It's the stupid, stupid

[unixronin]

"Worst Crisis Since '30s, With No End Yet in Sight", says the Wall Street Journal.

The latest trouble spot is an area called credit-default swaps, which are private contracts that let firms trade bets on whether a borrower is going to default.  When a default occurs, one party pays off the other.  The value of the swaps rise and fall as the market reassesses the risk that a company won't be able to honor its obligations.  Firms use these instruments both as insurance -- to hedge their exposures to risk -- and to wager on the health of other companies.  There are now credit-default swaps on more than $62 trillion in debt, up from about $144 billion a decade ago.

(Emphasis mine.)

So not only is half the economy based on funny money that only exists on paper, half of which consists of bad debts (but they look great on paper!), but if that wasn't enough, they're engaging in legally-sanctioned gambling with it.

Is anyone in any remaining doubt as to why the economy is screwed?

Credit default swaps "didn't cause the problem, but they certainly exacerbated the financial crisis," said Leslie Rahl, president of Capital Market Risk Advisors, a consulting firm in New York.

No shit, Sherlock?

The sheer volume of CDS contracts outstanding -- and the fact that they trade directly between institutions, without centralized clearing -- intertwined the fates of many large banks and brokerages.

So nobody outside the companies gambling with them really knows how much is tied up on them until the shit hits the fan.  Bloody wonderful.

In normal times, capital-starved companies usually can raise money on their own. In the current crisis, a number of big Wall Street firms, including Citigroup Inc., have turned to sovereign-wealth funds, the government-controlled pools of money.

But both on Wall Street and in Washington, there is increasing expectation that U.S. taxpayers will either take the bad assets off the hands of financial institutions so they can raise capital, or put taxpayer capital into the companies, as the Treasury has agreed to do with mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Either way, the fuckups who lost all that money by not only making stupidly bad deals with it, but by gambling with it, get to take it out of the taxpayers' pockets.  Heads they win, tails we lose.  Hands up anyone who didn't see THAT coming.

...Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

The more we learn about the utter and total clusterfuck our investment bankers and stock market wizards have made of the economy, mainly out of rampant greed and sheer stupidity, the worse it gets.  I would not be greatly upset at this point if it were to start raining former millionaires on Wall Street again.

(Thanks to wcg for the article pointer.)

Comments

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. The guys at the very top get to help make the rules, so the rules do not always apply to them. (The solution there is to get to the top.)

OTOH, the Fed has allowed some big players to either fail, or taken their assets out of the hands of those playing fast and loose with the rules. Those golden parachutes are showing some mighty big leaks about now. Even the remaining public corporations have had their value plummet so that even the "safe" bets are losing big time.

OTGH, the Fed's purpose is to keep the markets functioning. Somewhere they need to strike a balance between letting the Wall Street superstars take it in the shorts, and keeping the system functioning so that most of us do not fail financially. (Over 50% of the voting population has over $5000.00 invested.) The Fed simply does not have the resources to fix the mess, but they are pedaling like mad to keep it from getting worse.

Now, more than ever, it is proven that investing is a rich man's game. Forcing everyone working to do it on their own (or through some 101k) is risking the financial future of our global society.