Macroeconomia Crisi finanziaria e sviluppi (5 lettori)

[EKI]

The Rude Awakening

Laguna Beach, California

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

What the “Woman Who Call Wall Street’s Meltdown” really had to say,



By the time you read this column, Goldman Sachs will have probably reported a dazzling result for the second quarter. The rumors preceding this celebrated event sparked a stupendous 185-point rally on Wall Street yesterday.

But the trading day was not all about mere rumors. It was also about hearsay, hype and giddy optimism…

Meredith Whitney, “The Woman Who Called Wall Street’s Meltdown,” according to the Fortune Magazine cover of August 18, 2008, upgraded the shares of Goldman Sachs to a “Buy,” and predicted the stock would rise 30% from current levels. “Goldman has all the benefits of the capital markets in general,” said Whitney, “Without the ‘junk in the trunk’ as I like to call it.” Goldman shares jumped 5.3%.

Based on Whitney’s upgrade, and the subsequent market action, gullible investors could have deduced that the credit crisis has ended. The rest of us could have deduced that the credit crisis took a day off.

Lost in the celebration of Whitney’s upgrade was a smattering of bad news “below the fold.” For starters, Whitney did NOT upgrade any of the other seven banks she analyses. To the contrary, Whitney damned the other seven banks – and the economy in general – with her faint praise for Goldman.

“Our more bullish outlook on Goldman Sachs shares is deeply rooted in our sustained bearish stance on the U.S. economy and the state of U.S. financials at large,” said the influential analyst. “Specifically, we expect a tsunami of debt issuance from federal/sovereign, state, and local governments to fund woefully underfunded budget gaps. In addition, we expect corporate debt issuance to be at least 60% as strong as peak cycle levels, reflecting sizable debt maturity rolls. What's more, given fewer players in the market, not only is GS benefiting from market share gains on these products but more widely in the derivatives products.

“To be clear, our reasons for liking GS stock today are drastically different from any we have had recommending the stock on and off over the past decade. In the past, GS shares were a great play on equity markets and expansive global gross domestic product. While that may still hold true down the line, our thesis today is that we expect GS to be the key competitor in some of the most unpredictable markets: government, corporate, and municipal debt.”

As if on cue, the U.S. Treasury disclosed yesterday that the U.S. federal deficit has already topped $1 trillion for 2009…and the year is barely half over! Sure, that might seem like bad news. But it’s actually GOOD news…for Goldman Sachs. More debts mean more Treasury bonds, which mean more trading profits for Treasury bond dealers like Goldman.

Whitney, who probably possesses more intellectual honesty than most equity analysts, probably possesses legitimate reasons to fancy the shares of Goldman. But a relatively promising outlook of one company is hardly a reason for investors to chase after all the other stocks in the market.

We would be surprised to discover any correlation whatsoever between the fortunes of Goldman Sachs and the fortunes of a bakery in Des Moines or a florist in Fargo. On the other hand, we have no trouble whatsoever imagining that Goldman might flourish while bakeries and florists are going out of business from coast to coast.

The only essential point here is that Goldman, circa 2009, is hardly General Motors, circa 1954. What happens in Goldman stays in Goldman. This company is not a bellwether for the economy at large.

 

[stockuccio]

ancora sofferente riporto

(ANSA)- ROMA, 14 LUG - Goldman Sachs ha chiuso il secondo trimestre con un utile netto di 3,44 mld di dollari, pari a 4,93 dollari per azione contro i 3,65 previsti. Secondo gli analisti e' l'utile trimestrale piu' alto nella storia della banca d'affari newyorchese. Sui risultati hanno pesato i 426 mln di dollari pagati di interessi sui 10 mld ricevuti dal governo nell'ambito del Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp): esclusi gli interessi pagati al Tesoro, gli utili per azione sono stati pari a 5,71 dollari per azione.


dopo una analisi diciamo accurata si arriva ad una conclusione inaspettata ... AIG è gestita dal governo per pagare i cds di goldman coi soldi dei contribuenti http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/07/what-is-goldman-sachs/


il ritorno di Nouriel


Mounting Job Losses Will Hurt Consumption, Housing, Banks’ Balance Sheets, Public Finances and Lead to Protectionist Pressures
Nouriel Roubini | Jul 14, 2009

Recent data suggest that job market conditions are not improving in the United States and other advanced economies. In the U.S., the unemployment rate, currently at 9.5%, is poised to rise above 10% by the fall. It should peak at 11% some time in 2010 and remain well above 10% for a long time. The unemployment rate will peak above 10% in most other advanced economies (especially Europe and Japan), too, where social safety nets are broader and thus leading to less short term job losses and pain, but where the effects of the crisis on growth have been even more severe than the U.S.

But these raw figures on job losses, bad as they are, actually understate the weakness in world labor markets. If you include partially employed workers and discouraged workers who left the U.S. labor force, for example, the unemployment rate is already 16.5%; even temporary employment is sharply down. Monetary and fiscal stimulus in most countries has done little to slow down the rate of job losses as economies suffer from problems of insolvency, not just illiquidity, and as the fiscal stimulus programs are too small and not labor intensive enough. As a result, total labor income – the product of jobs times hours worked times average hourly wages – has fallen dramatically.

Moreover, many employers, seeking to “share the pain” of the recession and slow down the rate of layoffs, are now asking workers to accept cuts in both hours and hourly wages. Thus, the total effect of the recession on labor income of jobs, hours and wage reductions is much larger.

Other indicators are suggesting a protracted period of job losses and a persistently high unemployment rate even after the recession is over. The average duration of unemployment is not at an all time high in the U.S. Many manufacturing sectors are on a secular decline (autos, etc.) and employers are shedding jobs on a permanent basis; employment in the previously bubbly sectors (housing and related housing/real estate services, banking and financial services) is falling sharply and will not recover for a long time. The process of offshore outsourcing of both blue collar and white collar jobs is still in full swing. A lot of the job losses in the U.S. and in other advanced economies are structural rather than cyclical; many jobs will never come back.

A sharp contraction in jobs and labor income has many negative consequences on both the economy and financial markets. There are at least five important ones that we will discuss next:

First, falling labor income implies falling consumption for shopped-out, saving-less and debt-burdened households, which have already been hard hit by a massive loss of wealth (as the value of equities and homes has sharply fallen) and a very large rise in their debt ratios and debt servicing ratios. With consumption accounting for 70% of GDP in the U.S. and also a high share of aggregate demand in other advanced economies, this implies that the recession will last longer, and that economic recovery next year will be anemic (less than 1% growth in the U.S. and possibly even lower growth rates in Europe and Japan).

Second, job losses will lead to a more protracted and severe housing recession, as joblessness and falling income are key factors in determining delinquencies on mortgages and foreclosure; by the end of this year about 8.4 million U.S. individuals with mortgages will be unemployed, unable to service their mortgages and likely to default. Also, with falling incomes, uncertainty about future employment and weak consumer confidence the number of households who are willing to buy a new home or can qualify for a mortgage is smaller. Home prices have already fallen about 27% from their peak; they are still falling – year over year – by 18%. So, the cumulative fall in home price is likely to end up being 40% to 45% from the peak. Large job losses also lead to less demand for commercial real estate (office space and factory floors) and thus likely to worsen the accelerating slump in this sector.

Third, if you plug an unemployment rate of 10% to 11% into any model of loan default rates and losses given default, you get ugly figures not just for residential mortgages (both prime and subprime), but also for commercial real estate, credit cards, student loans, auto loans, etc. The U.S. stress tests assumed that the U.S. unemployment rate will average – in the most adverse scenario – 10.3% in 2010. But at the current rate of job losses the unemployment rate will be above 10.3% already at some point this fall. Thus, banks losses on their toxic assets and their capital needs will be much larger than recently estimated, which will worsen the credit crunch and the ability of households and firms to borrow to finance consumer durable spending, residential home purchases and capital spending by the corporate sector.

Fourth, rising job losses lead to greater demands for protectionist measures, as governments are pressured to save domestic jobs. The sharp fall in global exports and imports has already been severe even without a massive surge – so far – in protectionist actions. But, as job losses mount and a glut of global manufacturing capacity needs to be worked out, these pressures will escalate. While the G20 committed in the fall to avoid protectionist actions, by early 2009 already 17 out of the 20 countries in this group had undertaken over 50 policy measures that are protectionist. This rise in protectionism threatens to aggravate the damaging contraction of global trade.

Fifth, the higher the unemployment rate goes, the wider budget deficits will become, as automatic stabilizers reduce revenue as labor income falls and increase spending (for example, on unemployment benefits). Thus, an already unsustainable U.S. fiscal path, with budget deficits above 12% of GDP this year and public debt expected to double as a share of GDP from 40% in 2008 to 80% by 2014, becomes even worse.

This leads to a very difficult policy dilemma. On the one hand, rising unemployment rates are forcing politicians in the U.S. and other countries to consider additional fiscal stimulus programs to boost sagging demand and falling employment. For example, in the U.S. the drumbeat about the need for another fiscal stimulus is becoming louder by the day: state and local government have a $250 billion fiscal hole that the Federal government will have to help fill; expiring unemployment benefits will have to be extended as the number of continuing claims – signaling very difficult prospects for currently unemployed workers – are surging to all time highs; a new round of employment-intensive jobs programs and infrastructure spending will be necessary.

On the other hand, despite persistent deflationary pressures that will continue through all of 2010 (as the slack in goods and labor markets is still sharply rising), rising budget deficits, high financial-sector bailout costs, continued monetization of deficits, and eventually unsustainable levels of public debt will ultimately lead to higher expected inflation – and thus to higher interest rates, which would stifle the recovery of private demand. Deflationary pressures will be dominant through 2010, but by 2011-2012 the effect of large and monetized fiscal deficit will put significant upward pressures on long term government bond yields, especially as the U.S. creditors are becoming wary by the day of the risk that the U.S. will inflate or devalue away the real value of their trillions of U.S. dollar assets.

So, increasingly, while further fiscal stimulus seems necessary to avoid a more protracted recession, governments around the world can ill afford it: they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Indeed if, like Japan in the late 1990’s and the U.S. in 1937, they take the threat of large deficits seriously and raise taxes and cut spending too much too soon, their economies could fall back into recession. But recession could also be the result if deficits are allowed to fester, or are increased with additional stimulus to boost jobs and growth, because bond-market vigilantes might push borrowing costs higher. Indeed, in the U.S. most of the 2001-2003 tax cuts are expiring at the end of 2010 – cuts on income taxes, capital gains, dividends and estates taxes – and if these cuts are not reversed – to prevent a massive fiscal drag in 2011 – the fiscal deficit will remain extremely large even in 2011-2012, thus increasing the concerns about deficits and debt sustainability. And if the tax cuts are partially or fully allowed to expire to allow the reductions of unsustainable fiscal deficits, a weak economy with an anemic recovery could be pushed into another recession. Indeed, damn if you do and damn if you don’t!

Thus, even as mounting job losses are undermining labor income and consumption, pushing further down home prices, increasing the banks’ losses, weakening the support for free trade, and further worsening public finances, the room for further policy stimulus is becoming narrower. Indeed, not only are governments running out of fiscal bullets as debt surges, but monetary policy is having little short-run traction in economies suffering insolvency – not just liquidity – problems and monetary easing has so far been like pushing on a string. Worse still, in the medium turn the monetary overhang may lead to significant inflationary risks as a period of sharp deflation may be followed – from 2011 on - by a period of rising expected inflation and disorderly weakening of the U.S. dollar.

Little wonder, then, that we are now witnessing a significant correction in equity, credit, and commodities markets. The irrational exuberance that drove a three-month bear-market rally in the spring is now giving way to a more sober realization among investors that the global recession will not be over until year end, that the recovery will be weak and well below trend, and that the risks of a double-dip W-shaped recession are rising. The alleged green shoots turned to be yellow weeds and – unless policy makers figure out a sensible medium term exit strategy for monetary and fiscal policy – they may turn into brown manure.

 

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acc ... qaddirittura un pdf da 2,62 mb ...

(ANSA) - NEW YORK, 14 lug - Il ruolo che la Goldman Sachs,
forse la piu' famosa tra le banche Usa, ha svolto nella crisi
economica americana in questi ultimi mesi e' al centro di una
violenta polemica tra esperti economici degli Stati Uniti.
Tutto parte da un lungo articolo pubblicato da Rolling Stone
da Matt Taibbi, uno dei giornalisti politici americani piu'
aggressivi, in cui accusa la banca di essere alla base di tutte
le bolle moderne, da quella della Grande Depressione a quella
internettiana della fine degli anni novanta fino alla piu'
recente legata al mercato immobiliare e ai mutui subprime,.
Cioe' quelli a rischio che poi venivano cartolarizzati con
grossi guadagni per tutti i protagonisti.
Secondo Taibbi, Goldman Sachs cartolarizzava i mutui
attraverso strumenti derivativi chiamati 'Collateralized Debt
Obligations' (Cdo), che venivano poi garantiti da strumenti
assicurativi (forniti in particolare dal colosso Aig,
virtualmente fallito), con i famigerati Credit Default Swap
(Cds), cioe' una sorta di assicurazione sugli investimenti a
rischio.
Scrive Taibb: ''gli swap erano diventati una sorta di gara
tra Aig e Goldman Sachs: la banca puntava sul loro fallimento,
Aig scommetteva sul contrario''.
Negli ambienti finanziaria americani la prosa di Taibbi viene
giudicata assoluta fantascienza: la ex banca d'affari (ora ha lo
statuto, almeno teorico, di banca commerciale) non ha mai avuto
l'obiettivo di creare una bolla o di speculare sullo scoppio di
una bolla, trattandosi di fenomeni impossibili da controllare e
generalmente devastanti per tutti.
Nessuno contesta invece la lista stilata da Taibbi, con una
presenza di ex di Goldman Sachs in quasi tutti gli ambienti
economici che contano.
Si va dal segretario al Tesoro Usa Timothy Geithner al suo
predecessore Henry Paulson, dal presidente della Banca Mondiale
Bob Zoellick a Ed Liddy, incaricato di salvare l'Aig. Tra i
banchieri centrali, spiccano l'italiano Mario Draghi e il
canadese Mark Carney. (ANSA).

 

[yellow]

Ritengo utile sottolineare che l'ottima/fantasmagorica/eclatante trimestrale
di Goldman Sachs
( così come probabilmente/prevedibilmente quella della maggior parte dei Colossi Bancari USA....ma vale pure per quelli non USA ),
è dovuta PRINCIPALMENTE al Trading ed ai Mercati
( praticamente di TUTTI i tipi ),
che nell'ultimo Trimestre 2009 sono VOLATI LETTERALMENTE,
e dove chiunque abbia avuto il coraggio di acquistare ha visto GUADAGNI
senza precedenti.

Figurarsi le grandi Banche che ancora operano con LEVE disumane,
e che quindi hanno quantomeno guadagni decuplicati.

Finchè dura......

 

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alla faccia degli anglosassoni

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/07/industrial-production-declines-capacity.html

http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/07/eurozone-industrial-production-improves.html

 

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un intervento interessante


IASB Proposes Accounting Rules to Clarify Bank Value (Update1)
2009-07-14 16:35:35.90 GMT


(Adds banking group comment in seventh paragraph.)

By Peter Chapman
July 14 (Bloomberg) -- Europe’s accounting standard-setters
proposed rules to streamline how banks book complex financial
instruments, in an attempt to make it easier to understand
banks’ value.
The proposals on how financial instruments are classified
and measured would replace about 20 different ways of measuring
them using two systems, fair value or amortized cost, the
International Accounting Standards Board said.
“Making it easier for investors to understand financial
statements is an essential ingredient to the recovery of
investor confidence,” said IASB Chairman David Tweedie in a
statement from London today.
The rules will become part of the International Financial
Reporting Standards used in more than 100 countries. The Group
of 20 nations, comprised of top industrialized nations as well
as emerging markets such as Brazil and China, have asked for
such amendments to help protect the global economy.
Products with predictable cash flows would tend to be
covered by amortized cost, while instruments such as derivatives
would be covered by the fair-value approach, the IASB said.
Fair-value, or mark-to-market, forces companies to value many
securities each based on market prices. Amortized costs are
based on payments and impairments on financing.

Impairment

The proposal would change impairment rules on some types of
market-traded bonds such as “vanilla” corporate bonds,
bringing their treatment into line with the system for loans,
the IASB said. Missed bond payments would be deducted from
profits rather than the drop in market value of the asset, which
could be higher.
The European Banking Federation said the proposals may
widen the scope of the fair value measurement, something it
opposes.
“The criterion for determining measurement categories
should be based on the principle of how instruments are used in
business,” said Denisa Mularova, an adviser to the group, in
Brussels. The same types of asset may be held to maturity by a
bank or actively traded, and the accounting rules should reflect
that, she said.
The U.S. in April changed “mark-to-market” rules that may
help banks such as Citigroup Inc. report higher profits by
easing requirements to recognize fluctuations in investment
values.

Hedge Accounting

The IASB will work with the U.S. Financial Accounting
Standards Board, “to achieve a common and improved accounting
standard on financial instruments,” Tweedie said.
The IASB, the non-government body in London that drafts
IFRS, called for public comments until September 14. Companies
will be able to opt to use the new rules in year-end 2009
financial statements. They won’t be mandatory until 2012, the
IASB said.
The ISAB said the next set of changes will cover impairment
methodology and hedge accounting.



e ora vi chiedo: xche' una banca o un'assicurazione dovrebbe finanziare l'economia reale, se acquistando e tradando distressed bonds o semplicemente bonds, o acquistando azioni sotto la dicitura partecipazione strategica, dove lo strategico non e' individuato in maniera certa e peculiare, non e' soggetta alla valutazione di mercato e puo' valutare tutto al fair value o al costo? da una parte, ovvero finanziando l'economia reale aumentando gli impieghi ed aprendo i cordoni della borsa, accetterebbe un rischio d'impresa, dall'altra il rischio di svalutazione a bilancio ed eventuale ricapitalizzazione o svalutazione del capitale x perdite e' praticamente 0 di conseguenza il rischio d'impresa di gran lunga mitigato, e se si sbaglia beh ci sono 2.5 tlns di mamma FED. Altrimenti il VAR di GS col cavolo che era li dov'e'.

il Fringuello

 

[stockuccio]

nell'attesa (spero non vana) che si torni al mark-to-market per i derivati (e voglio proprio ridere coi bilanci delle banche specialmente se dovranno rientrare nei bilanci le porcherie parcheggiate esternamente) ... in questa schifezza di mondo si discute del libercolo di Julien Coupat, sulle conseguenze della impossibilità (alla faccia delle inutili rassicurazioni dei governanti) del recupero occupazionale http://crisis.blogosfere.it/2009/07/linsurrezione-che-arriva.html
la società è da rifare da cima a fondo

allego il pdf

nel frattempo tutti contenti per l'andamento dei mercati

 

[troppidebiti]

nell'attesa (spero non vana) che si torni al mark-to-market per i derivati (e voglio proprio ridere coi bilanci delle banche specialmente se dovranno rientrare nei bilanci le porcherie parcheggiate esternamente) ... in questa schifezza di mondo si discute del libercolo di Julien Coupat, sulle conseguenze della impossibilità (alla faccia delle inutili rassicurazioni dei governanti) del recupero occupazionale http://crisis.blogosfere.it/2009/07/linsurrezione-che-arriva.html
la società è da rifare da cima a fondo

allego il pdf

nel frattempo tutti contenti per l'andamento dei mercati

stockuccio gli indici sono letteralmente esplosi

 

[stockuccio]

stockuccio gli indici sono letteralmente esplosi

quanto ti diverti alle spalle altrui ... è ovvio che gli indici esplodano, i fondamentali sono ottimi

 

[troppidebiti]

quanto ti diverti alle spalle altrui ... è ovvio che gli indici esplodano, i fondamentali sono ottimi

ahahah questa è stupenda

in effetti anche a me questa euforia mi pare innaturale