A Run On the Funds: Majority of Cerberus Investors Want Out — Now

by ilene - August 30th, 2009 1:51 pm

A Run On the Funds: Majority of Cerberus Investors Want Out — Now

When investors or depositors ask for the immediate withdrawal of 71% of their money there is only one thing to call it: a run on the bank.

The selling in the markets is still quiet, and overshadowed by some of the visible bubbles in financial assets and rosy headlines. The bank bailouts are working, but only to produce a false Spring to lure in the last of the greater fools.

The economy is not improving fundamentally, the recovery is not sustainable, and the wealthy insiders are increasingly trying to liquidate investment positions to raise cash and diversify their holdings into cash and hard assets.

Risk is once again being spread from the financial sector to the public, which is what Fed Chairman Greenspan had said was one of the objectives of the Fed in their positions on the regulation of complex financial products. We were assured that the markets were sound, no additional regulation was required, the pensions were adequately funded. And finally when disaster struck and the facade fell away, that a generation’s ransom was required by the banks, in order to heal themselves and avert disaster.

And then they took the money for themselves.

"He’s mad, that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath." The Fool, King Lear

And so they have made fools of us all.

Reuters
Cerberus clients overwhelmingly want out
Fri Aug 28, 2009 4:21pm

BOSTON (Reuters) – Cerberus Capital Management has been swamped with redemption requests with the Wall Street Journal reporting that investors are asking to pull out $5.5 billion or 71 percent of assets from its hedge funds.

Cerberus last month tried to entice investors into staying with the firm, but found that its clients overwhelmingly wanted to leave, the newspaper reported.

"We have been surprised by this response," Cerberus chief Stephen Feinberg and co-founder William Richter wrote in a letter delivered to clients late on Thursday, according to the newspaper…

The bulk of investors elected to put their money into a fund that will liquidate hard-to-sell assets over time…

Entire Cerberus article here.>>

Tags: Cerberus Capital Management, redemption requests

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Stuyvesant Town Reserves Depleted, Default Likely To Come In December

by Zero Hedge - August 30th, 2009 12:32 pm

Courtesy of Tyler Durden

Tishman Speyer’s 2006 acquisition of Stuyvesant Town for $5.4 billion apparently is about to turn terminally sour. The “biggest deal for a single American property in modern times” which never managed to be profitable from day one, is on the verge of completely exhausting reserve accounts tied to $3 billion of securitized accounts.The premise – take the 11,227 rent-stabilized u,nits apartment complex and convert them to market-rate. Alas, the timing could not have been worse due to an implosion in the NY rent market, coupled with legal difficulties – to date only 4,350 of the units have been converted to market rate, while the remaining rent-controlled units will likely increase in number due to a recent court ruling.

According to RealPoint the original reserve fund which had a balance of $650 million in 2007 when Stuy Town’s debt was first securitized is down to a meager $49.7 million. The origianal reserve fund set consisted of a $190 million general reserve as well as a $60 million replacement reserve, both of which have been depleted, as well as a $400 debt-shortfall service fund, which has now declined to just over 10% of its initial balance.

The reserve fund was drawn down by $7 million month to date, versus $13.3 million in July and $19.6 million in June, with an average decline in the reserve fund of $11.3 million per month. At this rate Stuy Town’s reserves will be completely wiped out in four months, sometime in December.

To demonstrate what a colossal failure Tishman and Blackrock’s assumptions have been from the very beginning, the property has a $23.8 million monthly debt service, while on the revenue side, according to first quarter data, the property generates $136.5 million in annual cash flow, or $11.4 million monthly, a $12.4 million monthly shortfall (a cap rate of about + infinity).

And to demonstrate just how bad (and getting progressively worse) real estate in New York is, midtown’s Dream Hotel, owners Hampshire Group have notified special servicer LNR Group, that it wold not make any more payments on the $100 million loan against the property. According to CREDirect, in 2008 the property’s cash flow dropped 11 percent to $7.8 million as occupancy fell 3% to 84%, with a DSCR drop from 1.41x in 2007 to 1.26x. Things have since deteriorated, not just for the…

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Survival Of The Biggest

by ilene - August 30th, 2009 12:10 pm

Survival Of The Biggest

big banks Courtesy of Mish

On account of Fed sponsorship, Banks ‘Too Big to Fail’ Have Grown Even Bigger.

When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation’s leading financial institutions because the banks were so big that officials feared their failure would ruin the entire financial system.

Today, the biggest of those banks are even bigger.

J.P. Morgan Chase, an amalgam of some of Wall Street’s most storied institutions, now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks, plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards, federal data show.

"It is at the top of the list of things that need to be fixed," said Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. "It fed the crisis, and it has gotten worse because of the crisis."

Fresh data from the FDIC show that big banks have the ability to borrow more cheaply than their peers because creditors assume these large companies are not at risk of failing. That imbalance could eventually squeeze out smaller competitors. Already, consumers are seeing fewer choices and higher prices for financial services, some senior government officials warn.

Officials waived long-standing regulations to make the deals work. J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo were each allowed to hold more than 10 percent of the nation’s deposits despite a rule barring such a practice. In several metropolitan regions, these banks were permitted to take market share beyond what the Department of Justice’s antitrust guidelines typically allow, Federal Reserve documents show.

"There’s been a significant consolidation among the big banks, and it’s kind of hollowing out the banking system," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com. "You’ll be left with very large institutions and small ones that fill in the cracks. But it’ll be difficult for the mid-tier institutions to thrive."

"The oligopoly has tightened," he added.

Last October, when the Fed was arranging the merger between Wells Fargo and Wachovia, it identified six other metropolitan regions in which the combined company

…

Tags: Bank of America, FDIC, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Sheila C. Bair, too-big-to-fail, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo

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THE 2 BIGGEST RISKS TO THE BULL MARKET

by ilene - August 30th, 2009 11:32 am

THE 2 BIGGEST RISKS TO THE BULL MARKET

Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist

This is a re-post from an article we wrote for TheStreet.com:

The rally off the March 8th lows has been nothing but spectacular. In hindsight, it’s clear that investors overreacted to the downside, but as stocks surge more than 50% it’s time to begin pondering whether the current rally is a bit ahead of itself. Contrary to my bottom call on March 8th when I said it was time to invest in risky assets (a full history of my 2008/9 calls can be found here including our 2008 crash call and March 8 buy call), now is the time to put on your risk management cap on as a number of various threats begin to pop up across the market. I recently turned near-term bearish on stocks due to 2 primary reasons: sentiment & seasonality.

1) Sentiment – As I often say, psychology drives markets. After months of skepticism regarding the rally we are finally beginning to see an overwhelming amount of bullishness. This is a screaming contrarian indicator. The latest consumer confidence readings showed a marked jump to 54.1 and bullish sentiment among fund managers has soared to its highest level since 2003:

The latest Merrill Lynch fund managers survey shows an extraordinary jump in optimistic sentiment. The survey makes up the current psychology of 204 portfolio managers running over $550B in assets. The report shows a 63% jump in sentiment since July and the highest reading since November of 2003.

After months of short squeezes and failed market declines this optimistic sentiment has begun to eat into one of the fuels of this rally: short sellers. Recent short sales data shows the lowest readings since the market tanked in early February. As we lose the short sellers we lose an important driver of higher prices.

Perhaps most important has been the enormous shift in analyst estimates. After turning bearish in early June, I reversed the position in early July for one reason – earnings. My analysis led me to believe that estimates were far too low primarily due to the fact that analysts were not accounting for cost cuts. The estimates have been outrageously low, but now as the consensus begins to believe in a full blown recovery the

…

Tags: analyst estimates, bullishness, Consumer Confidence, contrarian indicator, earnings, Housing, Oil, rally, risks, seasonality, sentiment

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Radio Zero: Late Night With Marla Singer

by Zero Hedge - August 30th, 2009 3:41 am

Courtesy of Marla Singer

Late Night with Marla Singer.

Chat up the DJ/Send Tunes: via AIM here.

Pull our bits off the interweb: http://cdo.zerohedge.com:8000/listen.pls

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Silly chart of the day, data-fitting edition

by ilene - August 30th, 2009 1:26 am

40% Higher? You Gotta Be Kidding!

Okay, the chart was floating around earlier but I was sufficiently skeptical that I initially ignored it. Now it’s popping up at some of my favorite sites, so let’s examine it, starting with the Bloomberg article. – Ilene

S&P 500 May Surge 40% in Duplication of Japan: Chart of the Day, Bloomberg

By Alexis Xydias

Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks are behaving like Japanese equities in the 1990s, meaning the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index may return 40 percent in the next year, according to Bank of America Corp.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows the Nikkei 225 Stock Average since 1980 and the S&P 500 during the past two decades, when adjusted for currencies. The Nikkei doubled between October 1998 and April 2000 in dollar terms, as the chart illustrates. The S&P 500 has risen 34 percent since March when the Dollar Index, a measure of the dollar against currencies in six major U.S. trading partners, is factored in.

A “melt-up” rally in the U.S. may be triggered by central bankers keeping interest rates near record lows, an economic recovery or an undervalued dollar, Bank of America strategists wrote in an Aug. 26 report.

“Even in economies overcoming credit booms, rallies can be powerful and last much longer than you think,”…

Continue reading S&P 500 May Surge 40% in Duplication of Japan here.

Silly chart of the day, data-fitting edition

By Felix Salmon at Reuters Blogs

Paul Kedrosky finds this chart in a Bloomberg story: it’s the kind of thing which really reinforces one’s belief in the wonders of data-fitting. [My emphasis, bolded]

The story isn’t actually particularly clear on exactly what the graph is showing, and specifically what “adjusted for currencies” means:

The Nikkei doubled between October 1998 and April 2000 in dollar terms, as the chart illustrates. The S&P 500 has risen 34 percent since March when the Dollar Index, a measure of the dollar against currencies in six major U.S. trading partners, is factored in.

So it seems that the BofA analysts who came up with this chart first converted the Nikkei to dollars, only to then convert the S&P 500, which was in dollars all along, out of dollars. Hm. And they chose pretty random start points: what makes 1980 in…

Tags: Bloomberg, charts, Data Fitting, Economy, Editors' Picks, Investing, japan, Markets, Nikkei, S&P 500, Stock Market, stocks

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Triggers to nastiness

by Chart School - August 29th, 2009 9:41 pm

New charts from Allan, who seems to be predicting an end to the rally’s coming soon. Here’s why. – Ilene

Triggers to nastiness

Courtesy of Allan

Things are getting pretty interesting again, due to a host of factors that seem to be converging and alerting us to some imminent changes. Both Glenn Neely and Robert Prechter are suggesting the move up from March has just about reached it’s most likely conclusion, reaching or close to reaching ideal targets in terms of price (Prechter & Neely) and time (Neely). In addition, Arch Crawford wrote in his August newsletter that, "September is a truly ugly month right from the start – Overwhelming negative aspect count."

Let’s walk through my most salient charts and analysis to see if we can identify any triggers to nastiness, so as to be ready when Ms. Market yells, "Pull."

SPX- Monthly

On the Monthly chart, with one day left in August, 1029.80 still prevents the ATR system from flipping positive. Blue Wave is four months into it’s Buy Signal and won’t flip Short until the 830′s.

SPX – Weekly

On the Weekly analysis, we still see a triple divergence on the False Bar Stochastic as well as a stubborn wave count and pattern from Advanced GET warning of new lows to come. I’ve drawn a trend line that is walking up with price and is sitting right now at about 963, almost exactly where both Blue Wave and ATR will flip Short. Take note.

SPX – Daily

A close up Daily chart further clarifies and provides new REVERSAL levels, basis Daily closing prices:

Blue Wave Daily flips SHORT @ 1010.87

ATR Daily flips SHORT @ 1000.71

INTRA-DAY CHARTS

SPX – 90 minute

The 90 minute chart shows an Elliott Oscillator on the bottom, highlighting a significant divergence between the oscillator and the recent new

…

Tags: $SPX charts, Crawford, daily charts, Equities, market downturn, Neely, Prechter, reversal levels, Stock Market

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Tale of Two Economies

by ilene - August 29th, 2009 9:19 pm

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Tale of Two Economies

Courtesy of Mish

How well corporations have fared in the recovery depends largely on two factors.

1) How much cash on hand they had and how conservative there were heading into the recession

2) How much Uncle Sam (taxpayers) bailed them out

The Wall Street Journal has the story in Halting Recovery Divides America in Two.

The U.S. recovery is a tale of two economies.

At one extreme of Corporate America is a cadre of companies and banks, mostly big, united by an enviable access to credit. At the other end are firms, chiefly small, with slumping sales that can’t borrow or are facing stiff terms to do so.

On Main Street, there are consumers with rock-solid jobs — but also legions of debt-strapped individuals struggling to keep their noses above water.

This split helps explain the patchiness of the recovery that appears to be taking hold after the worst recession in a half-century.

The split between companies that can borrow and those that can’t shows the extent to which any recovery depends on reviving the nation’s ailing banks and squeamish credit markets. Until that happens, the vigor of the economy will remain in doubt.

"If you’re not making money, you need to borrow money," says John Graham, a finance professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. But "you need to be creditworthy in order to borrow, and if you’re not making money, you’re creditworthiness isn’t very strong."

Mr. Graham, who oversees a quarterly survey of CFOs, says more companies are doing better than they were a few months ago. Still, he estimates, one in four is in "dire straights due to lack of profits combined with not being able to borrow."

Companies big enough to bypass banks and go directly to capital markets are finding a warmer reception. That’s because the markets are showing more willingness to make risky loans: In January, only eight of the 56 companies that sold bonds were rated below-investment-grade, or "junk," according to Dealogic. In August, by contrast, 24 of the 60 deals had junk ratings.

Since the start of the year, companies have been increasingly turning to the bond markets to raise money. Through August thus far, companies have issued $395.4 billion in bonds over 512 deals, according to

…

Tags: debt, Economy, Halting Recovery Divides America in Two, Mish, Recession, Recovery, tax payers, Wall Street Journal

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Greater Than One in Four FDIC Insured Institutions are Unprofitable; Bank Problem List at 15 Year High

by ilene - August 29th, 2009 8:50 pm

Greater Than One in Four FDIC Insured Institutions are Unprofitable; Bank Problem List at 15 Year High

banks Courtesy of Mish

The second quarter 2009 Quarterly Banking Profile has some interesting charts and facts that inquiring minds will be interested in.

Insured Institution Performance

Higher Loss Provisions Lead to a $3.7 Billion Net Loss

More Than One in Four Institutions Are Unprofitable

Charge-Offs and Noncurrent Loans Continue to Rise

Net Interest Margins Show Modest Improvement

Industry Assets Decline by $238 Billion

The Industry Posts a Net Loss for the Quarter

The Industry Posts a Net Loss for the Quarter

Burdened by costs associated with rising levels of troubled loans and falling asset values, FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions reported an aggregate net loss of $3.7 billion in the second quarter of 2009. Increased expenses for bad loans were chiefly responsible for the industry’s loss. Insured institutions added $66.9 billion in loan-loss provisions to their reserves during the quarter, an increase of $16.5 billion (32.8 percent) compared to the second quarter of 2008. Quarterly earnings were also adversely affected by writedowns of asset-backed commercial paper, and by higher assessments for deposit insurance.

Almost two out of every three institutions (64.4 percent) reported lower quarterly earnings than a year ago, and more than one in four (28.3 percent) reported a net loss for the quarter. A year ago, the industry reported a quarterly profit of $4.7 billion, and fewer than one in five institutions (18 percent) were unprofitable. The average return on assets (ROA) was -0.11 percent, compared to 0.14 percent in the second quarter of 2008.

Net Charge-Off Rate Sets a Quarterly Record

Net charge-offs continued to rise, propelling the quarterly net charge-off rate to a record high. Insured institutions charged-off $48.9 billion in the second quarter, compared to $26.4 billion a year earlier. The annualized net charge-off rate in the second quarter was 2.55 percent, eclipsing the previous quarterly record of 1.95 percent reached in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The $22.5 billion (85.3 percent) year-over-year increase in net charge-offs was led by loans to commercial and industrial (C&I) borrowers, which increased by $5.3 billion (165.0 percent). Net charge-offs of credit card loans were $4.6 billion (84.5 percent) higher than a year earlier, and the annualized net charge-off rate on credit card loans reached a record 9.95 percent in the second

…

Tags: assets decline, bank losses, bank problem list, Banks, excessive debt, FDIC, Federal Reserve, insolvent, Mish, quarterly banking profile, unable to lend

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An Uncomfortable Choice

by ilene - August 29th, 2009 7:50 pm

An Uncomfortable Choice

Courtesy of John Mauldin at Thoughts From The Frontline

An Uncomfortable Choice
What Were We Thinking?
Frugality is the New Normal
And Then We Face the Real Problem
The Teenagers Are in Control
Choose Wisely

We have arrived at this particular economic moment in time by the choices we have made, which now leave us with choices in our future that will be neither easy, convenient, nor comfortable. Sometimes there are just no good choices, only less-bad ones. In this week’s letter we look at what some of those choices might be, and ponder their possible consequences. Are we headed for a double-dip recession? Read on.

An Uncomfortable Choice

As our family grew, we limited the choices our seven kids could make; but as they grew into teenagers, they were given more leeway. Not all of their choices were good. How many times did Dad say, "What were you thinking?" and get a mute reply or a mumbled "I don’t know."

Yet how else do you teach them that bad choices have bad consequences? You can lecture, you can be a role model; but in the end you have to let them make their own choices. And a lot of them make a lot of bad choices. After having raised six, with one more teenage son at home, I have come to the conclusion that you just breathe a sigh of relief if they grow up and have avoided fatal, life-altering choices. I am lucky. So far. Knock on a lot of wood.

I have watched good kids from good families make bad choices, and kids with no seeming chance make good choices. But one thing I have observed. Very few teenagers make the hard choice without some outside encouragement or help in understanding the known consequences, from some source. They nearly always opt for the choice that involves the most fun and/or the least immediate pain, and then learn later that they now have to make yet another choice as a consequence of the original one. And thus they grow up. So quickly.

But it’s not just teenagers. I am completely capable of making very bad choices as I approach the end of my sixth decade of human experiences and observations. In fact, I have made some rather…

Tags: Consumer Confidence, debt, deflation, frugality, government, Government spending, John Mauldin, lending, savings

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40% Higher? You Gotta Be Kidding!

An Uncomfortable Choice

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