Posts Tagged “JPMorgan Chase”

Occupy Wall Street, Consider This My Gift to You…

2 | By Shah Gilani

Out of far left field, I see something coming that I never expected.

It’s more like the coming together of pieces of a puzzle that have eluded us for too long.

By the way, Occupy Wall Street, if you’re listening, and I hope you are, and you’re still floundering (which I know you are) without a cause that anybody can really wrap their heads around, drop your drums, chants, and wanderings, and make the coming together of this puzzle what you’re protesting.

And make what could result what you are demanding.

Because, really, this could be the mother lode.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is accusing six former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of playing down the risk to investors of their firms’ aggressive fast-forward into subprime mortgages… which caused them to implode spectacularly.

Two separate civil suits, filed last Friday, allege that the executives “knowingly misled investors” who owned shares in the companies and were thus deprived of critical information against which meaningful investment decisions are generally made.

The two wards, currently under U.S. conservatorship (life support attended by a wet-nurse), were themselves spared being sued, on account of their signing civil non-prosecution agreements and promising to cooperate and not dispute allegations (and also not have to admit nor deny wrongdoing). Yet the SEC is seeking financial penalties, disgorgement, and an order barring guilty parties from serving as officers or directors of any public companies in the future against the implicated executives.

The SEC faces an uphill battle based on one word – “subprime.”

The problem is, subprime has never been legally defined.

You know what it means, I know what it means, everybody knows what it means, without knowing its exact definition. But if there’s no definition of subprime, defense lawyers will counter that it’s not possible to sue based on a standard that has never been defined.

How about we compare mortgages to cars and subprime to clunkers. If you’re on my used car lot and I offer you two cars at the same price and don’t tell you one is a clunker, is that fair? You wouldn’t need me to define “clunker.” If I said one was a clunker, you would simply choose the other car; after all, it’s the same price.

There is a difference, there’s a big difference.

Over on the Fannie and Freddie lots between 2006 and 2007, they were loading up on clunkers and not telling anyone what they were stocking. In fact, they were saying things like, “basically (we) have no subprime exposure” in the single-family realm.

They lied.

One of the reasons they were loading up on subprime was because Wall Street banks were eating their lunch by buying up subprime loans, packaging them, and selling them to investors hand over fist, and Fannie and Freddie wanted in on that very lucrative business. It’s not that they hadn’t dabbled in subprime before; they had. But as they saw stresses in the marketplace on the better mortgages in their portfolios, they still loaded up on far weaker credits; also known in the business as SUBPRIME.

So what’s next?

There are going to be a lot of emails and other testimony coming out about who knew what when, and who lied to who to make how much.

It’s going to be fun to watch this thing unfold.

But the whole point of this piece of the puzzle coming to light is that, to make their bonuses bigger and their options worth more, these executives leveraged their essentially “private” companies knowing that their losses would be “socialized” (paid for by taxpayers) if their bets fell apart.

Their lies are no different than the lies told to investors by the big banks during the credit crisis (and most of the time, for that matter).

Yes, if the SEC wins their cases, there’s hope that the lying executives of our biggest banks (and, if there is a God, the liars at the Federal Reserve, too) will be brought to justice for misleading not only their investors, and the American public that bailed them out, but also Congress (not that they would ever lie), who crafted legislation to save us from another financial catastrophe without knowing how the banks and the Fed lied to us all.

Thanks to Bloomberg LP and Fox News Networks LLC – who sued the Fed to get them to cough up data under the Freedom of Information Act – we know just how much they all lied.

We now know the bankers were telling lies to our faces while being propped up by the backdoor boys at the Fed. Heck, most Fed regional bank presidents didn’t know, the Treasury Secretary didn’t know. Nobody but the bankers and the Fed knew that they were lying to us.

Again, courtesy of Bloomberg, here’s what they were saying, when they were saying it, and how much money they got from the Fed to keep their doors open on the exact dates that their borrowings peaked:

  • On September 21, 2008, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack said, “Morgan Stanley is in the strongest possible position.” By September 29, 2008, they had borrowed $107 billion from the Fed and took another $10 billion in TARP money.
  • On January 16, 2009, Citicorp CEO Vikram Pandit said, “We have an irreplaceable franchise.” By January 20, 2009, they had borrowed $99.5 billion from the Fed and took $45 billion in TARP money.
  • On January 22, 2009, Bank of America CEO Kenneth D. Lewis said, “The diversity and strength of our company is allowing us to continue to invest in our business to drive future profit growth.” By February 26, 2009, they had borrowed $91.4 billion from the Fed and took $45 billion in TARP money.
  • On December 16, 2008, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said, “Our deep and global client franchise, experienced and talented people and strong balance sheet position our firm well.” By December 31, 2008, they had borrowed $69 billion from the Fed and took $10 billion in TARP money.
  • On February 23, 2009, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said, “We believe we have a fortress balance sheet.” By February 26, 2009, they had borrowed $48 billion from the Fed and took $25 billion in TARP money.
  • On March 6, 2009, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf said, “We couldn’t feel better about the future.” Meanwhile, as of February 26, 2009, they had borrowed $45 billion from the Fed and took $25 billion in TARP money.

They are all liars. They should all be prosecuted for misleading their investors, the public, and Congress.

It was these very banks that were feeding crap to Fannie and Freddie and at the same time competing with them to grow the whole pie for all their bonuses and stock options.

It was a giant scheme – don’t you get it?

And because they are such good liars they, the banks, and the Fed will tell us and Congress that we can’t handle the truth and they lied to us to protect us from the reality of how bad things really were.

Really? We need to be protected from the truth so we can continually be lied to so they can all make more money?

Sure, that’s why total assets held by the country’s above-named biggest banks have risen 39% since 2006. That’s why average banker pay in 2010 was the same as it was in 2007. That’s why banks spent 33% more money lobbying Congress from 2006 through 2010. That’s why Dodd-Frank isn’t completed and never will be. That’s why America has become a sinkhole.

And speaking of sinkholes…

No, I’m not going to point to that former MF Global leader Jon Corzine, who used to brag that he co-authored Sarbanes-Oxley when he was a U.S. Senator (such an august body!), which hopefully he will be hung by, along with the entire gallery of rogues above who deserve the gallows… no, not him.

Time out…

In case you Occupy Wall Streeters missed the other pieces of the puzzle, there was the list of lies the bankers foisted on us while being aided and abetted by the lying Fed and how they should all come under the axe of Sarbanes-Oxley, after all, it is still the law of the land. Those are the pieces of the puzzle that need to come together.

But, alas, I digress once again; back to Freddie and Fannie.

No doubt you knew that Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, a House member since 1979, author of the Contract With America, and the distinguished first House member in history (he will like this, he is an historian, did you know?) to be disciplined (and fined $300,000) for ethics violations. (He actually faced 84 charges during his, did I say “distinguished,” term, and quit before he could be kicked out of that, did I already say “august,” body).

When he “quit” he said, “I’m willing to lead, but I’m not willing to preside over cannibals.” Good for him! Because once freed, the august historian was called upon to eat at the august table of Freddie Mac.

Of course, he didn’t approach them. He says, “I was approached to offer strategic advice.” Nice work for $1.6 million if you can get it, being an “historian” I mean, and offering The Freddie …”advice on precisely what they didn’t do.”

He actually said that.

Oh, what they didn’t do, now I get it.

The Newton bomb must have been talking about Freddie not raising the fees it charged back in 1995.

You probably don’t remember, but back then some actually, really august members of the House wanted Freddie and Fannie to raise their fees to make them more competitive with private mortgage outfits. There was serious concern back then that the Government Sponsored Enterprises were too enterprising and, with their de facto government backing, could raise money cheaper than private outfits and outcompete them in their rather large business space.

But Newt-to-the-rescue – the same Newt who said, “I’ve never done a favor for Fannie or Freddie” saw to it that the proposed fees would never see the light of day. Ah, all in a day’s work over at our august Capitol.

Is he a liar? I would never accuse anyone of being a liar, you know me… so let me put it nicely… He is a liar.

Where was I?

Oh, have a Happy Holiday… and if you don’t have any presents to give out, you can always pass this along as a pillow to any of the cold kids camped out with their Occupy Wall Street posters as comforters.

Seriously, Happy Holidays!

And one more thing. There won’t be an Insights & Indictments in your mailbox this Sunday morning… I just don’t have the heart to do that on Christmas.

Shah

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The Canary in the Coalmine, and Why JPMorgan’s Hands Are Filthy

0 | By Shah Gilani

What a fun day that was yesterday.

No, I’m not talking about Jefferson County, Alabama, filing for bankruptcy… that’s not fun or funny, as you’ll come to learn shortly.

I’m talking about global stock markets and bond markets.

Wow, what fun! Can you imagine being short stocks and having one heck of a day yesterday? I can.

Can you have imagined that Italy’s interest rates would have soared the way they did? I can. And you could too, if you read what I wrote on Monday about how the CDS market was broken and what that would do to Italian bond rates.

Look, I’m not the kind of guy to say I told you so, but if I was, I’d sure be saying it now.

Italy is the canary in the coalmine – not Greece. (FYI, they used to keep a canary in every coalmine, because if it died, that meant poisonous gases that humans couldn’t smell were present.)

If Italy implodes, either by its bond yields exploding, its economy sinking, or its fiscal house burning, all of Europe is going down. And America will surely follow.

While you were sleeping this morning, Italy had to offer 6.087% interest on the one-year bills it floated. That compares to the 3.57% it paid just last October 11. What smells is that Greece just floated some bills at 4.90%.

In other words, the canary (Italy, in case I lost you) is starting to teeter on its perch.

It has another €28 billion to roll over by the end of 2011, and how much it will have to offer investors to buy its paper is anybody’s guess.

There’s only one guessing game that matters in Europe right now. That is whether or not the ECB will step up and promise – à la the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank – to be lender of first and last (and in-between) resort.

The ECB has to do something bold. And it probably will.

If it does, the next guess will be, where will its backing and credibility to backstop all of Europe come from?

Will it come from the same teetering nations that’s its going to have to support? Good luck with that. Or will it come from the backing of the IMF, with a ton more commitments from the U.S. and other G20 countries? Good luck with that.

We’re going to get a relief pop this morning in the stock market. Good luck with that, too.

Until Europe is figured out – and it won’t be any time soon – stay short with tight stops, just in case there is a Santa Claus coming to a chimney near you.

Oh, and by the way, if Italy starts singing again, watch Spain, then France, they are the next canaries we’ll have to watch in the coal pit we call the European Union.

Now for the “indictment” poke today…

Jefferson County filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday. It just happens to be the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Is it the canary in the coalmine for municipal finance? I’m not sure yet. I don’t think so. But if the U.S. economy double-dips, like everyone is now saying it won’t, then, yes, there will be more municipal bankruptcy filings… count on it.

But that’s not the story.

The story is how filthy dirty JPMorgan Chase’s hands are in the whole Jefferson County saga – specifically, their JPMorgan Securities arm.

This isn’t “new” news. I’ve written about it before – a lot of people have. You may have missed it, because the spin was so effective that the story got fairly quickly buried.

It’s really a long story, and someone should write a book – really, it’s that great a story. But I don’t have the space and you don’t have the time, so, here’s the short version.

Jefferson County is full of characters, a few of them who made it into local government, as on the county commission, turned out to be good old boy crooks.

Jefferson County, home to Birmingham, had an aging and stinky sewer system. The EPA demanded that it do something about it as far back as 1996. And, they did.

It was decided that a brand-new sewer system needed to be built, at an expected cost of around $1.5 billion. So the county commission had to decide who would run the financing operations, craft a plan to manage the debt, and float bonds to pay for it.

Here’s where I’m cutting out all the starch and getting to the meat of the story…

Local politicians, who were in cahoots with local broker-dealers (securities firms), wanted a piece of all that money that was going to be sloshing around. They ended up demanding (and getting) hefty bribes from big securities firms to let them become the chosen ones to run this lucrative muni finance deal.

I’m not going to get into how Goldman Sachs got involved in 2002 and ended up being paid some $3 million (some of which it passed along to “consultants”) to get into this deal… which it ended up doing nothing on, other than participating in the back-door swap arrangement with JPMorgan Securities.

Nor am I going to get into Bear Stearns’ dealings, or the small securities dealers who acted as conduits for money being exchanged between JPMorgan (who I am getting into) and all of them. Everybody has dirty hands.

But JPMorgan ended up constructing the finance arrangements and doing most of bond deals that served to finance the building of the new sewer system, and its hands got filthy as a result.

JPMorgan not only overcharged the County by some $100 million in fees (according to an advisor subsequently hired by the County) and, jointly with its co-conspirators, paid out some $8.2 million in bribes; JPMorgan actually imbedded the cost of the bribes it paid into the finance deal it constructed.

In other words, taxpayers and bond holders paid the bribes JPMorgan conveyed to get to run the County’s financing of the sewer system.

Oh but it gets better.

Before JPMorgan came to run things, some 95% of Jefferson County’s debt was fixed-rate obligations. JPMorgan turned that around to the point that the County ended up with some 93% of its outstanding debt being variable and floating rate debt, subject to interest rate hikes.

But not to worry. JPMorgan created a neat little swap deal so the County was “protected.” It didn’t work out that way, and interest costs on the County’s debts rose to as high as 10%.

In the end, JPMorgan admitted no wrongdoing but amazingly, considering it did nothing wrong, settled an SEC fraud complaint and paid Jefferson County $50 million, paid the SEC $25 million in penalties and agreed to not demand a $648 million “termination fee” it was due when the County backed out of its swap deal, which helped bankrupt it.

No one at JPMorgan went to jail. Although others were convicted of conspiracy and fraud and folks went to jail for 48 months, 52, months, and 15 years.

But not JPMorgan.

Everything is broken. Good luck with that.

Shah

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