Since 2004, when the amount of the government bond issuance reached an annual average of $400 billion, 94% of new buyers of US government bonds have been foreigners, Mizuno told Asia Times Online.
One measure of the increased concern at the ability of the United States to finance its enormous deficits in the future is the rising cost of credit default swaps bought as protection of Treasury debt. These traded near a record high on Tuesday, with benchmark 10-year contracts on Treasuries increased to 42 basis points, or 0.42 percentage points, from around 20 in early September. The contracts have also risen from below two basis points at the start of the credit crisis in July 2007.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Gold at $1200 then $1650. The US dollar at .72, .62 and then .52.
It cannot be averted.
OTC derivative dealers have killed more people than most wars, and it is only starting.
The glaring disappointment is the Bank for International Settlement’s finagling with the derivative numbers by computer based netting and model risk analysis. In other words even they are now BS merchants.
America’s Mark-to-Model Banking System (revisited)
Posted on November 20th, 2008
Reflection time – earlier in the year I put together a chart for my own personal use showing all financial institutions Level 1, 2 and 3 assets vs their shareholder equity, tier capital etc. After not too long I realized it was a fairly good guide to troubled financial institutions.
I posted it on the blog on Oct for all of you guys and got emails about it for a month. I think its time to review the chart because it clearly shows why all this is happening and why TARP could not be used to buy distressed assets.
Everyone was focused on Level 3 and glossed right over Level 2, which could be equally as toxic and marked to some sort of internal proprietary modeling system that give these assets much more value than reality. For many of these firms at the top of the list a mere 5% haircut in their Level 2 book renders them insolvent. This is where a lot of that nasty commercial resides.
Citi said today that its balance sheet is not that much different that Chase – by the looks of Chase’s Level 2 assets to equity, they better hope not.
Remember, its not a liquidity problem, its a solvency problem, which this chart clearly shows. The institutions listed here were my top 25 short picks earlier in the year based upon this chart. Some still look good. Please note that I have not updated this chart completely because I have not had the time but since I have not heard of very many banks selling massive amount of bulk assets, I would assume that these numbers have not shrank, more likely grown. -Best Mr Mortgage
America’s Mark-to-Model Banking System
Oct 2nd 2008
Is $700bb really enough? Buying distressed assets from banks balance sheets is a waste of money. How insolvent are the nation’s leading banks?
Level 1, 2, and 3 assets are ways of classifying a company’s assets based on the degree of certainty around the assets’ underlying value. For example, Level 1 assets can be valued with certainty because they are liquid and have clear market prices. At the other end of the spectrum, Level 3 assets are illiquid and estimating their value requires inputs that are unobservable and reflect management assumptions. Think of it like Prime, Alt-A and subprime mortgage loans for example.
Somehow we have skipped right over Level 2 and are judging bank risk by looking at Level 3. Maybe in a robust credit market full of securitizations and leverage like 2006 this would have been just fine, but not now. Perhaps this is unfolding in a linear way just like the mortgage crisis beginning with subprime (level 3), now onto Alt-A (level 2), then to Prime (Level 1). Walls Street did a similar thing last year when it went right to focusing on CDO’s and forgot about all of the toxic whole loans and MBS on the balance sheet.
In the past several months, banks have been very focused on ’selling assets and bringing down leverage’ with the primary focus being on their mostly toxic Level 3 ’assets’. That would be fine and dandy if their Level 2 ‘assets, which in this market may be equally as hard to value as Level 3, were not up to 20 times greater in Bank of America’s case for example.
The chart below show total Level 1, 2 and 3 ‘assets’. I have been keeping this for many quarters but shown is only Q2. However, if you look at level 2 assets/equity percentages it has been a road map to troubled banks with the exception of a few…but are those really exceptions.
**PLEASE NOTE – Chart below may not reflect accurate shareholder equity – needless to say it is much lower now. (Click to enlarge)2
**Note: This chart is a couple of months old numbers may have changed. My Excel is a little rough sometimes at times as well so you can visually look at row amounts vs total assets/equity in order to run your own ratios.
Level 2 ‘assets’ are by definition “Assets that aren’t actively traded, but have quoted market prices for similar instruments – otherwise known as ‘mark to model.’” Could this be more mortgage debt? We all know that all ‘modeling’ systems are broken and have been for years so how accurate are these marks, especially if much of this is mortgage debt. Look at the Wachovia line above. They have $160 billion in Level 2 assets. That number is eerily similar to the amount of toxic Pay Option ARMs they hold.
The Level 2 numbers are so staggering that even a 7.5% haircut across the small group banks below would equal the total write downs by all banks worldwide to date!
Back on May 2nd I posted a story on Merrill playing ‘hide the CDO’ for reference and have updated my chart on 25 of the top financials and their Level 1, 2 and 3 exposure. What I found was astoundinig. Of the 25 companies I studied, their total assets were $14.6 Trillion, Level 1 assets were a total of $1.3 Trillion, Level 3 assets were only $802 Billion but Level 2 Assets were $7.3 TRILLION!
Are you kidding me! 50% of the group’s total assets were Level 2 “assets that aren’t actively traded, but have quoted market prices for similar instruments – otherwise known as ‘mark to model.”
Wouldn’t it be great if the banks let you mark your investment portfolio to what you believed the assets to be worth on those dreaded days on which you receive a margin call?
All joking aside, this is an absolute disaster in the making. The Treasury does not have enough to take care of many of the nation’s largest banks. The Fed does not either. As you can see they are OVER their heads in Level 2 and Level 3 ‘assets’, of which much has not been able to be priced for months. Much of it never will. -Best, Mr Mortgage
Level I: Mark to Market – readily observable market prices.
Level II: Assets that aren’t actively traded, but have quoted market prices for similar instruments – otherwise known as ‘mark to model.’
Level III: Assets that have model derived valuations in which one or more significant inputs or significant value drivers are unobservable-otherwise known as ‘mark to myth’ or ‘mark to management’s best guess,’ ‘mark to a hope & a prayer,’ etc…