Housing Doom

The Board’s H.4.1 statistical release, "Factors Affecting Reserve Balances of Depository Institutions and Condition Statement of Federal Reserve Banks," has been modified to include information related to TALF LLC, a limited liability company formed to purchase and manage any asset-backed securities that might be received by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) in connection with the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF). This information will be presented in a new table 8, "Information on Principal Accounts of TALF LLC." … - For release² at 4:30 p.m. EDT November 19, 2009

Looks like the H.4.1 table itself is a bit newsworthy this week. If I’m reading the above correctly, they’re now providing a bit more transparency on some of their bailout numbers. Should be a long weekend for the number crunchers

After last week’s nothingburger the central banks really came alive. The Fed’s own MBS holdings surged $74.469 billion, and the cenbanks bought big in treasuries, and even added a fair hunk to their agencies holdings. This week’s Reuters report¹ was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site.² Here is Doom’s updated CSV version³ of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set.

The treasuries buy rebounded to a big $12.557 billion.

The agencies number increased $4.616 billion, the biggest up move in a long time. Interestingly, the Agency Debt number has been pretty stable for the last 7 weeks. Are we entering another extended period where that figure barely moves?

This week the total US obligations number for the cenbanks blasted up $17.173 billion.

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1:36:34 … This crisis was caused by massive government subsidies to purchase homes by people who couldn’t really afford them. So what does Congress do? They pass an $8,000 tax credit for people who can’t really afford to buy a home to buy one. I mean, how stupid can you get? - John Makin

Doom Transcripts: Index & Guide

Housing Doom is pleased to present a complete unauthorized annotated transcript for the American Enterprise Institute’s October 22, 2009 event "The Deflating Bubble, Part VI: The Lessons of the Bubble and Crisis".¹ The event site has a variety of resources including both an audio and a video of the proceedings. There is as yet no official transcript.

Table of Contents

[link navigation works best when full article displayed]

1. 0:00:00 - Alex Pollock intro (preview post)
2. 0:11:43 - Tom Zimmerman presentation (preview post)
3. 0:26:50 - Chris Whalen presentation (preview post)
4. 0:37:03 - Nouriel Roubini presentation (preview post)
5. 0:54:19 - John Makin presentation (preview post)
6. 1:08:20 - Desmond Lachman presentation (preview post)
7. 1:21:56 - Panel discussion (preview post)
   1. 1:22:08 - Roubini discussion
   2. 1:22:59 - Whalen discussion
   3. 1:23:57 - Lachman discussion
   4. 1:25:24 - Makin discussion
   5. 1:28:01 - Whalen question
      1. 1:28:18 - Makin response
      2. 1:29:19 - Pollock response
   6. 1:29:51 - Pollock (with Roubini) aside on Canada
8. 1:31:26 - Q&A (preview post)
   1. 1:32:00 - Bert Ely question
      1. 1:33:04 - Zimmerman (with Roubini) response
      2. 1:34:29 - Whalen response
   2. 1:34:58 - Brian Gardner question
      1. 1:35:43 - Makin response
      2. 1:36:59 - Whalen response
   3. 1:38:18 - Steve Votaw question
      1. 1:38:59 - Lachman response
      2. 1:40:38 - Roubini response
      3. 1:41:22 - Zimmerman response
      4. 1:41:49 - Pollock response
   4. 1:42:11 - Jack Phelps[ph] question
      1. 1:42:54 - Makin response
      2. 1:43:24 - Whalen response
   5. 1:44:40 - John Serrapere question
      1. 1:46:02 - Roubini response
   6. 1:46:27 - anonymous question
      1. 1:47:44 - Whalen (with Pollock) response
      2. 1:48:44 - Roubini response
      3. 1:49:52 - Makin response
   7. 1:50:42 - Barry Wood question
      1. 1:51:12 - Roubini response
      2. 1:54:36 - Whalen response
   8. 1:55:02 - Christine Eisner[ph] question
      1. 1:55:24 - Zimmerman response
   9. 1:57:22 - Dale Kinsella[ph] question
      1. 1:57:55 - Makin response
   10. 1:58:44 - Pollock brief wrap-up
9. 1:59:06 (end)
   • Notes and References

Alex Pollock: [0:00:00] Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. [slide² 1]

When in the course of financial events we have a huge bubble and the inevitable succeeding huge bust, a decent respect for the the opinions of mankind requires that we try to learn something useful from the painful experience. That’s the point of these deflating bubble series of AEI conferences, which you all have so kindly supported with your participation. So welcome to Deflating Bubble Roman numeral VI, "The Lessons of the Bubble and Crisis."

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1:27:42 No, might go wrong. - Allan Meltzer

Doom Transcripts: Index & Guide

Almost 19 months later, Doomers may enjoy putting some of these opinions up against what actually took place.

Housing Doom is pleased to present a complete unauthorized annotated transcript for the American Enterprise Institute’s April 28, 2008 event "What Lies Beyond the Credit Crunch? Part II".¹ The event site has a variety of resources including a summary and both an audio and a video of the proceedings. There is an official transcript, but the link to it does not seem to be currently working.

Table of Contents

[link navigation works best when full article displayed]

1. 0:00:00 - Peter Wallison Intro
2. 0:07:43 - Charles Calomiris presentation
3. 0:24:33 - Kevin Hassett presentation
4. 0:36:53 - (interruption for computer problems)
5. 0:39:20 - Desmond Lachman presentation
6. 0:55:22 - John Makin presentation
7. 1:15:02 - Allan Metzer presentation
8. 1:36:04 - Vincent Reinhart presentation
9. 1:55:20 - Panel discussion
   1. 1:55:36 - Calomiris discussion
   2. 2:00:18 - Hassett discussion
   3. 2:01:55 - Lachman discussion
   4. 2:03:41 - Makin discussion
   5. 2:06:49 - Meltzer discussion
   6. 2:10:30 - Reinhart discussion
10. 2:12:34 - Q&A
    1. 2:12:59 - Jeff Wrase question
       1. 2:13:28 - Makin response
       2. 2:13:39 - Wallison digression
          • 2:14:33 - Calomiris response
          • 2:15:47 - Lachman response
       3. 2:16:26 - Lachman response
       4. 2:17:06 - Makin (with Wallison) response
    2. 2:18:34 - Bert Ely question
       1. 2:19:21 - Calomiris response
    3. 2:20:38 - Pieter Bottelier question
       1. 2:21:11 - Meltzer response
       2. 2:23:52 - Makin response
    4. 2:25:00 - Steve Entin question
       1. 2:26:05 - Meltzer reply
       2. 2:27:39 - Lachman reply
    5. 2:28:18 Wallison brief wrap-up
11. 2:28:54 (end)
    • Notes and References

Peter Wallison: [0:00:00] OK, I think we’ll get started. Everyone take his or her seat. I want to welcome you all on a pretty raining and nasty day. I’m delighted that all of you came out. This should be one of the more interesting conferences of the year, and I can understand why you’re all here.

This is the 2nd conference on exactly the same subject. The last time these esteemed AEI economists got together to discuss the future of the credit crunch and the US economy was in December of 2007. At that conference there was sharp disagreement at to whether the US, as a result of that housing meltdown, the credit crunch and other factors was headed for a deep recession, a shallow recession, or merely a slowdown for a quarter or two.

The data presented at that conference showed a serious breakdown in trading in the credit markets, and major losses in housing values. These factors would suggest a serious recession. But at that point there was no clear evidence of a recession, during the 4th quarter of 2007, at least. The Dow, which opened at 13,339 that morning, was down from its high of 14,000, but certainly was not signaling a serious recession.

All the participants in the December conference thought that their predictions would be proved correct when several months of additional data was available, so we scheduled this conference to see [laughs] whether in fact their positions have changed, and whether things have become any clearer to our AEI economists.

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Dr. Jay Butler of ASU’s Realty Studies has released his monthly report on the Phoenix housing market.  He says he see’s "signs of recovery" in the market, but then goes on to say the market is "still bottoming out".  Here’s what Butler said about sales:

In October, foreclosures on 3,815 homes accounted for 38 percent of the total market, according to Butler. This is an increase from September’s 32 percent, but a drop from the 46 percent of a year ago. That’s not the whole story, however. Approximately 45 percent of traditional transactions — 6,140 sales — involved properties that had been in foreclosure. That means foreclosure-related activity was 66 percent of the market in October — about level with September.

While sales have returned to the levels of the boom years, the market is being driven by speculation and foreclosures.  October sales undoubtedly received a bump from the concern of buyers that the $8,000 credit would not continue.  Speculators, however, are having a hard time finding renters for these properties–the rental market is glutted.  The Phoenix economy continues to be poor and is unlikely to sustain it’s former rate of immigration.  What we are basically seeing is the activity of vultures picking over the carcass–this is not healthy activity.

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UPDATE: Oops! of course the title should have read "… to November 11, 2009".  I hate it when that happens

Suddenly here’s another week where there’s just about no movement in foreign central bank holdings. The Fed’s own MBS holdings ticked up $1.179 billion, and the cenbanks’ total went down just a tad more than that. There’s a lot of volatility in the Treasury Debt weekly figure that’s coming out of somewhere, but I have no idea from where. This week’s Reuters report¹ was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site.² Here is Doom’s updated CSV version³ of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set.

The treasuries buy collapsed again to a mild $1.748 billion selloff.

The agencies number increased $0.509 billion. There have been several sub billion dollar moves lately.

The net change of US obligations was actually a slight dip of $1.239 billion, but it’s going to take more than one week of negative growth before that treasuries bottle-rocket would begin to show a course change.

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To that end, FHFA has informed Fannie Mae that a possible transfer of a portion of its LIHTC investments to unrelated third-party investors is consistent with FHFA’s ongoing efforts to conserve Enterprise assets and with the Enterprise’s multifamily housing mission. … FHFA Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco, November 5, 2009¹

Many thanks to twist for data-mining that gem from the dark recesses of the DC bureaucracy. So in all the turbulence going around, the most urgent crisis facing America is …

• Swine Flu? not even in the top 10
• Recession? OVER! OVER! OVER!
• CMBS Tsunami? way out in the offing, won’t hit for weeks
• Looming Shortage of "Dow 10K" Party Hats? not even that …

America’s most urgent crisis is the fallout from October 23, 2008, when DeMarco’s predecessor Jim Lockhart testified in Congress and mentioned the word explicit.²

Once a week³ ever since, the OMB’s most consistently optimistic analyst (let’s just call him "Phineas Q. Pangloss") has come back from a long lunch, taken a deep breath, and circulated a research note to the effect that …

… Yeah sure guys, no problem. Treasury can cut off their support⁴ to the GSEs any time they want to. And holders of Agency Debt would be, like, totally cool with the resulting haircut. After all, every piece of senior debt ever issued by Freddie, Fannie and the gang came stamped with a nice big notice that "This Ain’t No Sovereign Obligation of No USA!"

And the reason this happens every week without fail is that should the OMB ever come to the same conclusion as Mr. Market (that there’s no way in Hell that Geithner’s ever going to throw the agencies holders under the bus) they would have no choice but to immediately double the nominal value of the US National Debt.

But there’s one small problem. Fannie & Freddie are being used as a couple of cudgels to beat back the housing recession, and so their balance sheets are swelling by the day with more and more toxic MBS. Profitable? Probably never as they’re situated, but if the farce of conservatorship ends and they revert to the pre-1968 world where Fannie was an actual Federal Government department like Ginnie, you trigger the above disaster.

Enter LIHTC. If Fannie requests another $15 billion (like they did yesterday) too often, even Pangloss will have to recognize the evident truth that

1. Fannie’s a basket case; and,
2. Treasury is their explicitly dependable sugar daddy.

So the GSEs and their regulator, the FHFA, are going to use every trick they can think of to keep up the pretense that the Enterprises are going concerns.

Now LIHTC is tax-reduction credits, many $billions worth, but Fannie isn’t going to have a bit of taxable income for many, many years. So to achieve a benefit for its own balance sheet, they have to find someone else with $billions of fresh profit who will buy the credits at a discount so they can reduce their taxes. Hello, Goldman⁵ and Mr. Buffett.⁶

But in real life, Fannie and the US Treasury are two pockets on the same pair of pants. The net effect of this exploit would be to give a direct government gift of billions of dollars to some of America’s most flush companies so that Fannie can put off for a couple of months formally going back to Geithner for their next infusion of cash. What’s Wrong with This Picture?

So at any rate, Doomers will I’m sure be ecstatic at the heart-warming news that response-times to aid the needy have reduced considerably since Katrina. Guy Fawkes’ fireworks have barely cooled down and already WSJ⁷ is reporting FHFA approval for selling $2.6 billion-worth of the credits to unnamed, but surely deserving counterparties. Would that FEMA could start dropping relief packages as expeditiously.

UPDATE: The plot thickens.¹¹

If you were curious about the recent news regarding Goldman Sachs’ (GS) and Warren Buffett’s (BRK.A) interest in acquiring the tax losses of Fannie Mae (FNM), the details are in Fannie’s 10-Q.

This deal was agreed to and inked a month ago. It is still pending approval. So the information that was first reported by Bloomberg was a deliberate plant. A possible objective would have been to get a decision on the transaction before yesterday’s release. Note that the Q provides an update of the deal’s status as of November 5. Someone was waiting to edit this section right up to the last minute. A tad unusual.

……………………..

Further (Friday PM late): This¹² just in from the WSJ.

The U.S. Treasury blocked Fannie Mae’s proposed sale of nearly $3 billion in low-income housing tax credits to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. on Friday after concluding that the deal was too costly for taxpayers.
…

But Treasury Department officials blocked the deal after concluding that it would have resulted in a loss of tax revenues greater than the savings to the federal government had it allowed the sale. "In short, withholding approval of the proposed sale affords more protection of the taxpayers than does providing approval," an administration official said in a statement.
…

Approving the deal could have also furthered a perception that policy makers have taken steps that have favored Goldman ahead of other banks at a time when populist sentiment against Wall Street has surged.

But since the debt that finances things like that is still regarded as the world’s safest investment, foreign central banks are eager to buy the stuff. While The Fed’s own MBS holdings rose a trivial $0.328 billion, and the cenbanks’ agencies not much more than that, their Treasury Debt buy was more than healthy, according to this week’s Reuters report⁸. The report was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site.⁹ Here is Doom’s updated CSV version¹⁰ of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set.

The treasuries buy was a lusty $18.159 billion, more than doubling last week’s figure.

Agencies were back in positive territory, but only added $0.758 billion.

The net change of US obligations was an excellent $18.917 billion, well over $2 billion a day.

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Fraud might be rampant in the program, but that didn’t stop the Senate from voting 85-2 in favor of extending the home buyer tax credit.  Why is it that the Senate is so willing to extend this expensive program?  Here’s an example from Savannah, GA as to how the credit is affecting the market:

The housing credit’s impact is particularly pronounced in the Savannah area.

The number of first-time buyers locally is unavailable, but pricing and loan trends indicate they could make up more than 40 percent of the market.

Homes priced under $200,000 have outsold those priced above that number by almost a 2-to-1 margin this year, with homes sold for $100,000 to $149,999 - "starter homes" - outpacing all others.

And almost half of the houses financed locally this year were done with loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration or the Veterans Administration, which cater to first-time buyers.

And how would allowing the credit to expire affect the market?

A drop in local building permit applications in September offered a glimpse of what a creditless future could look like. Permits tripled in Chatham County during the summer months as builders began construction on homes that could be completed in time to be bought and occupied ahead of the Nov. 30 tax credit deadline.

Permit numbers dropped drastically in August and September, a trend the head of the local homebuilders association, Matthew Young, said reflected the industry’s wait-and-see approach to the post-tax credit market.

"If they don’t extend" the credit, Young said, "they will wait and see what sales are like after that."

Here’s a great chart from Business Insider that shows how this credit has skewed the market in favor of first time homebuyers:

 So how critical is the home buyer tax credit?

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Doom Transcripts: Index & Guide

Housing Doom is pleased to present a sixth selection from our under-construction transcript of the American Enterprise Institute’s October 22, 2009 event "The Deflating Bubble, Part VI: The Lessons of the Bubble and Crisis".¹

The event site has a number of resources, including an audio and video of the proceedings. There is as yet no official transcript.

This is the presentation by AEI’s Desmond Lachman.

Desmond Lachman: [1:08:20] Alex, thank-you very much again for organizing this conference at a 6-monthly interval.

I think one’s got to go through life counting one’s blessings, and one of the blessings that I’ve realized that I’ve got to count on now is that my name isn’t Tom Zimmerman, and that I come at the end of the presentation.

Because much of what is said, I really agree with. So I can walk through a presentation. I’ve entitled it "A False Dawn for the Housing Market?" [slide 1²]

In the interests of being optimistic I’ve put a question mark whereas I really meant putting an exclamation mark. [laughter]

Let me start just with the lessons that one can draw from this crisis, and I think that there are a whole bunch of lessons. We’re going to be writing books about this for many years to come, much like The Great Depression we’ll be looking through this crisis. And I very much agree with what both Nouriel and John have said, that one really needs to be paying attention to bubbles, that we’re just creating another bubble that is going to be bursting. But I think that there are just a whole bunch of other lessons to be learned.

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The Fed’s own MBS holdings slid by just $2.802 billion, while foreign central banks sold off a bit more MBS than that. Meanwhile, cenbanks bought a good amount of treasuries. Altogether a pretty ho-hum week on the US obligations front.

This week’s Reuters report¹ settled down significantly after last week’s excitement. The report was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site.² Here is Doom’s updated CSV version³ of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set.

The treasuries buy was a healthy $8.651 billion, but last week’s splurge had been over $20 billion higher.

Agencies have resumed their steady march down, dropping a significant $3.788 billion.

The net change of US obligations was just $4.863 billion. About twice that amount on a regular basis would be better.

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Doom Transcripts: Index & Guide

Housing Doom is pleased to present a second selection from our under-construction transcript of the American Enterprise Institute’s October 22, 2009 event "The Deflating Bubble, Part VI: The Lessons of the Bubble and Crisis".¹

The event site has a number of resources, including an audio and video of the proceedings. There is as yet no official transcript.

This is the presentation by UBS fixed income researcher Tom Zimmerman.  Tom’s the most moderate of AEI’s Six Bears but in my opinion the scariest, because he usually brings the hardest data to the table.

Tom Zimmerman: [0:11:43] Thanks a lot, Alex, it’s great to be here again. [slide 0²] What’s amazing about coming down here every 6 months is that I’m usually viewed as one of the more bearish people in my shop, and also when I speak at conferences around the country I’m usually sort of sitting on the bearish side of these discussions. But I come down here, [laughs] and I’m not … it’s a … I feel like I’m a raving bull about what’s going to happen in the world when you listen to some of these people talk. So anyway, that hasn’t changed, in the last 6 sessions, so …

We had lunch together today, and it’s exactly the same.

I see some green shoots here and there, but I think that it’s not something the other panelists see some real major problems down the road.

What I thought I’d do today is just continue some of the things I’ve talked about before in terms of the housing market, mortgage market. And then at the end talk about some of the lessons that we’ve learned from this bubble which isn’t over with yet, but we’ve learned some lessons or at least some take-aways from it.

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