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Former Fed Governor: Financial Crisis Worse Than Great Depression

CNBC’s Andrew Fisher wrote today:

Economics scholar and former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin says the shock that continues to rip through the nation’s economy is actually worse than what was felt during the Great Depression.

“The difference is, we have people on the ball,” the Columbia University professor told CNBC.

Mishkin said he was impressed by the way his former colleagues at the Fed handled crises.

“During all these episodes… everybody stayed very cool, calm, and collected,’ he recalled. “Chairman Bernanke is someone who sits down, is very analytical, thinks through, doesn’t get excited, just, ‘Let’s do the job,’ the staff operated that way, the rest of the board operated that way.”

I, for one, sure hope Mr. Bernanke’s problem-solving skills are a lot better than his forecasting abilities.

Anyone recall the following statements from “Helicopter Ben” over the last couple of years?

Housing Bubble

Testimony given at a Congressional Joint Economic Committee hearing in October 2005 (as reported by Nell Henderson of the Washington Post):

Ben S. Bernanke does not think the national housing boom is a bubble that is about to burst, he indicated to Congress last week, just a few days before President Bush nominated him to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.

U.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years, noted Bernanke, currently chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, in testimony to Congress’s Joint Economic Committee. But these increases, he said, “largely reflect strong economic fundamentals,” such as strong growth in jobs, incomes and the number of new households…

Bernanke’s testimony suggests that he does not share such concerns, and that he believes the economy could weather a housing slowdown.

“House prices are unlikely to continue rising at current rates,” said Bernanke, who served on the Fed board from 2002 until June. However, he added, “a moderate cooling in the housing market, should one occur, would not be inconsistent with the economy continuing to grow at or near its potential next year.”

Derivatives

Testimony given at a U.S. Senate hearing, November 15, 2005:

I think, generally speaking, they are very valuable. They provide methods by which risks can be shared, sliced and diced and given to those most willing to bear it. They add, I believe, to the flexibility of the financial system in many different ways.

And, with respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.

Subprime Crisis

Testimony given at a Congressional Joint Economic Committee hearing in March 2007:

At this juncture, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained.

The big question: Can Bernanke and the Fed fix something they never saw coming in the first place?

Sources:

“Top Economist Mishkin: Worse Than the Depression”
Andrew Fisher
CNBC, September 23, 2008

“Bernanke: There’s No Housing Bubble to Go Bust”
Nell Henderson
Washington Post, October 27, 2005

Credit-Default Swaps May Produce Another Bear Stearns

Back on January 16, 2008, I wrote a post about an article I had read earlier that day by the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein. In “Caught in a Downdraft and Starting to Panic,” the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner talked about the danger from credit-default swaps. He wrote:

Despite the brave exhortations from the CNBC Squawk Box, we are nowhere near the end of the financial unraveling that is necessary for an economic bottom to be reached…

Looking ahead, the final phase of this unraveling is likely to implicate the giant market in credit-default swaps. Those swaps are essentially contracts that allow sophisticated investors to bet on whether a company, a government entity, or even a securitized package of loans will default on its debt obligations. And they can place these bets whether they own the underlying security or not.

Because these contracts trade on unregulated derivatives markets, nobody knows who holds the losing side of the bets. But it’s a good guess that if defaults rise even to historically normal levels, a big hit will be taken by highly leveraged hedge funds, some of which may be unable to pay off on their bets and simply collapse. That, in turn, would trigger even further losses by banks and other investors that, unlike pure speculators, rely on those instruments to insure against default.

The credit-default swap has become so central to modern global finance that its size — the amount insured, in effect — is estimated at $43 trillion. If the losing side is unable to make good on even a fraction of a percent of those contracts, it could set in motion a financial chain reaction that could easily rival the subprime debacle.

Recently, I’ve noticed increased chatter about credit-default swaps in my research. Just today, I came across the following piece by the Wall Street Journal’s Donna Kardos in the MarketBeat Blog. Kardos wrote:

A growing proportion of U.S. firms are seeing credit-default-swap counterparty risk as a serious threat to global markets, and think another major financial company will go under due amid the global-markets crisis, according to a study by research firm Greenwich Associates.

The study’s results, which say the proportion seeing CDS counterparty risk as a serious threat is approaching 85%, highlight the perceived concern of another financial firm going down. Only 27% of the institutions surveyed think there won’t be another casualty along the lines of Bear Stearns, Greenwich consultant Frank Feenstra said in a statement.

The research firm said of the 146 U.S. and European banks, hedge funds and investors it surveyed, most “believe another major financial-services firm will fail as a result of the ongoing crisis in global markets — and they expect it to happen sooner rather than later.”

Almost 60% of the respondents expect another big financial firm will collapse within the next six months, while another 15% see it happening in six to 12 months.

Source:

“Who’s on the Other Side of That Trade, Anyway?”
Donna Kardos
Wall Street Journal (MarketBeat Blog), August 12, 2008

Latest Bank Actions Draw Comparisons To 1929 Crash

With all the upheaval in the global economy lately, comparisons were bound to be made with another era symbolic of financial hardship. Last weekend, Philip Aldrick of the Telegraph (UK) wrote:

Perhaps the most intriguing parallel, though, is the crude attempt at self-preservation made by the investment trusts in 1929 and the banks now.

In the great crash, investment trusts with vast cross-holdings in each other tried to stem their collapse by buying up their own stock in what the economist JK Galbraith in his book, The Great Crash 1929, described as an act of “fiscal self-immolation”. At the time, “support of the stock of one’s own company seemed a bold, imaginative and effective course,” Galbraith wrote, but ultimately the trusts were just “swindling themselves”.

Yet, as I often bring up from time to time, the American writer Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.” Aldrick notes that almost 80 years later:

Modern economists have compared the trusts’ actions with what the banks are now doing. “They seem to be just papering over the cracks,” says Brendan Brown, chief economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities.

To free their books of the estimated $1,000bn (£505bn) of sub-prime assets and $340bn of leveraged loans banks have been left carrying since the credit markets shut down last year, lenders are offering to sell these damaged assets cut-price and - crucially - are willing to lend investors the money to buy them. In other words, the banks are providing new debt for the old debt they no longer want.

At first glance, as with the investment trusts, the arrangement seems little more than trickery - recycling a bank’s own funds back into its own assets. As one senior industry expert described it: “It is like walking through a hall of mirrors in a fairground. There are far fewer people who really understand it than profess to understand it. Even the central bankers don’t know where all the risk is ending up.”

The Telegraph reporter highlighted a number of examples where banks provided funding for the purchase of debt or subprime assets they own:

• UBS sold a $22 billion portfolio of subprime assets to American fund manager BlackRock
• A consortium of banks financed last year’s £9 billion Alliance Boots merger by offloading £2 billion of the debt to private equity
• Citigroup and Deutsche Bank are each believed to have offloaded $10 to $12 billion of U.S. leveraged loans in recent months, partly funding the purchase themselves. Aldrick noted that these banks, along with Merrill Lynch, have found buyers for “tens of billions of dollars” of their subprime debt, using similar funding arrangements.

Ingenuity, or a disaster in the making?

Source:

“Banks’ credit crisis solutions have echoes of 1929 Depression”
Philip Aldrick
Telegraph (UK), June 1, 2008

World’s Leading Banks React To Write-Down Pain

Rules. We’re all taught to follow them at a young age. You know how to spot someone who has real authority and influence? No, it’s not those chumps who break the rules. Rather, it’s those who change the rules of the game to fit their needs. And that’s what we are witnessing with the world’s leading banks as they confront escalating write-downs stemming from the ongoing housing and credit crisis. Earlier today I came across a post by Elizabeth MacDonald from FOXBusiness. In “Emac’s Stock Watch,” MacDonald wrote:

The world’s leading banks are demanding stock market and accounting regulators relax controversial accounting rules in order to stop the “downward spiral” of huge writedowns during the credit and housing crisis, $335b and counting…

The FT says the Institute of International Finance, an alliance of 300-plus companies chaired by Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank’s chairman, is promoting a plan that would let financial companies soften the blow of financial crises by valuing illiquid assets using historical, rather than market, prices.

The IIF says: “The writedowns required under current interpretations [of the accounting rules] may be substantially in excess of any actual or reasonably probable loss on many instruments.”

From what I understand, the issue here is the benchmark, the ABX market index, which might not accurately depict the values for bonds backed by subprime mortgages, as it’s a “thinly traded” index that is barely two years old, according to MacDonald. She explained:

The ABX is a synthetic credit derivative index, or a basket of credit default swaps that are basically high-priced gambling bets on where investors think the direction of the underlying bonds backed by subprime mortgages are headed.

I know this is complicated, but bear with me, it’s important. The swaps in the ABX are basically bets on the prices of the 20 supposedly most liquid (not saying much) subprime mortgage-backed bond deals. It’s an understatement to say booking prices based on this index is accounting that is more art than science…

Can an index based on values for just 20 bond deals legitimately be used for an asset class approaching $1.3tn in size? An index that historically undervalues the cash bonds it purportedly represents? An index noted for its negative sentiment and one that is routinely used by short sellers to attack these securities?

Okay, fair enough. So a new benchmark is needed (easier said than done, I’m guessing). Still, that’s not a good reason for permitting the valuation of illiquid assets using historical, rather than market, prices. But, as MacDonald said, “The bankers want the moon here.” Case in point:

The IIF plan would also let banks decide whether to hold asset-backed securities for as long as they want, freed from accounting rules that would force the banks to hold them to maturity. Instead, they would be able to book these securities on the balance sheet without taking the hit to profits, and then sell them after two years.

I’m not too surprised the banking industry wants to change the rules of the game. As Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild banking empire, once said:

Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.

Source:

“Bankers Cry Uncle”
Elizabeth MacDonald
FOXBusiness, May 22, 2008

Charting A U.S. Financial Crisis

I came across some excellent Wall Street Journal charts this morning which show how the present financial crisis in the United States came to be. Like that old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Sources: WSJ Market Data Group, Federal Reserve, Dealogic, Equifax, Moody’s Economy.com, National Association of Realtors, St. Louis Federal Reserve, Dow Jones Indexes

Article Source:

“U.S. Mulls Next Steps in Crisis”
Bob Davis, Greg Ip, and Damian Paletta
Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2008

UBS Predicts $600 Billion Loss From Credit Crunch

On Friday it was reported that analysts from UBS AG, Europe’s second largest bank, were predicting total industry losses from the ongoing credit crunch would reach $600 billion, with banks and brokers accounting for $350 billion of these losses. MarketWatch’s Steve Goldstein said earlier today that financial firms have been forced to write-down approximately $160 billion since the crisis began last summer. Goldstein wrote that, according to UBS strategist Geraud Charpin’s note to clients:

Corporate collateralized debt obligation have been relatively spared because defaults are low and CDOs are not mark to market, but risks remain, particularly as monoline insurers are heavily referenced in CDO baskets.

In today’s “Daily Briefing,” Fortune’s Colin Barr noted that:

The comment comes a day after insurance giant AIG (AIG) took an $11 billion hit on its portfolio of credit default swaps and government-sponsored mortgage lender Freddie Mac (FRE) took $3.1 billion in writedowns on its credit guarantee and derivatives holdings. UBS itself was hit with a $14 billion writedown on mortgage-related securities earlier this month…

“Leveraged risk positions are a cancer in this market, wrote UBS analyst Geraud Charpin, “and the sooner it is treated the better.”

According to CNN Money, the world’s largest manager of private wealth assets is concerned most underestimate the impact of the credit crunch:

The bank also noted that the crisis’ impact on the real economy is likely to be stronger than currently expected.

‘To cut a long story short, if we had a ‘rhetoric index’ measuring the tone of messages from our economics team, it would have been dropping since last September,’ the study said.

UBS said the downward trend has accelerated over the last few months with both US and EU data becoming increasingly worrisome.

‘At this stage, therefore, we have to recognise the risk that the economy will suffer more damage than what consensus suggests,’ UBS said.

No Sympathy For Wall Street

“Shanna, they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into. I say, let ‘em crash.”

-Airplane! (American comedy film. 1980)

I have this strange feeling that Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein is not Wall Street’s biggest fan. Maybe it has something to do with his piece from this morning entitled “Time for Wall Street to Pay,” in which he wrote:

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there’s part of me that takes some perverse satisfaction from the ever-widening crisis that has engulfed Wall Street, humbling its most powerful institutions and exposing its hypocrisy and corruption.

Pearlstein was just getting started:

Over the ensuing two decades, Wall Street has been brilliant at dreaming up other financial innovations that picked up where junk bonds left off. These included complex futures and derivatives contracts; loan syndication; securitization; credit default swaps; off-balance-sheet vehicles; collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs; and blank-check initial public offerings.

As the industry and its cheerleaders constantly remind us, these innovations have helped to lower the cost of capital and make the business sector more efficient and globally competitive. But what we are now discovering — or perhaps rediscovering — are all the ways in which all this glorious financial innovation has weakened the economy and the society it serves.

Pearlstein listed how Wall Street’s “innovations” have taken their toll on America and its economy:

For starters, these innovations have helped to create a cycle of financial booms and busts that have a tendency to spill over into the real economy, contributing to a heightened sense of insecurity.

They have shortened the time horizons of investors and corporate executives, who have responded by under-investing in research and the development of human capital.

They have contributed significantly to massive misallocation of capital to real estate, unproven technologies and unproductive financial manipulation.

They have made it easy and seemingly painless for businesses, households and even countries to take on dangerous levels of debt.

They have given traders a greater ability to secretly manipulate markets.

They have given corporations clever new tools to hide risks, liabilities and losses from investors.

And by giving banks the tools to circumvent reserve requirements and make more loans with less capital, they have enormously increased the leverage in the financial system and with it the risk of a financial meltdown.

But far and away the greatest damage from all this financial wizardry is the obscene levels of compensation it has generated for a select group of Wall Street executives and money managers.

Regarding this last point, Pearlstein warned that because “huge bonuses paid in the good years are never required to be paid back in the bad years,” this creates an “asymmetric compensation system that encourages excessive leverage and risk-taking.” Furthermore, he lamented at the fact that the prospect of earning untold wealth on Wall Street has attracted “an enormous amount of young talent that could have been more productively used in science, engineering, medicine, teaching, public service and businesses that generate genuine long-term value.” He asked:

Is it not fair to ask whether the United States can remain the world’s most prosperous and innovative economy when half of the seniors at the most prestigious colleges and universities now aspire to become “i-bankers” at Goldman Sachs?

At which point, Pearlstein went nuclear:

So I hope you’ll forgive me, dear readers, when I say that the best thing that could happen to our economy is for a dozen high-profile hedge funds to collapse; for investment banking to enter a long, deep freeze; for a major bank to fail; and for the price of a typical Park Avenue duplex to fall by 30 percent. For only then might we finally stop genuflecting before the altar of unregulated financial markets and insist that Wall Street serve the interest of Main Street, rather than the other way around.

Yes, I know it’s harsh and vengeful solution, and there will be lots of collateral damage. But as I look out over the destruction sweeping across the financial sector, I just can’t silence the small voice in my head that keeps repeating that old ‘60s expression, “Burn, baby, burn.”

Latest U.S. Economic Forecast: Apocalypse

Peter Brimelow from MarketWatch talked about Harry Schultz, the highest paid investment consultant in the world, and his International Harry Schultz Letter this morning. For those of you not familiar with Mr. Schultz, I wrote about him back on December 13:

Have you ever heard of Harry Schultz? I sure have, and to this day I am still in absolute awe of the money this man earns. Mr. Schultz, publisher of the International Harry Schultz Letter, is the highest paid investment consultant in the world at $3,500 an hour (or $4,900 an hour if you require his services during the weekend).

Brimelow, in “Schultz still sees an apocalypse,” wrote that since Schultz declared a “financial tsunami is upon us” in the December issue of his investment newsletter, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost some 2,000 points. According to Brimelow:

So I checked to see if Schultz is any cheerier.
Answer: No.

The MarketWatch columnist talked about Schultz’s latest U.S. economic forecast. He said:

Schultz writes: “It’s a derivative crisis, stupid!… 9,000 U.S. banks failed in 1929-1932; look for new records… Hyper-inflation is a distinct possibility; stay awake!”

Among his more colorful recommendations: “Buy a few local non-rare gold coins of whatever country you are in for emergency/barter use, smallest denominations… Keep 6-12 months cash at home/ office/ lawyer-doctor office. Pretend an emergency is coming, because it may be.”

According to Brimelow, Schultz recommended traditional inflation hedges that were popular in the 1970s: art, commercial property that yields certain income, and farm land. In addition, Brimelow noted that:

The HSL section called “Actions To Take - In A Nutshell” epitomizes Schultz’s combination of sensational and shrewd. It begins: “The global derivative/credit crisis is nearing breaking point. Take immediate measures to safeguard your assets before it becomes too late, due to sudden (bank/government) restrictions on cash withdrawals, wire transfer limitations, the loss or recall of credit facilities, frozen fund redemptions, foreign exchange controls, etc…”

This outlook is consistent with what Schultz was predicting in his December newsletter. From MarketWatch on December 13:

Among other interesting ideas raised by Schultz in his intense, somewhat terrifying introduction: recession, possibly depression; bank failures; exchange controls; housing prices down by 50%; credit card company failures; money market fund dangers; tripling of U.S. jobless numbers; federal bail-outs for Fannie Mae.

Apocalypse, indeed.

(Note: The author disclaims any personal liability, loss, or risk incurred as a consequence of the use and application, either directly or indirectly, of any information presented herein.)

Banks May Write Down Additional $300 Billion

Yesterday, global strategy consulting firm Oliver Wyman said in a new study that an additional $300 billion in write-downs related to the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown may be announced by banks before the crisis is over. Back on January 18 I noted that write-downs had already surpassed $100 billion. In a press release picked up by Yahoo! Finance yesterday, John Colas, Managing Director and head of the North American Corporate Strategy Practice at Oliver Wyman, said:

The credit crisis is unlikely to resolve itself before the end of this year. We also see strong likelihood of price corrections in emerging markets and this combination will extend the value loss and turbulence witnessed in 2007.

The management consultancy said in its “State of the Financial Services Industry” report:

We expect a stormy 2008. While governments, central banks and regulators scramble to address the aftermath of the sub-prime fallout, several other crises are mounting.

These other disruptions include:
• A significant slowdown in European real estate markets, especially in Spain and the UK
• The continued weakening of the U.S. dollar
• A collapse in commodity prices
• A fall in Chinese and Indian stocks

The financial services industry should expect “turbulent conditions for 2008 and beyond.” Oliver Wyman predicted that American banks are especially at risk. From its 2008 report:

North American financial services firms will have a tough year. Market uncertainty, combined with further write-downs and expected home-price and loan-volume declines, implies more squeezes on earnings. Banks most likely will have to increase loan-loss reserves.

In North America last year, the financial sector lost 13% in market value, second only to Japan. In contrast to the United States, the value of financial companies in Canada grew 12%.

For the first time since 2002, the global market value of the industry fell, according to the annual report. Controlling for exchange rates, the industry lost 7% of its market value last year. While $300 to $400 billion was gained in red-hot emerging markets last year, financial institutions lost more than $1 trillion in mature economies.

Write-Downs: $107.8 Billion And Counting

Well, it’s official. According to the Wall Street Journal this morning, write-downs related to the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown now surpass $100 billion. From the Journal’s MarketBeat Blog, here is the damage to-date:

Merrill Lynch- $22.4B
Citigroup- $19.9B
UBS- $14.4B
Morgan Stanley- $9.4B
HSBC- $7.5B
Credit Agricole- $3.6B
Deutsche Bank- $3.2
Bank of America- $3.0B
CIBC- $3.0B*
Wachovia- $2.7B*
AIG- $2.7B
Barclays- $2.7B
RBS- $2.5B
Credit Suisse- $1.9B
Bear Stearns- $1.9B
J.P. Morgan Chase- $1.4B
Countrywide- $1.0B
Others- $4.6B
Total- $107.8 billion in write-downs by banks, brokerage firms, and others

*Includes 4th quarter forecasts

A significant portion of the write-downs comes from 5 companies- Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, UBS, Morgan Stanley, and HSBC. Combined, they have written-down almost $73 billion in assets. Meanwhile, the Journal noted:

The thing is, the writedowns aren’t finished. Several firms retain significant exposure to subprime, such as Citigroup, which still has $37 billion in subprime exposure. Back in November, Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius estimated about $200 billion in mortgage-related losses on the big banking balance sheets. (He was ridiculed for this and charged with “talking his book;” but the figures show his gloomy forecast is on the way to being fulfilled.)

Panic In The Streets

This morning I read an interesting article by Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post. In “Caught in a Downdraft and Starting to Panic,” Pearlstein noted how Main Street and Wall Street have come to terms with a troubled economy:

The country and Wall Street have already made great progress in moving through the stages of economic grief:

• Willful blindness. (“Bubble, what bubble?”)
• Denial. (“House prices never fall. It’s only those speculators in Las Vegas and the Gulf Coast.”)
• Rationalization. (“Maybe subprime did get out of hand, but it’s really a small part of the market.”)
• Fantasy. (“Things should be pretty much back to normal by the second half of ‘08.”)
• Anger. (“If it weren’t for those yahoos up in structured finance…”)
• Capitulation. (“We might as well take these write-downs now and get it over with.”)
• Depression. (“This is going to get worse before it gets better.”)

Now we’re entering a new stage: Panic.

Pearlstein pointed to the following as evidence of this next stage of grief:

Hedge funds scrambling to actually hedge their positions. Central banks throwing money at money-center banks. Huge financial institutions desperately raising capital from foreign investors on concessionary terms. Day after day of triple-digit declines on the Dow. Gold prices heading toward $1,000 an ounce, with record lows on the dollar. Policymakers and politicians tripping over one another to offer economic-stimulus plans.

Not even the cheerleaders can turn the tide:

Despite the brave exhortations from the CNBC Squawk Box, we are nowhere near the end of the financial unraveling that is necessary for an economic bottom to be reached.

Pearlstein predicts that the final stage will involve the unraveling of credit-default swaps:

Looking ahead, the final phase of this unraveling is likely to implicate the giant market in credit-default swaps. Those swaps are essentially contracts that allow sophisticated investors to bet on whether a company, a government entity, or even a securitized package of loans will default on its debt obligations. And they can place these bets whether they own the underlying security or not.

Because these contracts trade on unregulated derivatives markets, nobody knows who holds the losing side of the bets. But it’s a good guess that if defaults rise even to historically normal levels, a big hit will be taken by highly leveraged hedge funds, some of which may be unable to pay off on their bets and simply collapse. That, in turn, would trigger even further losses by banks and other investors that, unlike pure speculators, rely on those instruments to insure against default.

The credit-default swap has become so central to modern global finance that its size — the amount insured, in effect — is estimated at $43 trillion. If the losing side is unable to make good on even a fraction of a percent of those contracts, it could set in motion a financial chain reaction that could easily rival the subprime debacle.

Wall Street Write-Downs Approach $100 Billion Mark

Earlier today Wall Street Journal bloggers reported that write-downs related to the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown have reached $96 billion after Citigroup announced another $17.4 billion in write-downs. A post in the Deal Journal predicted that this amount is expected to top $100 billion by the end of the week.

According to the blog, when you add Citigroup’s latest write-down to the $14.6 billion already lost by the bank, “Citigroup’s total hit to date related to the subprime-mortgage meltdown is $32 billion, the largest by any investment bank and one-third of the total written down across the entire sector.”

Deal Journal bloggers predict that the “write-downometer” from the Dow Jones-owned Financial News will surge to $112.1 billion by the end of this week after J.P. Morgan Chase and Merrill Lynch announce their fourth-quarter results. Analysts predict J.P. Morgan Chase to announce an additional $3.4 billion, while Merrill is expected to write-down somewhere between $15 billion to $22 billion.

Before the holidays, the financial blog Calculated Risk talked about the potential total losses from the growing number of write-downs. From their December 23 post entitled, “Barclays: Losses May Reach $700 Billion”:

Goldman Sachs caused shock last month when it predicted that total crunch losses would reach $500bn, leading to a $2 trillion contraction in lending as bank multiples kick into reverse. This already seems humdrum.

“Our counterparties are telling us that losses may reach $700bn,” says Rob McAdie, head of credit at Barclays Capital. Where will it end? The big banks face a further $200bn of defaults in commercial property. On it goes.

UPDATE: My main interest in this article was the quote from Barclays Capital. There has been a growing agreement that the mortgage credit crisis would result in losses of perhaps $400B to $500B; this is the first estimate I’ve seen significantly above that number.

I noted last week that a $1+ trillion mortgage loss number is possible if it becomes socially acceptable for the middle class to walk away from their upside down mortgages. And that doesn’t include losses in CRE, corporate debt and the decrease in household net worth.

The S&L crisis was $160B, so even adjusting for inflation, the current crisis is much worse than the S&L crisis…

World’s Highest Paid Advisor: ‘Financial Tsunami Is Upon Us’

Have you ever heard of Harry Schultz? I sure have, and to this day I am still in absolute awe of the money this man earns. Mr. Schultz, publisher of the International Harry Schultz Letter, is the highest paid investment consultant in the world at $3,500 an hour (or $4,900 an hour if you require his services during the weekend). I talked about him in my November 21 post where I discussed gold as a hedge and investment. Back then, Schultz said that gold will advance past the thousand dollar mark in 2008. Earlier today in his MarketWatch commentary, Peter Brimelow said that Schultz’s latest newsletter issue is “absolutely apocalyptical.” Schultz warned, “A financial tsunami is upon us,” which he attributes to lax credit and complications from the derivatives craze. MarketWatch’s Brimelow says:

Among other interesting ideas raised by Schultz in his intense, somewhat terrifying introduction: recession, possibly depression; bank failures; exchange controls; housing prices down by 50%; credit card company failures; money market fund dangers; tripling of U.S. jobless numbers; federal bail-outs for Fannie Mae.

 Bank run from “It’s A Wonderful Life”

Sound terrifying? According to Brimelow, Schultz’s advice for protecting one’s self from the coming financial storm and vulnerable U.S. banking system included, most urgently, closing out time deposits and buying non-U.S. government bonds. Regarding the future of the U.S. dollar, Schultz warned:

…the second biggest danger is owning U.S. dollars in any form, (it) has crashed and going much lower … use dollar rallies to exit dollars or sell short … This is not a time to seek profits, but to protect what U have … Portfolio diversification is essential in troubled times.

Brimelow noted Schultz’s favored currencies are, “In order of preference: Swiss Franc, Australian dollar, Euro, and Canadian dollar.”

On the topic of gold, Schultz recommended that:

Exposure to gold shares and bullion should be a minimum of 35-45% of your total portfolio, with at least 10% in physical gold bullion and coins, and/or very rare coins…

The public is still not in the gold market. They will be in 2008 as the derivatives and credit crises bring down more financial institutions (amid recession) and eyes will be opened, via pain. While Rome burns, gold will smash through its old unadjusted-for-inflation $850 high on the way to $1,600, & who knows how far beyond …

Wow. Apocalyptical indeed. By the way, Brimelow noted that Harry Schultz is up 21.42% over the past year according to the Hulbert Financial Digest, versus 7.51% for the dividend-reinvested Dow Jones Wilshire 5000. Looking back over five years, Schultz is up 34.38% annualized versus 12.85% for the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000.

Paulson Predecessor Says U.S. Recession Likely

In Sunday’s Financial Times (UK), former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that the odds now favor a U.S. recession that will slow growth significantly on a global basis. Summers, who served with the Clinton administration and now teaches at Harvard University in addition to serving as a managing director at hedge fund D.E. Shaw Group, concluded that the U.S. economy will stall out, based on the following:

1. The U.S. housing slump marches on.

Several streams of data indicate how much more serious the situation is than was clear a few months ago. First, forward-looking indicators suggest that the housing sector may be in free-fall from what felt like the basement levels of a few months ago. Single family home construction may be down over the next year by as much as half from previous peak levels. There are forecasts implied by at least one property derivatives market indicating that nationwide house prices could fall from their previous peaks by as much as 25 per cent over the next several years.

2. The U.S. financial sector will be rocked— hard.

Second, it is now clear that only a small part of the financial distress that must be worked through has yet been faced. On even the most optimistic estimates, the rate of foreclosure will more than double over the next year as rates reset on subprime mortgages and home values fall. Estimates vary, but there is nearly universal agreement that – if all assets were marked to market valuations – total losses in the American financial sector would be several times the $50bn or so in write-downs that have already been announced by big financial institutions. These figures take no account of the likelihood that losses will spread to the credit card, auto and commercial property sectors. Nor do they recognise the large volume of financial instruments that depend for their high ratings on guarantees provided by credit insurers whose own health is now very much in doubt.

3. Credit, necessary for economic expansion, will become tougher to come by.

Third, the capacity of the financial system to provide credit in support of new investment on the scale necessary to maintain economic expansion is in increasing doubt. The extent of the flight to quality and its expected persistence was powerfully demonstrated last week when the yield on the two-year Treasury bond dropped below 3 per cent for the first time in years. Banks and other financial intermediaries will inevitably curtail new lending as they are hit by a perfect storm of declining capital due to mark-to-market losses, involuntary balance sheet expansion as various backstop facilities are called, and greatly reduced confidence in the creditworthiness of traditional borrowers as the economy turns downwards and asset prices fall.

Add the following:

Then there are the potentially adverse effects on confidence of a sharply falling dollar, rising energy costs, geopolitical uncertainties especially in the Middle East, or lower global growth as economic slowdown and a falling dollar cause the US no longer to fulfill its traditional role of importer of last resort.

And you have the recipe for an economic recession in the United States. Summers said:

Even if necessary changes in policy are implemented, the odds now favour a US recession that slows growth significantly on a global basis. Without stronger policy responses than have been observed to date, moreover, there is the risk that the adverse impacts will be felt for the rest of this decade and beyond.