Sunday, September 21, 2008

Bailouts for Fun and Profit

OK, this pisses me off. David Stout, writing a Q&A in The New York Times (“The Wall Street Bailout Plan, Explained”):
Q. Who, really, is going to come up with the $700 billion?

A. American taxpayers will come up with the money, although if you are bullish on America in the long run, there is reason to hope that the tab will be less than $700 billion. After the Treasury buys up those troubled mortgages, it will try to resell them to investors. The Treasury’s involvement in the crisis and the speed with which Congress is responding could generate long-range optimism and raise the value of those mortgages, although it is impossible to say by how much.
First of all, today’s taxpayers are certainly not going to come up with the money, not by any stretch of the imagination. There are no plans to raise taxes to pay for this bailout, nor, in my opinion, should there be. (That’s not necessarily to say that taxes shouldn’t be raised, just that this bailout should not be the deciding factor.) People (and institutions mostly, really) who buy Treasury securities will come up with the money. The Treasury will issue new Treasury securities to raise the money to pay for the distressed securities that it buys. Most likely the banks that sold those distressed securities will buy the new Treasury securities with the proceeds from the sale, so nobody really has to come up with the money, except for a few minutes while the deals are being done. In effect the Treasury will be paying for the distressed securities by creating its own securities to use as payment.

Someone is going to say, “Well, of course today’s taxpayers aren’t going to come up with the money, but the Treasury securities eventually mature and have to be paid off, and when that time comes, those future taxpayers will have to come up with the money.” I will attack that straw man immediately by pointing out that the debt can be rolled over. Maybe eventually, after rolling over the debt several times, the government will be forced by circumstances to raise taxes to make those payments. But maybe not. I’ll have to do another post on why the “maybe not” case is more reasonable than you might think.

But let’s suppose that those Treasury securities do eventually have to be paid off with taxes and cannot be rolled over indefinitely. Does that mean that future taxpayers will have to come up with $700 billion plus interest? There is a tiny chance that that will be the case. Which brings me to what mostly pisses me off. I repeat from above:
...if you are bullish on America in the long run, there is reason to hope that the tab will be less than $700 billion.
Reason to hope? That the tab will be less than $700 billion? Holy crap! I would sure as hell hope that at least a few of the mortgages in the pools bought by the government don’t default! OK, I’m being a little disingenuous, since much of what the government buys will be lower tranches that can become worthless even if there are only a moderate number of defaults. Some of the securities very likely will become worthless. But in all probability, unless there is a severe, prolonged recession (which is to say, a depression) and a much further decline in housing prices, the government’s whole portfolio will still be worth something.

And – here’s my main point – the Treasury will not be paying full price for these securities. It won’t be paying anything remotely close to the price that the securities were issued at. It will be paying whatever price desperate banks are willing to accept in order to get the securities off their books and replace them with things that can be easily sold when they need cash. These are motivated sellers we’re talking about. In all probability, many banks will be willing to sell these securities for less than they think the securities are really worth. Because they don’t want to take the risk that, when the government bailout is over, they will have some need for cash and won’t be able to sell the securities then.

Granted, there may be some banks that figure out ways to game the system and sell their securities for more than they are worth. But all in all, we should expect the Treasury to get these securities at something close to fair value. The Treasury is not just throwing money away; it’s buying valuable (though quite risky) assets and paying roughly what those assets are worth. [EDIT: I was wrong about this, because I didn't take into account the moral hazard faced by bankers who can fudge their asset values. I discuss this among other topics in the post where I change my mind about the bailout. It is still true, though, that the Treasury will not be paying full price, and it is likely to recover much of its investment and possibly even turn a profit, but unfortunately not a large enough profit to justify the risk.]

And it’s important to understand that “fair value” includes the expectation of a substantial risk premium. The fair value of a junk bond is considerably less than the fair value of an otherwise similar investment grade bond, but when they mature, both bonds are redeemed at par. The junk bond has a larger chance of default, but even when you take that chance into account, the expected return on the junk bond is considerably higher. People don’t buy junk bonds because they’re stupid; they buy them because they expect, on average, a high return. Similarly, the Treasury should expect, on average, a high return from its purchases of distressed securities.

So, while there is (in theory, at least) quite a large risk to (future) taxpayers (a risk of up to $700 billion – plus the meager interest that the government has to pay), the expected return is not only positive but rather large. And since the interest paid on Treasury securities is quite small, that return, if it materializes, will be a huge windfall for whatever future taxpayers get the benefit.

So this “bailout” is not about the Treasury paying $700 billion and hoping to recover some of it in a best case scenario. It is about the Treasury paying $700 billion dollars, risking losing up to the whole amount, but expecting not just to recover the entire amount but to emerge with a large profit. The Treasury is, in a sense, gambling with taxpayers’ money, but the gamble is a good bet, kind of like if you had inside information about the horse. Of course, making a profit is not the point of the operation, but it might be a pleasant side effect.

17 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Just a nit, $700B is the balance sheet number, like the maximum limit on a credit card. There's no limit to total potential losses on the income statement (e.g., Treasury buys $500B worth for $700B, then sells half of that for $300B, then now it has $250B worth on the books for $350B, and can buy $350B more of assets at inflated prices, rinse repeat).

Sun Sep 21, 09:07:00 AM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In Fiscal Year 2006, the U. S. Government spent $406 Billion on interest payments on the national debt. At some point, the interest payments will grow so large that foreigners may become wary, and demand higher interest for further loans. The spiral potential exists.

Sun Sep 21, 09:22:00 AM EDT  
Blogger Ldtowers said...

"there may be some banks that figure out ways to game the system"

Are you kidding me? Of course they will game the system. The government will in fact only get truly worthless debt.

If this stuff was worth anything the financial system could have cleared this toxic waste doing the same thing for itself. They could have sold it all at a step discount. However there wouldn't have been any market for it. We are becoming buyer of last resort.

Sun Sep 21, 09:22:00 AM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Most likely the banks that sold those distressed securities will buy the new Treasury securities with the proceeds from the sale..."

If banks do this, they will not be loaning money out to start new businesses, and the program will not have restored private sector credit. The new treasuries will have to be purchased by foreigners for the program to restore private credit.

Sun Sep 21, 09:35:00 AM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You say:

And – here’s my main point – the Treasury will not be paying full price for these securities. It won’t be paying anything remotely close to the price that the securities were issued at. It will be paying whatever price desperate banks are willing to accept in order to get the securities off their books and replace them with things that can be easily sold when they need cash.

Why do you say this? If it were true, wouldn't we be seeing massive sales of these securities at a few cents on the dollar in order to obtain cash, which I think qualifies as "things that can be easily sold when they need cash"? Are you quite sure the reason these markets aren't liquid is that if they were sold at true clearing prices the sellers would be insolvent? The same situation, I am told by well-informed sources, obtains at many commercial banks, which aren't foreclosing and selling distressed loans because if they did, the banks would be toast.

If you're wrong about this, the U.S. taxpayer will be buying assets at well above market prices and probably well above prices justifiable by the cash flows of such securities on a "hold until maturity" basis as well, and will be taking a huge loss.

Likewise, you seem very confident that the U.S. can borrow whatever amounts it needs at cheap prices to do this sort of rescue. In other words, it doesn't matter how much in debt the U.S. is, our foreign bankers will always hand us more cash when we need it. This article of faith seems to be of a similar nature to that old chestnut that housing prices never fall. Are you quite sure you're thinking this all the way through?

Sun Sep 21, 09:41:00 AM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So precisely why is it that you say you don't believe taxes should be raised to pay for the bailout?

It seems pretty straightforward to me: the wealthy as a class should be taxed at pre-Ronald Reagan rates, only this time without loopholes. They are the ones who benefited the most from the privately-owned, Republican-supervised paradise that was created for the financial industry. They are really the only ones who have anything to gain from an extraordinarily expensive effort preserve the old order.

For the rest of us, a financial system that is based on taxpayer-ownership of most banks would work just fine. All we really need is a bank that can lend when lending more would benefit the economy. Either the government or the private sector can perform such a function; the private sector seems to be unable to manage itself well enough to avoid disasters that threaten the well-being of everyone. We don't need a profit motive in the banking industry; we just need decision-makers who will put the public's interest before all other considerations.

If we are going to try to restore the private finance industry, then they have got to pay for the whole thing, period. If you can't see the simple justice of that, then you must live in a moral universe that I would find quite threatening.

Sun Sep 21, 11:19:00 AM EDT  
Blogger Bruce Wilder said...

"The Treasury is not just throwing money away; it’s buying valuable (though quite risky) assets and paying roughly what those assets are worth."

I don't see where you get that interpretation out of this plan.

The plan has to throw money away; otherwise, it does not function to re-capitalize the banks.

And, the plan is structured to allow the Treasury to buy and sell, until the entire $700 billion is gone. Which, on the numbers, is pretty much what will have to happen, to make the crisis go away. $700 billion is a reasonable lower-bound estimate of the certain losses expected, but not yet realized and accounted for.

Sun Sep 21, 11:31:00 AM EDT  
Blogger knzn said...

I don't think the Treasury will make a habit of selling assets at a loss. If such a pattern begins to emerge, it will reevaluate its pricing mechanism. The purpose is not to recaptialize the banks but to reliquify them and to eliminate the uncertainty regarding their capitalization. If the objective were to recapitalize the banks, the only sensible thing to do would be for the government to take equity positions in the banks themselves.

Sun Sep 21, 12:55:00 PM EDT  
Blogger Greylocks said...

Quibbling over whether this plan is affordable to the US taxpayers simply detracts from the far more important questions of (a) whether it will even work, and (b) whether there's a better alternative.

Frankly, we don't even know what Paulson actually plans to do. He wants a $700b blank check with no strings attached. He says he'll do this that and the other thing, but he is opposed to any oversight or accountability that would force him to stay to his word, or punish him if he doesn't.

Stop the Bailout!

Sun Sep 21, 02:00:00 PM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with BW that the government will save the current monetary tool by throwing sufficient money away to recapitalize banks (bailout of the financial sector).

Sun Sep 21, 05:37:00 PM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The Treasury is, in a sense, gambling with taxpayers’ money, but the gamble is a good bet, kind of like if you had inside information about the horse. Of course, making a profit is not the point of the operation, but it might be a pleasant side effect."

In order for the government to create a 'profit', housing asset values will have to increase. House asset prices won't increase until a combination of long term interest rates fall, wages increase, or terms extending past 30 years.

Which do economists prefer?

Winslow R.

Sun Sep 21, 05:38:00 PM EDT  
Blogger knzn said...

Winslow R:

"In order for the government to create a 'profit', housing asset values will have to increase."

Not true. Well, not necessarily true, and definitely not true if the increase in housing asset values is considered unlikely and the government has paid fair value. If the government has paid fair value, it should expect, averaging over all possible outcomes, to make a profit. If an unlikely rise in housing asset prices is required for it to make a profit, then it has overpaid.

I should say though, that, as I have subsequently considered the issue, I have increasingly come to think it likely that the government will overpay, so, as per this post, I have turned against The 700 Billion Dollar Plan.

Sun Sep 21, 08:29:00 PM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It happens that people say things because something feels wrong. However what they express is wrong too, simply because they fail to point out the real problem.
I think this is the case here.
As far as my knowledge about the bail-out plan reaches and as far as details are available, the treasury will purchase the debt at a "normal price" in auctions (what Bernanke calls the greatest price experiment in history). The future losses on the debt will be for the government while the future gains will be for the seller of the debt. This boils down to socializing debt and reserving profits for the capitalist.
It's true that most of the debt will not fail and therefore the (present and future) tax payers will not have to pay. But structurally there's something very wrong. Maybe Luigi Zingales is right, we must save capitalism from capitalists.
http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/luigi.zingales/Why_Paulson_is_wrong.pdf

geert

Sat Sep 27, 03:14:00 AM EDT  
Blogger knzn said...

The future losses on the debt will be for the government while the future gains will be for the seller of the debt.

I haven't heard anything like that. In some cases it will be just the opposite, where sellers agree to reimburse the government for any losses.

Sat Sep 27, 08:08:00 AM EDT  
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