by Calculated Risk on 5/08/2009 04:39:00 PM

From the FDIC: FDIC to Open a Temporary East Coast Satellite Office

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) today announced it will open a temporary satellite office in Jacksonville, Florida, to manage receiverships and to liquidate assets from failed financial institutions primarily located in the eastern states.
...
The new office will provide facilities for up to 500 nonpermanent staff and contractors. ... Throughout its history, the FDIC has used these offices to keep temporary asset resolution staff closer to the concentration of failed bank assets they oversee. As the work diminishes, the temporary satellite offices are closed.

Unrelated - of course - BKUNA has been given an extension until May 14th. From the Miami Herald: N.Y. investment firm courting BankUnited

A third potential buyer has emerged for ailing BankUnited.

JC Flowers & Co., a New York investment firm run by J. Christopher Flowers, is looking at acquiring the Coral Gables-based thrift, according to a person familiar with the situation.

BankUnited, the main unit of BankUnited Financial Corp., is under federal regulatory orders to merge or find a buyer to strengthen its capital base. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. extended until May 14 the deadline for prospective investors or buyers of the thrift to submit their bids.

by Calculated Risk on 5/08/2009 03:08:00 PM

I took this video this morning (my first YouTube, so please excuse the quality).

This is a project in Irvine, CA called Central Park West. The project was built by Lennar and mothballed in 2007. I was surprised the area was open and fountains were all running, but unfortunately the information center was closed.

New condos like this are shadow inventory - they are not included in the Census Bureau new homes report, and they are not listed in the MLS. But they do exist.

Here are the Las Vegas "Manhattan West" photos mentioned in the video.

by Calculated Risk on 5/08/2009 01:03:00 PM

From Bloomberg: Fannie Mae to Tap $19 Billion in Treasury Capital

Fannie Mae ... asked the U.S. Treasury for a $19 billion capital investment and raised the possibility that its long-term survival may be dependent on continued government funding.

Fannie Mae, which took $15.2 billion in aid on March 31, cited the “unprecedented” housing market slump and government- mandated programs that are creating “conflicts in strategic and day-to-day decision making,” according to company filings today with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Here is the section from the SEC 10-Q filing:

We face a variety of different, and potentially conflicting, objectives, including:

providing liquidity, stability and affordability in the mortgage market;

immediately providing additional assistance to the mortgage market and to the struggling housing market;

limiting the amount of the investment Treasury must make under our senior preferred stock purchase agreement with Treasury in order to eliminate a net worth deficit;

returning to long-term profitability; and

protecting the interests of the taxpayers.

These objectives create conflicts in strategic and day-to-day decision-making that could lead to less than optimal outcomes for some or all of these objectives. For example, limiting the amount of funds Treasury must invest in us under the senior preferred stock purchase agreement in order to eliminate a net worth deficit could require us to constrain some of our business activities, including activities targeted at providing liquidity, stability and affordability to the mortgage market. Conversely, to the extent we expand our efforts to assist the mortgage market, our financial results are likely to suffer, at least in the short term, which will increase the amount of funds that Treasury is required to provide to us and further limit our ability to return to long-term profitability. We regularly consult with and receive direction from our conservator on how to balance our objectives.

Accordingly, we currently are primarily focusing on the first two objectives listed above ...

Notice they are concentrating on the first two objectives above, and that does not include "protecting interest of taxpayers", "returning long-term profitability" or "limiting the investment from Treasury".

by Calculated Risk on 5/08/2009 11:19:00 AM

Update: from Bloomberg: Chrysler’s Dissenting Lenders Give Up Fight Over Sale

Chrysler LLC’s secured lenders that opposed the automaker’s bankruptcy sale of assets to a company run by Fiat SpA are dropping their fight in the bankruptcy court case ...

The group, calling itself Chrysler’s Non-TARP lenders, doesn’t plan to defend earlier objections and may withdraw them formally, said Tom Lauria, the White & Case attorney representing the group.

From Alan Ross Sorkin at the NY Times: 2 Funds Withdraw from Dissident Chrysler Group

OppenheimerFunds and Stairway Capital Management said on Friday that they were withdrawing from a group of dissident Chrysler creditors, days after it suffered a series of defeats in federal bankruptcy court...

Stairway also cited the shrinking roster of the dissident creditors as a reason to publicly withdraw its opposition to the Chrysler reorganization plan. “The fact simply is, however, our group has become too small to have a voice within the bankruptcy,” the firm said in its own statement.
...
At the outset last week, the group claimed about 20 members holding $1 billion in debt. When lawyers for the group filed a motion to disclose its membership under court seal, they said that the group held about $300 million.

Now only three creditors remain.

Sorkin has statements from Oppenheimer and Stairway. Here is an excerpt:

OppenheimerFunds has determined that the senior creditors can no longer reasonably expect to increase the recovery rate on the debt they hold by opposing the Taskforce’s restructuring plan.

It looks like the government's restructuring plan will prevail.

by Calculated Risk on 5/08/2009 09:25:00 AM

Note: earlier Employment post: Employment Report: 539K Jobs Lost, 8.9% Unemployment Rate.

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms (as opposed to the number of jobs lost).

For the current recession, employment peaked in December 2007, and this recession was a slow starter (in terms of job losses and declines in GDP).

However job losses have really picked up over the last 6 months (4 million jobs lost, red line cliff diving on the graph), and the current recession is now the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms after 16 months - although not in terms of the unemployment rate.

In the early post-war recessions (1948, 1953, 1958), there were huge swings in manufacturing employment and that lead to large percentage losses. For the current recession, the job losses are more widespread.

In April, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major private-sector industries.
BLS, April Employment Report

Here is a look at how "widespread" the job losses are using the employment diffusion index from the BLS.

The BLS diffusion index is a measure of how widespread changes in employment are. Some people think it measures the percent of industries increasing employment, but that isn't quite correct.

From the BLS handbook:

The diffusion indexes for private nonfarm payroll employment are based on estimates for 278 industries, while the manufacturing indexes are based on estimates for 84 industries. Each component series is assigned a value of 0, 50, or 100 percent, depending on whether its employment showed a decrease, no change, or an increase over a given period. The average (mean) value is then calculated, and this percent is the diffusion index number.

So it is possible for the diffusion index to increase (like manufacturing increased from 12.7 to 26.5) not because industries are hiring, but because fewer industries are losing jobs.

Think of this as a measure of how widespread the job losses are across industries. The further from 50 (above or below), the more widespread the job losses or gains reported by the BLS.

Before September, the all industries employment diffusion index was close to 40, suggesting that job losses were limited to a few industries. However starting in September the diffusion index plummeted. In December, the index hit 20.5, suggesting job losses were very widespread. The index has recovered since then (28.5 in April), although job losses are still widespread.

The manufacturing diffusion index has fallen even further, from 40 in May 2008 to just 6 in January 2009. The manufacturing index recovered slightly to 26.5 in April.

by Calculated Risk on 5/08/2009 08:30:00 AM

From the BLS:

Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in April (-539,000), and the unemployment rate rose from 8.5 to 8.9 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.7 million jobs have been lost. In April, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major private-sector industries. Overall, private sector employment fell by 611,000.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the unemployment rate and the year over year change in employment vs. recessions.

Nonfarm payrolls decreased by 539,000 in April. March job losses were revised to
699,000. The economy has lost almost 4 million jobs over the last 6 months, and over 5.7 million jobs during the 16 consecutive months of job losses.

The unemployment rate rose to 8.9 percent; the highest level since 1983.

Year over year employment is strongly negative (there were 5.2 million fewer Americans employed in Apr 2009 than in Apr 2008).

The second graph shows the unemployment rate compared to the stress test economic scenarios on a quarterly basis as provided by the regulators to the banks (no link).

This is a quarterly forecast: in Q1 the unemployment rate was higher than the "more adverse" scenario. For Q2, April is already higher than the "more adverse" scenario, and will probably rise further in May and June.

Note also that the unemployment rate has already reached the peak of the "baseline scenario".

This is another weak employment report ... more soon.

by Calculated Risk on 5/07/2009 11:00:00 PM

Earlier I pointed out that some of the numbers seemed puzzling.

Peter Eavis at the WSJ has a similar reaction, but uses a different example: U.S. Banks' Not-So-Stressful Test

The government's 13.8% worst-case loss-rate for second-lien mortgages seems fair. But it is a stretch to think Wells Fargo, with its large home-equity book focused on stressed housing markets, will have a lower-than-sector loss rate of 13.2%.

That doesn't make sense.

And on commercial real estate:

The government may have been too optimistic in positing an 8.5% commercial-real-estate loss rate. This sector is just starting to fall apart, and defaults may move sharply higher as borrowers struggle to refinance loans.

Unfortunately the Fed grouped Construction & Development loans (C&D) in with other CRE loans. The losses on C&D at loans are rising sharply, and it would have been easier to analyze if the Fed had released the data by each separate CRE category.

by Calculated Risk on 5/07/2009 09:29:00 PM

With the recent increase in treasury yields, reader shortcourage asked for a graph comparing the 30 year fixed mortgage rate and the ten year treasury yield. Sometimes we do requests ...

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph compares the weekly 30 year fixed rate conforming rate from Freddie Mac, and the 10 year treasury yield. The black line is the spread between the two rates.

The spread is back down near the lower end of the range - and this suggests any further increase in the ten year yield will push up morgage rates.

Freddie Mac reported today:

Freddie Mac today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®) in which the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.84 percent with an average 0.7 point for the week ending May 7, 2009, up from last week when it averaged 4.78 percent. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 6.05 percent.

by Calculated Risk on 5/07/2009 07:04:00 PM

The Fed released the stress test results earlier today.

The projected $600 billion in losses over the next two years under the "more adverse" scenario are in addition to the estimated $400 billion in losses and write downs are already taken by these 19 banks. Because of existing resources, future earnings, and planned transactions, the Fed estimates the banks need to raise $75 billion in capital. This is a huge question mark: Is this enough?

Note: Shuffling preferred to common doesn't really help with solvency (except with some ratios). See Paul Kasriel's Preferred Equity into Common Equity – Accounting Alchemy?

Some of the numbers don't make much sense. Using BofA as an example, the indicative two year loss rates for first lien mortgages are 7% to 8.5%, and I believe BofA is in worse shape (because of their acquisition of Countrywide) than most banks. So I would expect losses substantially higher than the indicative rates. Instead they were lower (only 6.8% of first lien mortgages).

And I was expecting more details. Under Commercial Real Estate (CRE), the Fed grouped Construction & Development (C&D), Multi-family, and other non-residential in the same category. However the indicative loss rates suggest these assets perform very differently (C&D the worst), and it would help to break out each category. Especially since it appears the banks have under reserved for CRE losses.

How can BofA only have 9.1% in CRE losses over two years under the "more adverse" scenario? I'd like to see their exposure to C&D, and other categories.

Also, I was expecting to see the losses and loss rates for both the baseline and more adverse scenarios. Although the "more adverse" is the new baseline, I was hoping to construct a new scenario based on differences in these losses. Without the baseline data, this is impossible.

On the Obama dinner with several economists, Michael Hirsh writes: No-Stress Tests

It’s not that Barack Obama isn’t aware of what’s at stake. That’s very likely why on April 27, the president gathered in some of his chief outside economic critics —including two of the most vociferous, Nobelists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman—for a secretive dinner in the old family dining room of the White House. Also in attendance: Paul Volcker, who has one foot in and one foot out of the administration as the head of Obama’s largely cosmetic economic recovery board; Princeton economist and former Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder; Columbia’s Jeff Sachs; and Harvard’s Ken Rogoff. Representing the home team, as it were: Obama’s chief economic adviser Larry Summers, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Why did Obama hold the meeting? “I think he wanted to hear the [opposing] arguments right in front of him,” says Blinder. “All I can say is if the president of the United States devotes that much personal time, and it was about two-hour dinner, he must want to hear what people outside the administration are saying and hear what his own people say in rebuttal to that. Why would you do that if you aren’t at least turning over your mind what to do next?”

What to do next? If this fails, nationalize.

by Calculated Risk on 5/07/2009 05:00:00 PM

From the Fed:

The results of a comprehensive, forward-looking assessment of the financial conditions of the nation's 19 largest bank holding companies (BHCs) by the federal bank supervisory agencies were released on Thursday.

The exercise--conducted by the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation--was conducted so that supervisors could determine the capital buffers sufficient for the 19 BHCs to withstand losses and sustain lending--even if the economic downturn is more severe than is currently anticipated. In a detailed summary of the results of the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP), the supervisors identified the potential losses, resources available to absorb losses, and resulting capital buffer needed for the 19 participating BHCs.

The SCAP is a complement to the Treasury's Capital Assistance Program (CAP), which makes capital available to financial institutions as a bridge to private capital in the future. Together, these programs play a critical role in ensuring that the U.S. banking sector will be in a position of strength.

Overview of Results (333 KB PDF)

The results of the SCAP suggest that if the economy were to track the more adverse scenario, losses at the 19 firms during 2009 and 2010 could be $600 billion. The bulk of the estimated losses –approximately $455 billion – come from losses on the BHCs’ accrual loan portfolios, particularly from residential mortgages and other consumer‐related loans. The estimated two‐year cumulative losses on total loans under the more adverse scenario is 9.1 percent at the 19 participating BHCs; for comparison, this two‐year rate is higher than during the historical peak loss years of the 1930s. Estimated possible losses from trading‐related exposures and securities held in investment portfolios totaled $135 billion.

Ten banks need $185 billion in additional capital:

After taking account of losses, revenues and reserve build requirements, in the aggregate, these firms need to add $185 billion to capital buffers to reach the target SCAP capital buffer at the end of 2010 under the more adverse scenario. But a number of these firms have either completed or contracted for asset sales or restructured existing capital instruments since the end of 2008 in ways that increased their Tier 1 Common capital. These actions substantially reduced the final SCAP buffer. In addition, the preprovision net revenues of many of the firms exceeded what was assumed in the more adverse scenario by almost $20B, allowing them to build their capital bases. The effects of these transactions and revenues rendered the additional capital needed to establish the SCAP buffer equal to $75 billion.

Note: It's important to note these are future losses in addition to write-downs already taken.