April 11, 2008: 5:52 AM EDTThe questions Greenspan didn't ask
The former Fed chief's media offensive glosses over the apparent shortcomings of his laissez-faire stance.
By Colin Barr, senior writer
(Fortune) -- Alan Greenspan was once known for his inscrutable pronouncements, but his penchant for self-justification is now plain for all to see.

Bristling at charges he fueled the housing bubble by being loose with interest rates and lax with bank regulation, Greenspan has launched a media crusade of sorts. This week alone he has penned an opinion piece in the Financial Times, participated in a front-page profile in The Wall Street Journal and conducted a live interview with CNBC.

Greenspan once was the master of obfuscatory "Greenspeak," the man who in 1995 counseled senators that "if I say something which you understand fully ... I probably made a mistake." But shorn of that ambiguity, his message - that the Fed's role in fostering an unprecedented run-up of house prices has been vastly overstated, and that regulators aren't up to the task of preventing financial crises anyway - sounds almost willfully obtuse.

"The U.S. bubble was close to median world experience, and the evidence that monetary policy added to the bubble is statistically very fragile," Greenspan wrote in the FT. He told CNBC that "I have no regrets on any of the Federal Reserve policies that we initiated back then, because I think they were very professionally done."

Greenspan may well be correct on those counts. The problem is that Americans generally aren't interested in comparing worldwide house-price trends or considering how the Fed arrives at its decisions. What they expect from the Fed is policy that fosters stable economic growth and cushions ordinary people from the booms and busts associated with the free markets Greenspan so ardently defends. And on those scores, it's clear, something has gone awry.

The past nine months have found the U.S. paying for a leverage-fueled property binge that began toward the end of Greenspan's tenure. Since last summer, we have seen the collapse of the market for subprime-related securities, the disclosure of hundreds of billions of dollars in writedowns at major financial institutions and the related CEO shakeups at Citi (C, Fortune 500), Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500) and UBS (UBS), and a government-brokered rescue of Bear Stearns (BSC, Fortune 500). Unemployment is ticking up, and the tightfisted lending by cash-short banks threatens to stifle economic growth.

Greenspan is aware of these problems, but he doesn't seem to believe there was any way he could have done anything - such as raising interest rates earlier in the economic recovery earlier this decade, or cracking down on loose lending practices - to restrain them. Instead, he prefers to hide behind the limitations of the statistics he famously devours. Greenspan contended in a piece in the Financial Times last month that "the essential problem is that our models - both risk models and econometric models - as complex as they have become, are still too simple to capture the full array of governing variables that drive global economic reality."

But all the modeling in the world can't change the fact that the financial market meltdowns of the past year share roots in the housing mess - a debacle that some observers have been warning about for years. Northern Trust economist Paul Kasriel, for instance, said flatly in a June 2004 interview with Investment News that "housing is a bubble." He predicted "a real shakeout in the housing sector because today's real estate prices won't be justified by higher interest rates."

In fact, U.S. house prices didn't start peaking till 2006, after Greenspan gave way atop the Fed to Ben Bernanke. But the end of house-price appreciation fueled a rise in mortgage defaults and delinquencies, which left investors everywhere holding bonds that didn't turn out to be as safe as Wall Street had claimed.

There is no shortage of blame to go around in this mess - everyone from investors to bankers to regulators acted imprudently - and no one claims there is an easy answer. "Better regulation doesn't mean better outcomes," says Howard Simons, a strategist at Bianco Research in Chicago. Still, Greenspan's suggestion that the ramifications of the housing bubble were unforeseeable beggars the imagination.

"Greenspan is right, of course, that we will never have a perfect model of risk in a complex economy," Alice Rivlin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a response to Greenspan's March column at ft.com. "But the culprit was not imperfect models," Rivlin added. "It was failure to ask common sense questions."

Rivlin, who previously was director of the Congressional Budget Office and a Fed governor, wrote that Greenspan should have been asking whether house prices could rise forever (not likely, she answered) and what would happen to the value of mortgage-related securities when house prices stalled (they would decline). Ironically, one result of Greenspan's failure to pose those questions is Washington's march toward re-regulation of the financial sector - an outcome, as columinst Caroline Baum recently pointed out on Bloomberg, that Greenspan has spent his career opposing.

The Bear Stearns episode in particular seems to have crystallized sentiment that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of self-regulation. Asked earlier this month by Congress to explain why the Fed was using taxpayer dollars to finance Bear's sale to JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Treasury Undersecretary Robert Steel responded, "The failure of a firm that was connected to so many corners of our markets would have caused financial disruptions beyond Wall Street." In effect, he was saying the mighty U.S. economy couldn't withstand the failure of a second-rate brokerage firm - a notion that fairly calls out for substantial changes aimed at reducing so-called systemic risk.

Yet Greenspan retains his faith in modest, market-based solutions. "Bank loan officers, in my experience, know far more about the risks and workings of their counterparties than do bank regulators," Greenspan wrote in his most recent FT piece. "Regulators, to be effective, have to be forward-looking to anticipate the next financial malfunction. This has not proved feasible."

If the past nine months show anything, it's that Greenspan's approach hasn't proved feasible either.  
 

FED bekam eine Gesamtnote von 3, EZB von 2;
Hauptkritikpunkt bei der FED war die Vernachlässigung der Inflationsbekämpfung  

das muß eine sehr homogene Befragten-Gruppe gewesen sein ;-))

Immerhin finden die Amis ihre Notenbank als "best of the best" - aber hey, die Jungs machen einen guten Job - es kann den keiner für Übel nehmen, dass sie alles versuchen die eigene Konjunktur zum Wohle der US-Bürger zu retten. Vielmehr ist es so, dass dieses Vorhaben scheinbar gelingen wird (s. Credit Market; z.b.  iTraxx-Spreads haben sich normalisiert,)  

 

superjob, ich love ben bernanek, mein edelmetall wird unendlich steigen

superben , ich hab dein tatu aufm bo

 

 

Wie der nachstehende Artikelausschnitt zeigt, ist die geldpolitische Stützung der Kreditinstitute und indirekt des gesamten Kapitalmarkts immer noch in vollem Gange. Eins ist damit sicher: Die Liquiditätskrise bzw. die Vertrauenskrise der Banken untereinander ist alles andere als vorüber.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The Federal Reserve, along with other central banks, said Friday that it was increasing the funding it is providing to banks and announced that, for the first time, it was willing to accept bonds backed by auto loans and credit cards. "In view of the persistent liquidity pressures in some term funding markets, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve and the Swiss National Bank are announcing an expansion of their liquidity measures," the Fed said in a statement. The Fed took the move in an attempt to flood the market with supply and lower short-term lending rates, such as the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

Link:

 

 

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/...5C1%2DB984%2D3CD33807727B%7D  

Die FED ist auch weiterhin um die Stabilität des Finanzsystems besorgt. Anders kann die heutige Maßnahme nicht erklärt werden. Die Aktienmärkte, v.a. die Banken feiern dieses Event. Wie so oft, der Teufel steckt eben im Detail:

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Never mind that the loan balance between the Federal Reserve and Wall Street has been $0 for four weeks, time is running out for the borrowers to get their financial houses in order. The Fed announced Wednesday that the credit facility it opened to investment banks in March will be closing on Jan. 30. Banks will lengthen the term of credit on some loans to 84 days from 28 days. For broker dealers that serve as primary dealers of Treasury debt, the Fed said it would introduce auctions of options on $50 billion of loans. The options could be exercised if needed in periods of elevated stress in months to come, such as the end of financial quarters. ...

=> License to kill or fullfill the payement obligations!

Denn was heißt es: Die Banken sind ab jetzt an nicht mehr in der Situation, aufgrund der eingeschränkten/knappen Liquidität bestimmte Solvenzmeldungen zu tätigen. Ausserdem, und das ist der entscheidende Faktor, es kann wieder Neugeschäft generiert werden, die Counterparties haben quasi wieder Vertrauen untereinander. Bekannterweise laufen die Interbanken-Geschäfte auf einer Relation von 28 - 90 Tagen. Also alles im Butter. Dies könnte nun wirklich der entscheidende Befreiungsschlag gewesen sein! Aber auch der Anfang von Zinserhöhungen seitens der FED.

Auch eine weitere Einschränkung wurde gestern entschieden: Die Banken und sonst. große Finanzdienstleister dürfen auch weiterhin nicht mehr geshortet werden!

So sind sie eben die Wahljahre! Voller Steuer und sonstiger Geschenke, egal ob privat oder gewerblich. Traurig aber, dass am Ende ein Dritter die Rechnung zahlen wird! Darauf könnt ihr Euch verlassen.

 

oder vielleicht sogar ein bisschen mehr? ML scheint die einzige Bank zu sein, die sehr aktiv ihre Assets und somit ihr Fortbestehen managt.

Aktionen: Gemäß dem Management soll mit dem jetzigen Schritt die Risikoreduzierung des Investmenthauses beschleunigt werden. Im Detail geht es um Folgendes: ν

• Kapitalerhöhung durch Ausgabe neuer Aktien von nominal 8,5 Mrd. USD. Etwa 750.000 der Aktien werden dabei vom Management selbst gekauft (entspricht circa 2% basierend auf 24 USD/Aktie).
• Verkauf von U.S. super senior ABS CDOs im Nominalwert von 30,6 Mrd. USD für 6,7 Mrd. USD an die texanische Investorengruppe Lone Star Funds. In den Büchern stehen diese Papiere per 27.06.2008 mit 11,1 Mrd. USD. Merrill Lynch wird die Finanzierung von circa 75 Prozent des Kaufpreises übernehmen.
• Auflösung der Sicherungspositionen mit dem Monoliner XL Capital Assurance Inc. Mit weiteren Anleiheversicherern steht Merrill Lynch derzeit in Verhandlung.

Wertanpassungen für das aktuelle Quartal: ca. USD 6 Mrd., entsprechend ist die Kap.Erhöhung auch eine Stütze für das Neugeschäft. 

Auch positiv zu erwähnen ist, bei sinkenden Aktienkursen, die Kap.Erhöhungen zu platzieren. Das ist ein Gütezeichen. Entsprechend könnte man hier ein Engagement wagen. 

 

 

 

getting worse:

 

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The credit squeeze worsened in the past three months, the Federal Reserve reported Monday, and most banks expect to keep a lid on credit for the next year at least.

 

 Despite all the aggressive moves by the Fed in the past year to ease the flow of credit to the economy, a record percentage of banks were making it more difficult for borrowers in the three months ending in July, the Fed said in its quarterly senior loan officer survey of 52 major banks.A majority of banks tightened their rules for granting loans to businesses and consumers. The survey shows little appetite at banks to lend for home mortgages, credit cards, home equity loans, commercial real estate loans, or commercial and industrial loans.No bank in the survey eased credit terms for any type of loan in the past three months, and only one bank said it anticipated easing standards for consumers in the next 12 months.Tighter credit could slow economic growth, especially consumer spending, economists say. Lack of credit could sink the commercial real estate market, and curb capital investments by businesses. The survey is considered a leading indicator of credit creation in the United States."This is consistent with our view that consumer spending will slow markedly over the next several quarters," wrote economists for Lehman Bros."The impending tightening may ultimately curb consumer credit noticeably," wrote Harm Bandholz, an economist for UniCredit Markets. "This in turn would be another nail in the coffin of the U.S. consumer, who is already suffering from the weak labor market, high inflation and falling house prices."Despite the tighter credit standards, however, other data from the Fed show consumers increased their borrowing on credit cards and auto loans through the end of the second quarter, perhaps because other sources of borrowing, such as home-equity loans and auto leases, are less available.Banks told the Fed they were restricting credit because of worries about the economy, worries about risk or illiquid markets, and worries about their own fragile capital position.Ninety-eight percent of the banks cited the uncertain economy, 92% cited illiquid secondary credit markets, and 75% cited reduced appetite for risk.Banks were lowering credit lines, increasing interest-rate spreads, requiring more documentation, demanding more collateral, or requiring co-signers and or covenants before granting credit.Consumers continued to be hit hard by tighter credit standards. A record 74% of banks said they had tightened standards for prime mortgages, usually given only to those with the best credit. A record 84% of banks said they tightened standards on nontraditional mortgages (also known as Alt-A), and a record 86% of banks that still make subprime mortgages said they had tightened those standards.Businesses were also being squeezed. A record 65% of banks tightened standards for commercial and industrial loans to small customers. For commercial real estate loans, a record 81% tightened standards.DetailsC&I loans: Fifty-eight percent of banks tightened standards for commercial and industrial loans to large and medium firms, while 65% tightened for small firms.Commercial real estate: Eighty-one percent tightened standards, while 50% said demand was weakening.Residential mortgages: A record 74% of banks said they tightened standards for prime mortgages, while 53% said they saw reduced demand. For subprime mortgages, 86% tightened standards, with the number of banks who offer such loans declining to 14% of banks from about 30% two years ago. For nontraditional mortgages, 84% tightened standards while 63% reported reduced demand.Consumer credit: A record 36% of banks reported less willingness to extend consumer installment loans; only 2% were more willing.Eighty percent tightened standards on home-equity lines of credit. For credit cards, 67% tightened standards, mostly by refusing new loans to consumers without good credit

 

A mountain of worry for Fed at Jackson Hole

 "You don't know what is going to break loose," said former Fed Gov. Susan Phillips.The theme of the Fed's Jackson Hole seminar this year, 'Maintaining stability in a changing financial system,' seems more like a prayer to the mountain gods than anything else.Behind the scenes and on the sidelines, conference participants are going to be debating the Fed's dramatic actions over the past year to stem the crisis and protect the economy. And they'll be pondering what more could or should be done.Rate cuts, and new loansThe Fed has slashed interest rates over the past year to 2% from 5.25%, but that's the least of what they've done. In addition to traditional rate cuts, the Fed has instituted several innovative emergency loan programs to provide liquidity to commercial and investment banks.The Fed has now moved to the sidelines - unwilling to move rates lower due to the threat of inflation and having promised to keep lending cash to financial institutions until at least the New Year.Despite this frenzy of action, there is no end in sight for the financial market turmoil and the related housing market downturn, many experts say."I have a feeling that it is far from over," said Barry Eichengreen, an economic historian at the University of California at Berkeley. Eichengreen and other experts see mounting credit woes for banks from credit cards and other consumer loans."I think there will be another wave of mortgage-related problems, emanating not from the subprime part of the market anymore, but from people with slightly more normal credit and mortgages," he said. "It is entirely plausible that there will be some hedge fund failures and commercial bank problems.""I think this is going to bubble along for a while now," he said.Former IMF chief economist Ken Rogoff reportedly told an audience in Singapore earlier this week that a large U.S. bank was likely to collapse in the new few months.Since the beginning of the year, financial markets have reeled from one crisis to the other and remain very fragile. "You don't have the resilience now to shake off bad news," said Phillips, now dean of the business school at George Washington University.Fannie, FreddieThe current crisis surrounds the worsening conditions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with many expecting a government bailout of the two mortgage giants.To be fair, the economy has navigated the top part of the mountain in pretty good shape."I don't mean to sound like Phil Gramm...but there has been a huge amount of financial market disruption and the actual impact on the real economy has been limited," said Adam Posen, deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.Gramm, a former senator, quit as a top economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, after he said Americans were "whining" about the economy.So far this year, there hasn't been a negative gross domestic product number.   And it is very easy to overstate the problems of the financial system, warned Minneapolis Fed Gov. Gary Stern in a television interview earlier this week.But other economists are simply unsettled."It is not as if there are not some positive signs, but to me they are not consistent enough for me to be positive," said Phillips.The fact remains that the first necessary condition for repair of the markets - the bottoming of the housing market - is not in sight. Until the housing market bottoms, it will not be clear how many losses the banks need to realize."Looking ahead, there is still substantial uncertainty about the ultimate realized magnitude of loss on mortgages in 2006 and 2007, said Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker this week. "That uncertainty is out there - and that means still the potential for other shoes to drop.""We are going to continue to see some at least moderate level of stress," said Lacker.Robert Eisenbeis, a former researcher at the Atlanta Fed, said he is not confident that financial institutions have taken all the losses that they will.Fundamental questions remain about the business of investment banking and commercial banks. "I don't think anybody knows yet how big and how viable a particular business is going to be," Eisenbeis said.So far Washington has protected the financial firms, Eisenbeis said. "There is too much coziness there," Eisenbeis said. "First, we have the military industrial complex and now it's the financial complex," he said.Many economists are worried that the Fed's efforts will create inflation. Eisenbeis said the Fed went into this rate-cutting activity "without any exit strategy.""I don't think they are going to be able to just reverse policy in the face of continued weakness on the real side of the economy," he said.

 

Der Haupt-Auslöser für die erneute Zuspitzung der Kreditmarktkrise war auch der US-Finanzminister Henry Paulson. Eigentlich wollte er die Finanzmärkte beruhigen, als er im Juli die gesetzliche Voraussetzung für eine Verstaatlichung der beiden halbstaatlichen US-Hypothekenbanken Fannie Mae und Freddie Mac schaffte. Beide Institute kontrollieren zusammen 42 Prozent des US-Hypothekenmarktes und spielen damit eine entscheidende Rolle. Die Absicht von Paulson war, allein durch die Möglichkeit einer Verstaatlichung dem Markt Sicherheit zu geben. Wie ein Pokerspieler hoffte der US-Finanzminister darauf, dass die andere Seite die Karten nicht sehen will. Doch der Schuss ging nach hinten los. Die meisten Marktteilnehmer waren ohnehin davon ausgegangen, dass hinter Fannie Mae und Freddie Mac zwar nicht de jure, aber de facto staatliche Garantien stehen. Genau dies ist ja eines der Grundübel des US-Hypothekenmarktes in den letzten Jahren gewesen: Die falsche Risikoeinschätzung beruhte nicht nur auf der Gier der Investoren, sondern auch auf den impliziten staatlichen Garantien.                   

                                                                                                                                                                             Die heute veröffentlichten Einkaufsmanagerindizes für Deutschland sprechen jedoch eine andere Sprache. Sie fielen sowohl für das verarbeitende Gewerbe als auch für den Dienstleistungssektor überraschend deutlich. Deutschland verliert immer mehr seine Funktion als Konjunkturmotor für die Eurozone. Dennoch: Der gefallene Ölpreis und der schwächere Euro koennten die Grundlage für die deutsche Wirtschaft wieder verbessern. Vorausgesetzt, der Abwaertstrend haelt an.

Trotz des aktuellen Abwärtsdrucks rechne ich im Bereich zwischen 6.000 und 6.200 Punkten mit einer STabilisierung der Kurse bis Ende November. Einen Durchmarsch nach unten wird es nicht geben, da bin ich mir ziemlich sicher.