Loose Monetary Policy Fueled Bubbles

Low interest rates, especially negative real interest rates create excessive risk taking because people are forced to reach for yield in order just to stay even with inflation. Look at the situation today and back in the early 2000's with the FED Funds set at 1%. The typical definition for the risk-free rate is the 90 day Treasury bill which closely follows the FED Funds rate. With inflation above 1%, anyone who wanted a safe return would have to guarantee themselves a loss. The only way to keep up with inflation and keep purchasing power is to make riskier investments.

Banks are not the only ones that benefit from low FED Funds rates. Corporate bonds and other financial instruments (such as mortgage bonds) are also affected and receive lower rates too. The higher the quality of the bond, the lower the spread between Treasuries and the bond. Today, highly rated and highly "safe" companies such as Microsoft are able to sell their five year bonds at below inflation. Once again, the investor has to reach for yield in order not to guarantee himself a loss.

Where to go? Humm, junk bonds offered around 7%, and back in the bubble, people couldn't get enough of those bonds. There was so much demand that artificial junk and subprime mortgage bonds were created. That's right, artificial bonds made from credit default swaps simulated the junk and subprime bonds because not enough real subprime and junk bonds were available. Do we see something here? There was so much demand for subprime "high" yielding debt that mortgage brokers were pulling in jobless people and giving them money to buy a home. That is people could get cash out in addition to owning the home!

There was no conspiracy, these loans were widely known and discussed because they were referred to as NINJA loans, no income, no job loans and that name itself should have been enough for any regulator or investor to understand what they were getting into.

Yes there is definitely a psychological side as well. People stopped pouring money into stocks after the tech crash and people are much more risk-adverse today, even willing to accept 0.01% on T-bills which is a guaranteed loss of more than 3% a year with inflation where it is. But I hope that you see how low interest rates create speculation because people are FORCED to take risks that they wouldn't otherwise to protect their savings and assets from being destroyed by inflation. Many people would have been happy getting 5% in a riskless T-bill, which is why the bubble popped right around the time the FED raised FED Funds to 5.25%. It's a complicated system with many feedback loops, but there is no question that loose monetary policy was at the center of the mess.

SEC Has Weak Case Against Goldman

Today, the SEC filed civil charges against Goldman, a short summary from the NY Times reads,

Goldman Sachs, which emerged relatively unscathed from the financial crisis, was accused of securities fraud in a civil suit filed Friday by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which claims the bank created and sold a mortgage investment that was secretly devised to fail.

After reading more details of this transaction, I'm not sure if the SEC has a case or not. ACA knew that Paulson was involved with picking the securities, they exchanged e-mails with him and both negotiated over which securities would be included in the CDO.

On January 22, 2007, ACA sent an email to Tourre and others at GS&Co with the subject line, “Paulson Portfolio 1-22-10.xls.” The text of the email began, “Attached please find a worksheet with 86 sub-prime mortgage positions that we would recommend taking exposure to synthetically. Of the 123 names that were originally submitted to us for review, we have included only 55.”

It seems the whole SEC case hinges on the fact that Goldman did not disclose Paulson had purchased Credit Default Swaps (CDS) on some of the underlying securities from Goldman, and was involved with ACA in the initial selection process. However someone else on Felix Salmon's blog raised a really good issue,

“After participating in the selection of the reference portfolio, Paulson effectively shorted the RMBS portfolio it helped select by entering into credit default swaps (“CDS”) with GS&Co to buy protection on specific layers of the ABACUS 2007-AC1 capital structure.”

In other words Paulson bought insurance for the underlying portfolio from Goldman.

If the underlying portfolio fails–or if it were to fail–Goldman will have to post collateral.

If Goldman knew that these are bad securities (implying that at some point it has to post collateral to Paulson & Co.) then why would GS structure them in a way that Paulson wants?

Even if for some strange reason GS did structure it the way Paulson wanted and got a fee in return, how can GS be held culpable, given the fact it is long on the underlying insurance?"

This will be a very hard case and is not a clear case of wrongdoing. Goldman was not an underwriter, they were just the broker in the deal. There's no guarantee that anything a broker sells has to be a "good" security in the eyes of the broker or the seller. It's like a yard sale, the buyer knows that the stuff there is junk in the eyes of the seller, but one man's junk is another's treasure. In the financial world, no one is omniscient, Paulson turned out to be right, but ACA had the opportunity to review the proposed list of securities, made revisions, and agreed to the final list. They could have rejected any of the securities on the list, and in fact did reject 21 out of the initial list as well as pick the replacement securities. It was a negotiation and ACA is a big boy who should have done better analysis (actually it's really the willingness of subsequent investors to accept risk for such a low yield). The fact that these were to be based on subprime mortgages at the Baa2 credit level underscores that this wasn't going to be as safe as a government bond.

This occurred on February 2, 2007: “Later the same day, ACA emailed Paulson, Tourre, and others at GS&Co a list of 82 RMBS on which Paulson and ACA concurred, plus a list of 21 “replacement” RMBS. ACA sought Paulson’s approval of the revised list, asking, “Let me know if these work for you at the Baa2 level.”

The only fault I can see is that Goldman didn't correct ACA's false assumptions that Paulson was long in the fund.

On January 10, 2007, Tourre emailed ACA a “Transaction Summary” that included a description of Paulson as the “Transaction Sponsor” and referenced a “Contemplated Capital Structure” with a “[0]% – [9]%: pre-committed first loss” as part of the Paulson deal structure. The description of this [0]% – [9]% tranche at the bottom of the capital structure was consistent with the description of an equity tranche and ACA reasonably believed it to be a reference to the equity tranche. In fact, GS&Co never intended to market to anyone a “[0]% – [9]%” first loss equity tranche in this transaction…

On February 12, 2007, ACA’s Commitments Committee approved the firm’s participation in ABACUS as portfolio selection agent. The written approval memorandum described Paulson’s role as follows: “the hedge fund equity investor wanted to invest in the 0- 9% tranche of a static mezzanine ABS CDO backed 100% by subprime residential mortgage securities.”

All the instant analysis on the mainstream news sites don't do justice to the complexity of the issue. It's a good thing there are blogs out there that will provide real analysis from people who understand the business, but that's bad for the SEC as the deeper you look into the case, the worse it appears for the SEC.

Los Angeles Real Estate Prices Based on Traffic Flow

As we end 2009, it seems the worst for residential real estate is over. During this year, I picked up three properties in the Oakland area and all of them seem to have gone up looking at recent sales data. With properties generating huge cash flows even with a worsening rental market, I doubt that we'll see a new low being made in Oakland. As for the rest of the nation? Who knows. In LA where I live, I see single family homes continuing to trend lower in price, the homes in various non-Westside areas like Riverside, La Puente, Silverlake and so forth need to return to their pre-bubble prices of around $250,000-$450,000 depending on their proximity to Downtown LA.

In LA, it's all about traffic. Traffic is horrible going west in the mornings and east in the afternoons, north and south are horrible all day long. Downtown is the center of the freeway system where all traffic merges into a few lanes ill suited to today's traffic flow. Downtown is also where a lot of high paying jobs are, generally the easier traffic is to and from Downtown, the more valuable the real estate will be. Those who bought homes 30-60 miles away East of Downtown have 2 hour drives each way at least, to and from work. These are the homes that have more to fall, no one wants to spend 4 hours a day in the car, and with prices getting cheaper elsewhere, hitting the magic price point of $400,000-$600,000, the starter home price in LA, real estate in Riverside will have to return to $200,000 to attract takers. Because north/south traffic is especially bad, homes that are oriented on the 5/101/110/405 interstates that seem closer to Downtown than homes to the east oriented on the 10/60 will be just as cheap. That is moving 5 miles north or south is like moving 10 miles east valuewise. The further east and north/south, the lower property values. Homes located west of Downtown are able to escape the bad traffic flow and so reflect that convenience in their prices. West Los Angeles where I live saw prices drop by only 5.5% in 2009 according to Zillow, and the average home is still at a very high $798,900 (Oct 2009 sales).

My general thoughts are that LA has more to fall. It's a rich city, but having to spend $800,000 just to live in a decent area without facing horrendous traffic to and from work is just too much. Surprisingly, it will be these areas that hold up the best as everyone considers traffic congestion to be one of the major factors when deciding where to purchase. Consider this article as a very general overview of the LA market, I was thinking about more specific predictions and so forth but that's a lot harder and more time consuming than I thought it would be. This was supposed to be just a quick 5 minute blurb, but it's been well over 45 minutes now as I have to check facts and so forth. Maybe the lesson from this post is that real estate is very location specific and generalizations are all but useless. No wonder my real estate instructor drilled into us that location, location, location are the three most important factors in real estate. Now that I have 7 properties in LA and Oakland, I fully understand why.