Draining the Swamp: The Fed’s Tri Party Repo Machine
by ilene - November 30th, 2009 11:32 pm
Draining the Swamp: The Fed’s Tri Party Repo Machine
Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain
In this case as outlined by the New York Fed memo below, a triparty repo transaction is a transaction among three parties: a cash lender acting on behalf of all holders of dollars (the Fed), a borrower that will provide collateral (dodgy debt holder in shaky financial condition), and a clearing bank, most likely a primary dealer like J.P. Morgan, which is only too happy to collect its fees as an agent of the Fed.
The triparty clearing bank provides custody (agency) accounts for parties to the repo deal and collateral management services. These services include ensuring that pledged collateral meets the cash lenders’ requirements, pricing collateral, ensuring collateral sufficiency, and moving cash and collateral between the parties’ accounts. What if any liabilities the clearing bank such as J.P.Morgan or Goldman Sachs might obtain for the mispricing of risk remain undisclosed, but are probably negligible at worst.
This is the method of obtaining toxic assets from the books of non-primary dealers, and providing stability and liquidity from the aggregate value of all dollar holders to cover the misdeeds of diverse financial institutions and other favored parties.
In other words, the Fed is draining the financial debt swamp and toxic waste dumps into your basement, if you hold Federal Reserve Notes. Your IRA’s, your 401k’s, your savings, as long as you hold Federal Reserve Notes, which are claims on their balance sheet loosely backed by the Treasury. When the Fed’s balance sheet contained nothing but Treasuries and explicity backed agencies that relationship was firmer. Now, we are into the realm of make believe and Timmy’s credibility.
The Fed pledges that Goldman and Morgan assure them that there will be no radioactive material in the sludge pond headed your way, and levels of carcinogenic and toxic contamination will be within levels that they believe are adequate based on the non-binding estimates.
In practice the Fed has a defaults account on its book for the shortfalls from fat valuations due to the toxic debt it has already assumed on your behalf.
The source and composition of the sludge will remain a secret among the bankers, without oversight. This seems like taxation without representation, at least for holders of dollars that are US citizens, since the Fed is engaging in the expenditure of public money…
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Geithner Singled Out In TARP Watchdog Neil Barofsky’s Scathing Report On AIG Bailout
by ilene - November 18th, 2009 8:28 pm
The Huffington Post has a couple articles on the highly critical SIGTARP report discussed previously by The Epicurean Dealmaker. - Ilene
Geithner Singled Out In TARP Watchdog Neil Barofsky’s Scathing Report On AIG Bailout
A brutal report issued Monday by a government watchdog holds Timothy Geithner — then the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now the nation’s Treasury Secretary — responsible for overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs.
The authoritative new narrative describes how, while bailing out insurance giant AIG last fall, a team led by Geithner failed nearly every step of the way.
Instead of bargaining with AIG’s numerous counterparties to resolve its billions of dollars in souring derivatives contracts, Geithner’s team ended up paying top dollar for toxic assets — "an amount far above their market value at the time," the report notes.
"There is no question that the effect of FRBNY’s decisions — indeed, the very design of the federal assistance to AIG — was that tens of billions of dollars of Government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG’s counterparties," the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said.
Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia got full value for their derivatives contracts with AIG, and taxpayers got the bill. In total, $27.1 billion of public money was transferred to companies that did business with AIG…
Goldman Sachs Would Have Been Damaged By AIG Failure: SIGTARP Report
As Goldman Sachs put it in a press release last March, the bank had "no material direct economic exposure" to AIG.
Well, it depends on what you mean by "material direct economic exposure."
In a report issued earlier this week, TARP special inspector general Neil Barofsky took a shot at Goldman’s claim that it was insulated against AIG’s demise. While, the report’s language is arcane, the message is simple: if AIG had gone under, Goldman Sachs would have had significant difficulty trying to collect on the the derivatives bets it placed with other banks in order to offset potential AIG losses.
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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