Posts Tagged ‘Treasury Department’
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
In a stunning revelation, Bloomberg has obtained 29,000 pages of Federal Reserve documents detailing the largest bailout in American history. According to an article that will appear in the January issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine, the “Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on December 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates.”
The $7.77 trillion that the central bank made available stunned even Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009. According to Stern, he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It overshadows the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) program. When you add up guarantees and lending limits, it becomes clear that the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March, 2009 to rescuing the financial system. That is more than half the value of the U.S. GDP that year. “TARP at least had some strings attached,” said Representative Brad Miller (D-NC), a member of the House Financial Services Committee. “With the Fed programs, there was nothing.”
According to Bloomberg’s editors, “Even as they were tapping the Fed for emergency loans at rates as low as 0.01 percent, the banks that were the biggest beneficiaries of the program were assuring investors that their firms were healthy. Moreover, these banks used money they had received in the bailout to lobby Congress against reforms aimed at preventing the next collapse. By keeping the details of its activities under wraps, the Fed deprived lawmakers of the essential information they needed to draft those rules. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, for example, was debated and passed by Congress in 2010 without a full understanding of how deeply the banks had depended on the Fed for survival. Similarly, lawmakers approved the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to rescue the banks without knowing the details of the far larger bailout being run by the Fed.
“The central bank justified its approach by saying that disclosing the information would have signaled to the markets that the financial institutions that received help were in trouble. That, in turn, would make needy institutions reluctant to use the Fed as a lender of last resort in the next crisis. Fed officials argue, with some justification, that the program helped avert a much bigger economic cataclysm and that all the loans have now been repaid.”
Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, argues that the Fed’s secret bailout is a sign that it was doing its job. According to Thompson, “First, you can be furious that the Federal Reserve ‘committed’ $7.7 trillion — a sum of money equal to half of the U.S. economy — to save the financial system. I understand the shock, but we were at the precipice of catastrophe and that money wasn’t ‘spent’ so much as it was put at risk and subsequently recouped. The economy has struggled in the three years since, but we avoided meltdown. The trillions worked.
“Second, you can be furious that the banks made a profit off of their own mistakes — but $13 billion is a small price to pay for staving off Armageddon. Third, you can be furious that the Federal Reserve went to court to keep this information out of the hands of journalists. There, I’d agree. It’s Congress’s job (not the Federal Reserve’s job) to pass laws that govern the banking sector, but Congress needs information to make good decisions about regulating banks and it’s disappointing that the Federal Reserve withheld details about its bailouts while the commission and the Dodd-Frank debate were ongoing. Fourth, you can be furious that our central bank basically did the right thing when it had to, and its counterpart in Europe won’t — at the risk of a continental meltdown.”
Times’ Massimo Calabresi agrees. According to Calabresi, “But the Fed saved the world economy through all this lending without losing a penny in the process. And after its initial heavy breathing, the article does give the Fed an opportunity to explain itself. ‘Supporting financial-market stability in times of extreme stress is a core function of central banks,’ said William B. English, director of the Fed’s Division of Monetary Affairs. “Our lending programs served to prevent a collapse of the financial system and to keep credit flowing to American families and businesses.’ In other words, lending money to banks in a crisis is the whole point of the Fed: saving the world economy by flooding the system with money when it is about to freeze up is exactly what the central bank was created to do.”
The Fed has been lending money to banks since just after it was established in 1913. By the end of 2008, the Fed had created or expanded 11 lending facilities catering to financial firms that were unable to obtain short-term loans from their usual sources. “Supporting financial-market stability in times of extreme market stress is a core function of central banks,” said William English, director of the Fed’s Division of Monetary Affairs. “Our lending programs served to prevent a collapse of the financial system and to keep credit flowing to American families and businesses.”
Tags: bailout, Ben Bernanke, Bloomberg, Committee, congress, Division of Monetary Affairs, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Federal Reserve, Freedom of Information Act, GDP, House Financial Services, Occupy Wall Street movement, Treasury Department, Troubled Asset Relief Program, Wall Street
Posted in Economics, Financing, General | No Comments »
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
Is a 20 percent downpayment on a house or condominium on the horizon? If some federal regulators get their way, buyers may have to put down $60,000 on a $300,000 house to get the best possible mortgage interest rate. Although this sets the bar high, regulators believe it will prevent the risky lending practices that ended in a rash of foreclosures.
Numerous groups immediately announced their opposition to the proposal, contending that a 20 percent downpayment is too burdensome for many working class would-be homebuyers. If the proposal goes into effect in summer, it is not likely to have a major impact on the housing market for a while because the majority of mortgages are insured by federal agencies and are exempt from the rule. John Taylor, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said “If we require 20 percent downpayments to get a loan, we will ensure broad swaths of working- and middle-class people will not be able to get a loan.” According to Tom Deutsch, executive director of the American Securitization Forum, believes the 20 percent requirement will do little to encourage banks to make loans without federal backing. “The extremely rigid proposals…will further prolong the U.S. government’s 95 percent market share of the credit risk of newly originated mortgages,” he said.
Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, disagrees. “Properly aligned economic incentives are the best check against lax underwriting,” she said. The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department also support the move, and other federal regulators are expected to get behind the new requirement. The move comes as the Obama administration is working to end Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage companies, by reducing the competitive advantage they have over banks. One proposal is to require the agencies to charge higher fees to draw private firms back into the mortgage market.
Mortgage Bankers Association CEO John Courson warns that the 20 percent downpayment requirement would further damage already sluggish housing demand. “We believe that such a narrow construct of the risk retention exemption would limit mortgage opportunities for qualified borrowers more than it would reduce the number of problem loans,” Courson said. Ron Phipps, president of the National Association of Realtors, said the new rules will further restrict mortgage credit and housing recovery overall. “Adding unnecessarily high minimum downpayment requirements will only exclude hundreds of thousands of buyers from home ownership, despite their creditworthiness and proven ability to afford the monthly payment, because of the dramatic increase in the wealth required to purchase a home,” Phipps said.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who is leading the regulatory effort, said “Risk retention will help promote better standards for underwriting and securitizing mortgages, which is good for the long-term health of the housing market and for our nation’s economy.” An element of the Dodd-Frank Act that impacts the residential market, known as “risk retention”, is a rule that requires that mortgage lenders and securitizers to invest a minimum of five percent of the risk on qualified residential mortgages. The rule will play a crucial role in determining how much risk banks have to retain from mortgages they originate or package into bonds known as mortgage backed securities (MBS) and then subsequently sell into the market. “If this proposal goes through, the way it’s written, I think the housing market will not recover for years to come,” says Joe Murin, chairman of consulting firm The Collingwood Group.
Tags: 20 percent downpayments, American Securitization Forum, Dodd-Frank Act, Fannie Mae, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, federal regulators, Federal Reserve, foreclosures, Freddie Mac, Mortgage Bankers Association, Mortgage interest rate, mortgage-backed securities, National Association of Realtors, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Obama administration, Qualified residential mortgages, residential market, Risk retention, Risky lending practices, Timothy Geithner, Treasury Department
Posted in Financing, General, Residential | No Comments »
Thursday, October 27th, 2011
The renewable energy industry is facing serious challenges from competition subsidized by foreign governments and restrictive regulations on the home front. This was the consensus at the recent Solar Exchange East 2011, attended by academics, solar entrepreneurs, engineers, investors, supporters and government officials at the McKimmon Center at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
Larry Shirley, director of the Green Economy program at the North Carolina Department of Commerce’s Energy Division, said that “Policies and incentives are the building blocks” for the solar industry. Participants generally called for an end to government preference for fossil fuels, while critics believe the traditional means of letting private investors and the market dictate the industry’s direction is the optimal policy.
“Subsidies are basically a waste of taxpayers’ money, a form of corporate welfare,” said Roy Cordato, the John Locke Foundation’s vice president for research and resident scholar and one of the critics. “These (renewable energy ventures) are grossly inefficient. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t need government subsidies.”
“This is a robust environment,” said Rick Myers, director of the Solar Vertical Market Management program for Siemens. “The U.S. solar market grew 67 percent, from $3.6 billion in 2009 to $6 billion in 2010. Solar electric installation In 2010 totaled 956 megawatts. There’s no doubt the U.S. government needs to get more involved in this effort from a policy standpoint. The solar panels are 50 percent of the cost for installation and these prices are going way down. The fact of the matter is the competition is extremely difficult in that area. It’s coming from the Pacific Rim and China.”
In a related move that boosts renewable energy, a U.S. Treasury Department grant program that pays for up to 30 percent of a solar project’s costs would add 37,394 jobs to the economy in 2012 has been extended for one year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). The program, part of the 2009 economic stimulus package, was due to expire at the end of 2011 after an initial one-year extension was passed by Congress last December. A second extension will boost solar jobs by 12 percent as developers increase installations by 2,000 megawatts, or enough for about 400,000 homes. More than 100,000 Americans currently work in the solar industry, double the number in 2009, said Rhone Resch, SEIA’s chief executive officer. “Much of the jobs and industry growth has come out of that program,” Resch said. “The last thing the government should do in a fragile economy is eliminate a tax break that creates jobs.”
With the grant program, developers can obtain the equivalent amount in cash and write off assets more quickly. The solar industry has received more money from the grant program than any other renewable energy sectors with the sole exception of wind. “The (program) has been the most effective policy in driving economic and job growth in the past two years,” Resch said. “As we continue to slog through a sluggish economy, the tax equity market remains in a much smaller capacity than where it was in 2007.”
Writing for Renewable Energy World.com, Elisa Wood says that “We hear a lot about the job-building benefits of renewable energy when it draws manufacturers and developers to local communities. Less talked about are those who arrive well before the shovels, steel, factories and jobs. These are the green-energy entrepreneurs – the creative thinkers and risk takers responsible for the rise of clean energy ventures over the last decade. Others entering the industry are veterans of energy, finance, agriculture, telecommunications, high tech, science, transportation, construction, nanotechnology and commerce, all drawn by enormous opportunity, as the largest economies in the world spend an expected $2.3 trillion over the next decade to revamp industrial-age energy apparatus into cutting-edge technology. Green energy entrepreneurs emerge from throughout North America, Europe and Asia, but they tend to congregate in high-tech regions such as Silicon Valley, an area of California becoming as much about energy as it is the internet. ‘You can’t throw a softball around here without hitting another solar company,’ says Dan Shugar, one of the solar industry’s early pioneers and now chief operating officer of Solaria, a Fremont, CA-based company that makes silicon photovoltaic products.”
Tags: China, congress, fossil fuels, Green Economy program, John Locke Foundation, North Carolina Department of Commerce’s Energy Division, North Carolina State University, Pacific Rim, renewable energy, Siemens, Solar Energy Industries Association, Solar Exchange East 2011, solar power, Solar Vertical Market Management, Solaria, Tax credit, Tax equity market, Treasury Department
Posted in Economics, General, Green | No Comments »
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
The Treasury Department is laughing all the way to the bank. Insurance Giant AIG repaid $2.15 billion that it had borrowed through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). In 2008, the government helped the giant get back on its feet with a $180 billion loan. AIG has been gradually repaying the money. The most recent repayment is the result of the sale of AIG’s Taiwan-based subsidiary Nan Shan Life Insurance Company. One of AIG’s strategies for cutting its debt has been to raise funds by selling assets. “We continue to make progress in helping the Treasury and taxpayers recoup their investment in AIG,” according to AIG CEO Robert Benmosche.
Not surprisingly, the Treasury Department is pleased with the transaction. “This is another important milestone in AIG’s remarkable turnaround,” Tim Massad, the assistant secretary for financial stability, said in a statement. “We continue to make progress in recovering the taxpayers’ investments in AIG.” AIG still owes Treasury $51 billion. TARP legislation was passed by Congress in late 2008 to rescue the financial sector, which was on the verge of collapse.
Benmosche is still weighing whether to retain a stake in AIA Group Ltd. while repaying TARP funds. AIG sold 67 percent of Hong Kong-based AIA last year in an IPO that raised $20.5 billion. The remaining interest added $1.52 billion to AIG’s second-quarter profit as the Asian insurer’s stock price surged. AIA has soared 19 percent this year and is the number one gainer in the 73-company Bloomberg World Insurance Index. “It’s been a great investment, so they may want to hold onto it,” said Paul Newsome, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill & Partners LP.
Now that the Nan Shan deal has closed, AIG’s final significant disposal will be International Lease Finance Corporation, or ILFC, which purchases airplanes to lease them to airlines. The company is considering an initial public offering (IPO) for ILFC later this year. Using Nan Shan proceeds to repay the special purpose vehicle gives AIG “more flexibility as to what to do with ILFC and other assets, too. It adds in general to their cash-flow flexibility.” He is telling his clients to buy AIG stock. Treasury holds a $9.3 billion preferred interest in the special-purpose vehicle after accepting proceeds from the Nan Shan sale, according to AIG. Benmosche may delay or forego selling AIA shares. AIG’s agreement with underwriters lets Benmosche reduce or hedged the stake in October. “We’re looking potentially at monetizing other assets that we have so that AIA might be sold much later on, if at all,” he said.
Writing in The Hill, Peter Schroeder says that “In many ways, AIG came to serve as a symbol of much of the public’s anger over the bailout, as it found itself at the center of the historic financial crisis and reliant on substantial government support. That dissatisfaction came to a head in 2009, when executives at the company planned to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses after billions in losses during the financial crisis. In January, AIG completely repaid the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with a $47 billion payment, and the Treasury in May agreed to sell 200 million shares of AIG stock, raising nearly $9 billion in that offering. The latest payback from AIG means the Treasury has recovered $313 billion of the investments it made under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) — roughly three-quarters of the $412 billion it originally dished out to keep the financial system afloat. The Treasury announced in March that it had officially turned a profit on the bank portion of TARP. It followed that up with a July announcement that it had exited its investment in Chrysler, ahead of schedule but losing about $1.3 billion in the process.”
On the Huffington Post, Jason Linkins has a cynical take on AIG’s recent repayment of TARP money. “Okay, I’m just going to stop it right there, because when it comes to ‘AIG’s remarkable turnaround,’ the devil is in the details. Time and time again we’re asked to celebrate the success of TARP. Back in March, the good news was that, ‘The Treasury currently estimates that bank programs within TARP will ultimately provide a lifetime profit of nearly $20 billion to taxpayers.’ But this profit that the government has turned on the bailout of AIG rings pretty hollow in light of the four different restructurings of the original agreement that the government has acquiesced to since the fall of 2008.
“When the Fed first stepped in to prevent AIG from collapse in September 2008, the deal was actually pretty good — it carried a punitively-high interest rate appropriate for a bailout, the CEO was dismissed and the company was going to sell itself off in parts, ending its too-big-to-fail status. If the government were turning a profit on a deal like this, it would indeed be good news. The trouble is, AIG’s new management didn’t break up the company very quickly. And even as it paid out lavish bonuses to its top-performing traders and executives, it couldn’t make good on its interest payments to the government. So the feds stepped in again — and again, and again — throwing more money at the company, reducing the interest that it would pay taxpayers and eventually converting the government’s loans to common stock, abandoning concrete repayment obligations in favor of whatever the stock might someday be worth.”
Tags: AUG, Bloomberg World Insurance Index, Chrysler, congress, Federal Reserve, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, financial crisis, International Lease Finance Corp, IPO, Nan Shan Life Insurance Company. AIA Group Ltd., Sandler O’Neill & Partners LP, TARP, Too big to fail, Treasury Department
Posted in Economics, Financing, General | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
Federal regulators at the Departments of Justice, Treasury and Housing, as well as the Federal Trade Commission, have ordered the nation’s largest banks to revamp their foreclosure procedures and compensate borrowers who were financially hurt by “pervasive” bad behavior or carelessness. According to the bank regulators, failure to comply with the rules will result in fines and a broad investigation conducted by state attorneys general and other federal agencies. The regulators acted after being criticized for not putting a halt to risky lending practices during the housing boom.
Describing the lending practices as “a pattern of misconduct and negligence,” the Federal Reserve said that “These deficiencies represent significant and pervasive compliance failures and unsafe and unsound practices at these institutions.” Borrowers in trouble have complained that applying for a modification using the Obama administration’s program has been too complicated and characterized by multiple games of telephone tag. Enforcement requires servicers to set up compliance programs and hire an independent firm to review residential-foreclosures. The banks will be required to make sure that communications are more “effective” between borrowers and banks when it comes to foreclosure and mortgage-modification proceedings.
Citibank, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, the nation’s four leading banks, top the list of financial firms cited by the Federal Reserve, Office of Thrift Supervision and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Citigroup said that it had “self-identified” desired changes in 2009 and that it has helped more than 1.1 million homeowners avoid foreclosure. “We are committed to working with our regulators to further strengthen our programs in these areas and meeting these new requirements,” the company said.
As stern as the recent move seems to be, there are still critics. “These consent orders are worse than doing nothing,” said Alys Cohen, staff attorney for the National Consumer Law Center. “They set the bar so low on some things and they give the banks carte blanche on others. And they give the appearance of doing something while giving banks control of the process.” Additionally, consumer advocates and members of Congress said the new rules are too little, too late.
Congressional critics maintain that the order is too moderate. House Democrats introduced legislation that would require lenders to perform specific actions, including an appeals process, before starting foreclosures. “I want to know what abuses (the government agencies) identified, which banks committed them and how their proposed consent agreement is going to fix these problems,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) the ranking member of the House Government and Oversight Committee. “Based on what I have read…I am not encouraged at all.”
More than 50 consumer groups don’t like the settlement, and claim that the expected settlements do little more than require mortgage servicers to obey existing laws and that they lack penalties. “They’re left to police their new improvements,” said Katherine Porter, a University of Iowa law professor who is an expert on mortgage services. Another concern is that the settlements may weaken the ability of 50 state attorneys general to force concessions from mortgage servicers. The attorneys general have been investigating mortgage servicers since last fall, and in March sent the companies a list of terms, which go further than those pursued by bank regulators. Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who’s leading the joint effort, says any settlements with banking regulators will not “pre-empt” the states’ efforts.
Tags: Bank of America, bank regulators, Citibank, congress, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Justice, Federal Reserve, Federal Trade Commission, foreclosure, House Government and Oversight Committee, house of representatives, J P Morgan Chase, National Consumer Law Center, Obama administration, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Office of Thrift Supervision, Predatory lending, Regulations, Representative Elijah Cummings, Treasury Department, Wells Fargo
Posted in Economics, Financing, General, Residential | 1 Comment »
Monday, April 18th, 2011
The Treasury Department is planning to sell $142 billion worth of toxic assets that it acquired during the financial crisis. According to Treasury, it wants to sell approximately $10 million worth of assets every month, depending on market conditions and hopes to end the program next year. Treasury acquired the securities — primarily 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac –between October, 2008 and December, 2009 to stabilize the home loan market.
The Treasury has decided to sell the securities now because the market has “notably improved.” According to Treasury officials, the sale could net $15 billion to $20 billion in profits for taxpayers. The sale will have a negligible impact on the U.S. debt limit but could delay the ceiling’s arrival by a few days. In early March, Treasury estimated the U.S. would hit the $14.294 trillion ceiling between April 15 and May 31. The Treasury in 2008 retained State Street Global Advisors, a leading institutional asset manager, to acquire, manage and dispose of the mortgage-backed securities portfolio.
“We will exit this investment at a gradual and orderly pace to maximize the recovery of taxpayer dollars and help protect the process of repair of the housing finance market,“ Mary Miller, assistant secretary for financial markets, said. “We’re continuing to wind down the emergency programs that were put in place in 2008 and 2009 to help restore market stability, and the sale of these securities is consistent with that effort.”
Congress gave Treasury the authority to buy securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The value of these mortgage-backed securities declined significantly after the housing bubble burst, prompting fears that write-downs could drag down individual banks and further plunge the financial system into panic. The Treasury said that three years after the worst point of the crisis, the market for asset-backed derivatives is now much more robust.
The government bought $221 billion of these bonds, as part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. Treasury announced that it would buy the bonds on the day the government took over Fannie and Freddie. “The primary objectives of this portfolio will be to promote market stability, ensure mortgage availability, and protect the taxpayer,” Treasury said at the time. The portfolio is now just $142 billion. The Congressional Oversight Panel, which supervised the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said that as of February of 2011, Treasury had received $84 billion in principal repayments and $16.7 billion in interest on the securities it holds.
“It was a bit of a surprise, though will likely be easy to digest,” said Tom Tucci, head of government bond trading at Capital Markets in New York. “We spent a year and a half at levels that were unsustainable because they weren’t based on economic fundamentals, they were based on fear. “Now some of the fundamentals are starting to come back into place.”
Republicans are asking for deeper cuts in government spending before they will agree to raise the debt limit. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has cautioned that failure to raise the borrowing limit would cause an unparalleled default by the government on the national debt. Without question, this would drive up the government’s cost of borrowing money.
Tags: 30-year fixed-rate mortgage securities, congress, Congressional Oversight Panel, Debt ceiling, default, Fannie Mae, financial crisis, Freddie Mac, Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, Housing bubble, mortgage market, national debt, Republicans, State Street Global Advisors, Timothy Geithner, Toxic assets, Treasury Department, Troubled Asset Relief Program
Posted in Economics, Financing, General | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
The Federal Reserve made some serious money in 2010. The central bank’s profit soared to $81.7 billion, a record high, primarily from growing interest earnings on federal agency and government-sponsored enterprise mortgage-backed securities. The Fed’s balance sheet — which also can be monitored monthly — ballooned to $2.43 trillion, up $193 billion from 2009, as holdings of the Treasury Department and mortgage-backed securities increased. The Fed gave back $79 billion to Treasury in last year, an 68 percent increase over $47 billion the Fed returned in 2009. The Fed’s previous record high earnings was $53.4 billion.
In reaction to the financial crisis, the Fed acquired securities whose value had collapsed due to fear and uncertainty in markets. Additionally, the Fed created emergency lending programs for banks and firms, which further boosted its balance sheet. The central bank came under attack for taking too many risks with taxpayer money and putting itself in a position to endure losses. So far the Fed’s crisis-lending programs have earned handsome profits. The 2010 income rise primarily resulted from $24 billion in interest earnings from the $1.0 trillion mortgage-backed securities and agency bonds it bought to stabilize the housing market. As of last week, the Fed held a virtually identical quantity of such securities.
The Treasury Department plans to slowly sell its $142 billion portfolio of mortgage-backed securities. Although there’s no direct implication for Fed policy, the market reaction to the Treasury sale provides valuable input into how the central bank may go about selling its own significantly larger holdings, which analyst expect to take place early in 2012. That’s a significant increase over the $907 billion it held in August 2008, just before the financial crisis. To help the nation’s economy recover, the Fed has created massive amounts of credit to support the banking system and buy bonds.
Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, Doug French notes that “Amongst the assets Mr. Bernanke and Co. are shepherding include sub-prime mortgage bonds that once belonged to American International Group (AIG). The Wall Street Journal reports that AIG would like to repurchase these bonds as a part of its attempt to break free from government control through a public stock offering. ‘Ahead of that, AIG wants to be able to show investors it is putting its cash to work and boosting investment income in its insurance units,’ reports the WSJ’s Serena Ng. The rub is that AIG is offering 53 cents on the dollar for the mortgage bonds. Maybe the Fed can do better in the marketplace.”
Tags: AIG, Ben Bernanke, central bank, Federal Reserve, financial crisis, mortgage-backed securities, Profits, securities, Sub-prime mortgage bonds, Treasury Department, Wall Street Journal
Posted in Economics, Financing, General, Industrial, Office, Residential | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
A top Treasury official defended the federal government’s $700 billion bank bailout financial crisis-response program at a hearing where the effort was criticized by members of a watchdog panel insisting that it did more for Wall Street than Main Street. “The cost of TARP is likely to be no greater than the amount spent on the program’s housing initiatives,” said Timothy Massad, acting assistant secretary of the Treasury for the Office of Financial Stability, to the Congressional Oversight Panel that oversees the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). “The remainder of the programs under TARP — the investments in banks, credit markets and the auto industry — likely will result in very little or no cost,” he said.
Panel member J. Mark McWatters, a Dallas-based CPA ad tax attorney, argued that it is difficult to call TARP a success when the unemployment rate is still approximately nine percent and millions of Americans are fighting foreclosure. Panel Chairman Ted Kaufman – who was Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff of 19 years and temporarily replaced him in the Senate – said that Wall Street bankers ended up in better shape than Main Street. “It’s not a tough economy on Wall Street, it’s a tough economy everywhere else,” Kaufman said.
According to Massad, TARP will end up spending no more than $475 billion; 86 percent of which has been disbursed. To date, Treasury has received $277 billion back, including $241 billion in repayments and $36 billion in additional income. The Treasury expects to receive an additional $9 billion, which will leave $150 billion outstanding through various investments. The department hopes to recover those funds over the next several years. “TARP helped bring our financial system back from the brink and paved the way for an economic recovery,” Massad said. “Banks are better capitalized, and the weakest parts of the financial system no longer exist. The credit markets on which small businesses and consumers depend — for auto loans, for credit cards and other financing — have reopened. Businesses can raise capital, and mortgage rates are at historic lows. We have helped bring stability to the financial system and the economy at a fraction of the expected costs.”
William Nelson, deputy director of the Federal Reserve’s division of monetary affairs, agrees with Massad. In testimony about the Fed’s program to restart the asset-backed securities markets with backing from the Treasury’s TARP program, Nelson said even that program is unlikely to experience any losses. “The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) program helped restart the ABS markets at a crucial time, supporting the availability of credit to millions of American households and businesses,” Nelson said, adding that of the more than 2,000 loans worth $70 billion that were extended through the Fed’s facility, 1,400 totaling $49 billion were repaid early. Remaining loans are current, and the collateral backing the loans is retaining its value, “significantly reducing the likelihood of borrower default.”
“As a result, we see it as highly likely that the accumulated interest will be sufficient to cover any loan losses that may occur without recourse to the dedicated TARP funds,” Nelson said. Europe, by contrast, did not act as aggressively to apply stimulus with the result that financial crises occurred in countries like Ireland and Greece.
Tags: ABS markets, auto industry, banks, Congressional Oversight Panel, credit markets, Federal Reserve, foreclosures, Joe Biden, Main Street, Office of Financial Stability, Senate, Ted Kaufman, Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, Timothy Massad, Treasury Department, Troubled Asset Relief Program, Wall Street, William Nelson
Posted in Economics, Financing, General | No Comments »
Monday, March 21st, 2011
The year 2010 saw 956 megawatts worth of solar panels installed in the United States, providing a cumulative capacity of 2.6 gigawatts – enough to power 500,000 homes. Even though the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) says solar is a fast-growing business, it still provides less than one percent of the nation’s electrical capacity. In 2010, solar panels were a $6 billion business, a significant increase over the $3.6 billion reported in 2009. Despite the growth in dollar volume, the global share of American photovoltaic installations fell in 2010, to just five percent of the world’s total from 6.5 percent in 2009. Although demand is growing in the United States, other countries are adopting solar to the point where they are leaving the United States in the dust.
Not surprisingly, sunny California leads the nation in solar installations. In second place was Jersey, followed by Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Pennsylvania. The six states accounted for 76 percent of solar capacity installed in 2010.
President Barack Obama is an enthusiastic supporter of renewable energy sources, and Congress extended their federal tax credits, originally set to expire at the end of last year, through 2011. “This remarkable growth puts the solar industry’s goal of powering 2 million homes annually by 2015 within reach,” Rhone Resch, SEIA president and CEO, said. According to Resch, “Achieving such amazing growth during the economic downturn shows that smart polices combined with American ingenuity adds up to a great return on investment for the public. The bottom line is that the solar energy industry is creating tens of thousands of new American jobs each year.”
“Another doubling of U.S. installations in 2011 is likely, even in the absence of a substantial mid-year price decline,” said Shayle Kann, GTM Research’s managing director of solar research. A Treasury Department grant program, which repays 30 percent of the cost of installing solar panels, boosted the number of projects. The price of installing photovoltaic systems fell by 10 percent for commercial and eight percent for residential consumers last year. Other countries are cutting their subsidies this year, possibly leading to an Italy, the more suppliers are going to price more competitively in new markets, like the U.S., ultimately growing the market,” Kann said.
In addition to the United States, the leading nations that are adopting solar energy include Germany (9,785 megawatts); Spain (3,386 megawatts); Japan (2,633 megawatts); Italy (1,167 megawatts); the Czech Republic (465 megawatts); Belgium (363 megawatts); China (305 megawatts); France (272 megawatts); and India (120 megawatts).
Tags: Clean energy, congress, Gigawatts, GTM Research, jobs, Megawatts, Photovoltaic installations, President Barack Obama, Rhone Resch, Solar energy, Solar Energy Industries Association, solar panels, Treasury Department
Posted in Development, Green | 2 Comments »
Monday, March 7th, 2011
Republican congressmen searching for sizeable spending cuts are targeting Wall Street’s regulators over a plan to slash millions from the budgets of several vital agencies. They are setting their sights on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The workload of both agencies is expected to increase significantly as the Dodd-Frank financial reform law is implemented. House Republicans want to slash the CFTC’s funding by $56.8 million – nearly 33 percent of the agency’s entire budget — over the next seven months. The SEC’s funding would be cut by $25 million over the same time.
CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler said he would have no option but to reduce his staff from 680 to fewer than 440 if the cuts are approved. “We’d have to have significant curtailment of our staff and resources,” Gensler said. “We would not be able to police…or ensure transparent markets in futures or swaps.” Under Dodd-Frank, the CFTC regulates the multi-trillion dollar derivatives market that includes over-the-counter products called credit default swaps. The story is similar at the SEC, which is working to augment its enforcement of Dodd-Frank. “It (budget cuts) will have a very real effect on the SEC’s ability, not just with respect to Dodd-Frank implementation, but also with respect to our core mission,” SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said in testimony before Congress.
Leading the charge in Congress is Representative Randy Neugebauer, chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. One of Neugebauer’s top priorities is assuring that regulators are not “overreaching” and moving too quickly with their new authorities under Dodd-Frank. Neugebauer expressed concern about whether regulators are adequately performing cost-benefit analyses on every rule in Dodd-Frank, a process required under federal rule-making procedures. He expects to call SEC Chairman Schapiro and CFTC Chairman Gensler back to testify about the issue, especially since he believes that Gensler gave him “vague” responses about cost-benefit analyses on derivatives rules. Neugebauer said another of his major priorities will be to rein in the powers of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an entity created under Dodd-Frank. The Texas congressman wants to move the bureau to the Treasury Department and out of the Federal Reserve’s control.
Another congressional Republican makes this point. “When the House and Senate passed the Dodd-Frank Act, supporters continually purported that small financial institutions, like many I represent, were exempt,” Representative Shelley Moore Capito, (R-WV) said. “As the provisions of Dodd-Frank are going through the rule making process, I am starting to hear concerns from small institutions about the unintended consequences that could adversely affect them.”
One point of contention with the Republicans is the orderly liquidation provision that authorizes regulators to seize large financial institutions that are about to fail and dismantle them in a way that is less disruptive than either taxpayer bailouts or bankruptcy.
“People are saying we won’t have the guts” to invoke orderly liquidation, acknowledged Democratic Representative Barney Frank, (D-MA), who co-sponsored the legislation with now-retired Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT). “Well, we had the guts with regard to the TARP to get the money back. We got it back,” he said, referencing the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that bailed out Wall Street firms and which has been largely repaid. “I don’t have any question that we’re going to go through with it,” Frank said.
Tags: bankruptcy, Commodities Futures Trading Commission, congress, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, credit-default swaps, Derivatives markets, Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, Federal Reserve, Financial regulators, Gary Gensler, House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Mary Schapiro, Orderly liquidation, Representative Barney Frank, Representative Randy Neugebauer, Representative Shelley Moore Capito, Republicans, Securities and Exchange Commission, Senator Christopher Dodd, TARP, taxpayer bailouts, Treasury Department, Wall Street firms, Wall Street reform, “Too big to fail”
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