Our Hero was center stage today. True to his reputation, The Secretary put together every idea that had been put forth over the past six months, mixed them together, shook them up and came forth with his plan to save the financial sector. At last look the Dow was up 380 points with financials leading the way which put a smile on my son's face, he of the long positions, and the talking heads on TV. Not a bad day's work.
Forgive me if I am not quite as ebullient, because for the life of me I can't yet come to grips as to how...much less whether...this is going to work.
As I understand it, Our Hero and his guys are going to partner up with a bunch of investors in the public, each put in a bunch of capital and then Our Hero is going to drop on the private guys a bunch of non-recourse debt to fund the biggest Dutch Auction in history after which, if all goes well, we'll be out of the woods as the banks will be out of "toxic" debt. Shelia Blair has made it clear that she and the FDIC will provide the highest of scrutiny to the entire operation. I'm telling you, this gal must have photos because why in the world bones have to be thrown her way is beyond me but that is a subject for another day.
The private guys must be thrilled. For a small slug of equity, they get a huge load of taxpayer's money that they never have to pay back except from the corpus of the purchases--i.e. non-recourse TO THEM--financing, and the possibility of a huge upside ROE if all goes well. Tim gets a hugh upside as well for the People of America if all goes well but undertakes a huge downside if it doesn't. Funny, it sounds exactly like how Wall Street has been run ever since everybody went public: big risks, high returns but what the hell, it's not your money. This boy learns quick!
Once everything is in place, there will be an auction, conducted by someone, on assets (yet to be determined) held by the banks. Now it has not yet been announced if these assets will be differentiated (or how), size of tranches, maturities or whether there will be reserves placed on the assets (the bid must be at or above an agreed-upon level or else no deal) but there is the belief that all these little details--and others--can be worked out. No mentioned has been made of due diligence or timing but again, details, details. Once again, dear friends into the breach!
Our Hero was on TV today with Erin Burnett on CNBC--where I suspect we would all wish to be--musing that if we could only get a few of these auctions off, we would be able to get a better view of the real value of these assets. Huh? Let's see if I understand this. The consortium bids for 5 million of a certain asset held by a bank and wins. What is the effect? Does this mean that every like asset at every institution WORLDWIDE need be marked to the purchase price? There is no question that many of these assets have been marked to a level well below there intrinsic value at certain institutions but not at others. If the seller of the 5 million has a mark of 40 and he bid is 50, simply to get rid of a small problem a bank may well be willing to lose the asset even though it believes it will be money-good in the end. But what happens at another institution whose mark is 60...and the asset level is 100 million? Are they forced to change the mark to 50 and lose 10 million in capital (tax neutral)? Does the first bank book a profit? Do you mean that due to the size of a relative holding we create a situation in which one bank books a gain and another a loss ON THE SAME ASSET? Riddle me that one Bat Man.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but FASB 157 became effective in November of 2007. From that moment the stock market tanked. Hello? If this doesn't get fixed we accomplish nothing because we will never be able to fix the valuation question unless the volatility of these valuations is ended and they are approached on a different basis. Or to put it another way, there ain't gonna be no way to price these things at an auction. Surely, the government will attempt to bully the banks into participating if it gets to that point but that, I am afraid, is more than questionable. This is a moment in time...WHICH WILL BE KNOWN AS THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
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