03/25/11 Baltimore, Maryland – Gold is hitting new records. It’s telling us that there is something very wrong with the world’s dollar-based money system.
But most investors don’t notice. Gold is still a “kooky” thing to buy.
And the feds have no idea what is going on.
You gotta hand it to the feds. They’re cool. They’re incompetent. They could pass a lie detector test no matter what they did.
Over at the US Treasury, they’ve been crowing about how much profit they’ve made. They rushed to save AIG and Citi by buying their toxic bonds. Then, they flew to the side of Fannie and Freddie when they were in trouble.
As a result of these selfless rescue efforts, they came to hold a huge portfolio of securities; the Fannie and Freddie portion alone is worth $142 billion, say the papers. The Treasury has already sold its AIG and Citi paper – at a profit. And now, it is getting set to unload its hoard of Freddie and Fannie paper.
Can you believe it; its eggs haven’t been sold yet, but it’s already counting on profits between $15 and $20 billion. Are they investment geniuses at the Treasury, or what?
Well, in a way, they’re a lot smarter than we are. We could have bought those notes and bonds too. We should have had more faith in the feds. We could have looked ahead and seen that they would get away – for a while, at least – with one of the biggest financial scams in history. We could have made a profit on it too!
Let’s look at how it works. The borrowers – AIG, Citi, Freddie, Fannie – make bad bets. By all rights, they should go broke and their bondholders should lose money. But as Mr. Market is doing his work – marking down junk debt of all kind in anticipation of a clean up – in come the feds. No need to sell that stuff, they say. We’re behind it 100%. Thus did they pledge the full faith and credit of the United States of America to guarantee that bondholders wouldn’t pay for their own dumb mistakes.
We should have bought then; the fix was in. But we had doubts about the credit of the US. Still do. We worried that the fix may not stay fixed long enough to make money.
We were wrong. As to their ability to refloat the financial sector, we should never have doubted the feds. The Fed went out and bought every stray dog and cat of a mortgaged-backed security it could find – $1.4 trillion worth of them. It also lent money to the financial industry at 0.5%. That’s about 8.5% below the real rate of consumer price inflation – according to John William’s “Shadow Stats” estimate. And if that weren’t enough, the banks were guaranteed profits – by allowing them to borrow from the Fed at 0.5%, use the money to buy US Treasury bonds, yielding between 3% and 4%…and sell them back the Fed. Not taking any chances, the Fed is also printing up an extra $4 billion per day, money coming out of nowhere, to buy Treasury bonds. Not only is it financing more than America’s entire monthly deficit…it leaves the financial industry free to use its own (borrowed) money to speculate on other things.
Naturally, when you have this kind of racket going, you’re not going to bother making risky loans to the private sector. Instead, you’re going to go where the fix is in…you’re going to gamble on debt – buying more “junk” bonds…and pushing up bond prices!
Oh, Dear Reader, we hate a scam, but we admire an elegant scamster. In other words, the feds gave the financial sector the money to bid up its own paper…the very paper that the feds themselves held in great quantity.
And now they claim to have made a profit from this operation.
How about this? We’ll start a phony baloney business. We’ll sell shares all over town. When people realize that the business is a loser, the shares will fall and our business will be in danger of collapse. Then, the feds can come to our aid too. They can buy up our shares, guarantee that we’ll never go bust, and give us money so we can buy shares too. The price of the shares will go back up…and the feds can sell their shares, quietly. Hey, this will be profitable for the feds too – if they ignore all that money they gave us to make the flimflam work.
But here’s a question: why couldn’t they make this sort of razzmatazz work in Europe? Didn’t the Irish have a boatload of bad mortgage debt? Didn’t the government step in to guarantee the lot of it? And now look. Not only is the original mortgage debt getting marked down…so is the Irish government’s debt.
Why can’t the Irish get the hang of this?
Well, a couple of reasons.
First, the Irish have much more debt to deal with; they’ve already given their banks an amount equal to 1/4 of the nation’s entire GDP. That would be like reflating the US financial sector with $3.5 trillion.
Wait a minute. You say the US financial sector has gotten nearly that much? Hold on…maybe you’re right…
The money printing from the Fed is the aforementioned $1.4 billion, right? Okay… Another $200 billion or so in asset purchases from the Treasury. And surely handling all those US Treasury bonds didn’t hurt – what’s that, about $3 trillion there, but you can’t really count that as a bank bailout.
But the big difference is that the US can print money; Ireland can’t. Ireland has to borrow the money with which to bail out its banks. And the more it borrows, the more investors worry that it won’t be able to pay it back.
And they’re right. At current yields, the Irish can’t borrow at all – not on the open market. Two-year bonds issued by Ireland now yield more than 10%. So, the Irish have to beg loans from the euro-feds. And even they are charging them 6%. Even at that subsidized rate, Ireland can’t go on much longer.
Ireland is more like California or Illinois. It doesn’t print its own money. And it doesn’t have a central bank that will lend at zero percent…
In the long run, this is a good thing. They can’t destroy their entire economies with make-believe money, while claiming to make taxpayers’ a profit.
Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning
Bill Bonner
Since founding Agora Inc. in 1979, Bill Bonner has found success and garnered camaraderie in numerous communities and industries. A man of many talents, his entrepreneurial savvy, unique writings, philanthropic undertakings, and preservationist activities have all been recognized and awarded by some of America's most respected authorities. Along with Addison Wiggin, his friend and colleague, Bill has written two New York Times best-selling books, Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt. Both works have been critically acclaimed internationally. With political journalist Lila Rajiva, he wrote his third New York Times best-selling book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, which offers concrete advice on how to avoid the public spectacle of modern finance. Since 1999, Bill has been a daily contributor and the driving force behind The Daily Reckoning. Dice Have No Memory: Big Bets & Bad Economics from Paris to the Pampas, the newest book from Bill Bonner, is the definitive compendium of Bill’s daily reckonings from more than a decade: 1999-2010.
The Daily Reckoning is your premier source for making sense of the news Washington and Wall Street generate. Each business day, The Daily Reckoning calls on its stable of world-class writers and thinkers to show you how to get ahead.
Start your 100% FREE subscription to The Daily Reckoning today and you’ll get a free research report, “How to Survive the Fall of Social Security.” Simply enter your email address below to get your free report and join over 495,000 worldwide Daily Reckoning subscribers!
We Respect Your Privacy and We will
Never Share or Sell Your Email Address
Welcome back to Maryland!
-BB
“We should have bought then; the fix was in. But we had doubts about the credit of the US. Still do. We worried that the fix may not stay fixed long enough to make money.” … And that’s why we are Long Suffering Readers!
“But here’s a question: why couldn’t they make this sort of razzmatazz work in Europe?” Should it not be “Why” (uppercase W) after colon?
“…while claiming to make taxpayers’ a profit.” An apostrophe (’) after taxpayers?
In the article title, “Government Profits from the “Never Go Bust” Guarantee,” “from” should be “From” (uppercase F). See http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/index.html
Correct link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25fed.html?_r=1&ref=business
“The money printing from the Fed is the aforementioned $1.4 billion, right? Okay”
You mean 1.4 Trillion I suppose
Not helpful Mr. B.B. It is entertaining, yes,but not helpful. This comment box has lost its` dimensions and gained dementia.
It used to be an aide du subjet; a cross-examination.I did pan the space for the gold it uncovered.
Now,I enter and duck my head. Spit-balls ricochet the boundaries: Is there a hyphen between spit and balls? Do you write from where(emphasis on where)?
Are you kidding me? These can behold a tsunami of utter ruin and call out the bloke who takes refuge for wearing red pants! Really now!
There I am…contributing to that which I disdain…woe is me.
“Not helpful Mr. B.B.” Are you talking to me?
Au contraire… to those who wield the spit-balls and the grammar lessons…if you be asking of me, Mr. BB.
Thank you, Mr. Fletchhntr! You are a true gentleman! By the way, it is actually, “spitball.” No space or hyphen, my old man!
In today’s lesson, Bill admits “We were wrong” and says his dear readers were right.
So… why are we listening to Bill at all?
I am sure it beats him.
Shawn,
Listen to Bob! Let’s do a merger?
-BB
HERE’S THE QUESTION BILL DID NOT ASK IN THIS ARTICLE: “WHAT IF THE FED CALLS IN ALL ITS LOANS TO THE BIG BANKS?” IF THIS OCCURS, WILL THE ENTIRE HOUSE OF FINANCIAL CARDS IMPLODE? ANOTHER RELATED QUESTION: “WHAT IF THE FED MERELY RAISES THE RATE ON THESE LOANS BY, FOR INSTANCE, 2%?” FINAL QUESTION: “WHAT COULD CAUSE THE FED TO CALL IN THESE LOANS OR RAISE THE RATES THEREON?”
To facilitate reading, I edited the above post as follows:
Here’s the question Bill did not ask in this article: “What if the Fed calls in all its loans to the big banks?” If this occurs, will the entire house of financial cards implode? Another related question: “What if the Fed merely raises the rate on these loans by, for instance, 2%?” Final question: “What could cause the Fed to call in these loans or raise the rates thereon?”
P.S.: Note uppercase after colon.
Isn’t Ben Bernanke doing something similar for what Michael Milken went to jail?