Banking Crisis

If The Money Supply Is Exploding Why Are We Not Seeing Rampant Inflation?

The U.S. money supply has been expanding at an absolutely unprecedented rate.  So why are we not experiencing rampant inflation?  Why is the U.S. dollar not falling through the floor?  Well, the truth is that all of this new money has gotten into the U.S. financial system but it is not getting into the hands of U.S. businesses and consumers.  In fact, even though the money supply is exploding, U.S. banks have dramatically decreased lending.  This has brought us to a very bizarre financial situation as a nation.

What we have seen is the U.S. government shovel massive amounts of cash into the U.S. financial system and then watch as the big banks sit on that cash and refuse to lend it. The biggest banks in the U.S. reduced their collective small business lending balance by another 1 billion dollars in November 2009.  That drop was the seventh monthly decline in a row.  In fact, in 2009 as a whole U.S. banks posted their sharpest decline in lending since 1942.

So all of this money that the U.S. government pumped into the financial system has been doing American businesses and consumers very little good.  That is why we can have a vastly increased money supply (as you can see from the chart below) and very little inflation.

So if the banks are not lending the money to the American people, what are they doing with it?  One of the things they are doing with it is buying U.S. government debt.  As you can see from the chart below, U.S. banks have cut business lending by approximately 350 billion dollars since early 2009 and they have purchased approximately 300 billion dollars worth of U.S. Treasury securities.

So instead of loaning money to American businesses and consumers who desperately need it, a ton of this new money is being used to pump up yet another bubble.  This time the bubble is in U.S. Treasuries.  Asia Times recently described how this trillion-dollar carry trade in U.S. government securities works….

Remarkably, the most aggressive buyers of US government debt during the past several months have been global banks domiciled in London and the Cayman Islands. They borrow at 20 basis points (a fifth of a percentage point) and buy Treasury securities paying 1% to 3%, depending on maturity.

This is the famous “carry trade”, by which banks or hedge funds borrow short-term at a very low rate and lend medium- or long-term at a higher rate. This works as long as short-tem rates remain extremely low. The moment that borrowing costs begin to rise, the trillion-dollar carry trade in US government securities will collapse.

So what happens when this bubble collapses?

Nobody knows for sure.  But anyone who has dealt with carry trades in the past knows that when carry trades unwind they can do so very, very quickly and the results can be nightmarish.

The truth is that the U.S. financial system is a house of cards that could fall at any time.  A lot of economic pain is on the horizon – it is only a matter of when it comes and how bad it is going to get.  Trends forecaster Gerald Celente is predicting that it could be as soon as this year….

Is The United States Headed For A Commercial Real Estate Crash Of Unprecedented Magnitude?

Will commercial real estate be the next shoe to drop in the ongoing U.S. financial crisis?  While most eyes are on the continuing residential real estate disaster, the reality is that the state of the commercial real estate market in America could soon be even worse.  Very few financial pundits are talking about this looming disaster but they should be.  The truth is that U.S. commercial property values are down approximately 40 percent since the peak in 2007 and currently approximately 18 percent of all office space in the United States is now sitting vacant.  That qualifies as a complete and total mess, but the reality is that the commercial real estate crisis is just starting.

In fact, the commercial real estate market is likely to get a whole lot worse.  It is being projected that the largest commercial real estate loan losses will be experienced in 2011 and the years following.  Some analysts are estimating that losses from commercial real estate at U.S. banks alone could reach as high as 200 to 300 billion dollars.  To get an idea of how rapidly the commercial real estate market is unraveling, just check out the chart below….

Does that look like things are getting better to you?

And unfortunately, all indications are that the commercial real estate market is going to get much worse.

According to Real Capital Analytics, the default rate for commercial property mortgages held by all U.S. banks more than doubled in the fourth quarter of 2009 and may reach a peak of 5.4 percent by the end of 2011.

But even that estimate may be way too conservative as we shall see in a moment.

According to a recent report by the Congressional Oversight Panel, approximately 3,000 U.S. banks are currently classified as having a risky concentration of commercial real estate loans.  All of them are small to mid-size banks which have been already severely weakened by the recent financial crisis.

So could the crisis in the commercial real estate market lead to a massive wave of failures among small and mid-size banks?

Count on it.

In fact, the FDIC has acknowledged that the number of banks on its “problem” list climbed to 702 at the end of 2009.  To get an idea of just how bad that is, keep in mind that only 552 banks that were on the problem list at the end of September 2009, and only 252 banks that were on the problem list at the end of 2008.

Are you starting to get the picture?

So how are banks responding to this commercial real estate quagmire?

They are rapidly raising loan standards and they are dramatically reducing the number of loans they are making.

Just a few years ago, the number of commercial real estate loans was exploding, but now the bubble has burst, and as the chart below reveals, commercial real estate lending has absolutely fallen off the map….

What is making things even worse is that owners of commercial real estate are starting to walk away from properties that are heavily “underwater” just as many residential homeowners have been doing.  This has caused default rates to start shooting through the roof.

One of the latest and most high profile commercial property owners to do this is Vornado Realty Trust.  Earlier this month Vornado indicated that it would walk away from two heavily underwater loans totaling $235 million.

In the past commercial property owners would be very hesitant to do such a thing, but the reality is that the stigma has faded for these kind of “strategic defaults”.  Just as with residential real estate, these kinds of defaults have almost become accepted practice now.

The number of defaults is likely to skyrocket even further with so many commercial real estate loans scheduled to rollover in the next few years.

You see, commercial real estate properties typically carry mortgages with lives of 5 to 10 years.  A vast array of commercial real estate loans made between 2000 and 2005 are coming up for a rollover, but because credit standards have tightened, borrowers may find that they simply do not qualify for refinancing.

In fact, a report entitled “Commercial Real Estate at the Precipice” estimates that even under lenient lending standards, approximately 57 percent of existing commercial real estate mortgages will not qualify for refinancing.

That is a nightmare.

But if you apply more conservative lending standards, it is estimated that almost two-thirds of all commercial real estate borrowers will not qualify for a rollover.

So what is going to happen to the U.S. commercial real estate market when large numbers of borrowers start walking away from their “underwater” loans and about half of those who want to rollover their loans don’t qualify for refinancing?

What do you think that is going to do to commercial real estate prices?

Somebody better do something, because both the commercial and the residential real estate markets in the U.S. face a crisis of unprecedented magnitude.

But most Americans still have no idea that the great economic machine that their forefathers built is falling to pieces all around them.  They would rather numb the pain by watching the latest episode of American Idol or by catching up on the latest round of celebrity gossip.

But that is not going to stop what is about to happen.

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Money Out Of Thin Air: Now Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke Wants To Eliminate Reserve Requirements Completely?

Up until now, the United States has operated under a “fractional reserve” banking system.  Banks have always been required to keep a small fraction of the money deposited with them for a reserve, but were allowed to loan out the rest.  But now it turns out that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wants to completely eliminate minimum reserve requirements, which he says “impose costs and distortions on the banking system”. At least that is what a footnote to his testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services on February 10th says. So is Bernanke actually proposing that banks should be allowed to have no reserves at all?

That simply does not make any sense. But it is right there in black and white on the Federal Reserve’s own website….

The Federal Reserve believes it is possible that, ultimately, its operating framework will allow the elimination of minimum reserve requirements, which impose costs and distortions on the banking system.

If there were no minimum reserve requirements, what kind of chaos would that lead to in our financial system?  Not that we are operating with sound money now, but is the solution to have no restrictions at all?  Of course not.

What in the world is Bernanke thinking?

But of course he is Time Magazine’s “Person Of The Year”, so shouldn’t we all just shut up and trust his expertise?

Hardly.

The truth is that Bernanke is making a mess of the U.S. financial system.

Fortunately there are a few members of Congress that realize this.  One of them is Republican Congressman Ron Paul from Texas.  He has created a firestorm by introducing legislation that would subject the Federal Reserve to a comprehensive audit for the first time since it was created.  Ron Paul understands that creating money out of thin air is only going to create massive problems.  The following is an excerpt from Ron Paul’s remarks to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at a recent Congressional hearing….

“The Federal Reserve in collaboration with the giant banks has created the greatest financial crisis the world has ever seen. The foolish notion that unlimited amounts of money and credit created out of thin air can provide sustainable economic growth has delivered this crisis to us. Instead of economic growth and stable prices, (The Fed) has given us a system of government and finance that now threatens the world financial and political institutions. Pursuing the same policy of excessive spending, debt expansion and monetary inflation can only compound the problems that prevent the required corrections. Doubling the money supply didn’t work, quadrupling it won’t work either. Buying up the bad debt of privileged institutions and dumping worthless assets on the American people is morally wrong and economically futile.”

The truth is that the financial system that we have created makes inflation inevitable.  The U.S. dollar has lost more than 95 percent of the value that it had when the Federal Reserve was created.  During this decade the value of the dollar will decline a whole lot more.

That doesn’t sound like a very good investment.

But that is what happens when you give bankers power to make money up out of thin air.

And things are only going to get worse.

Especially if Bernanke gets his way and reserve requirements are eliminated entirely.

The U.S. economy is a giant mess already, and we have got a guy at the controls who simply does not have a clue.

It’s going to be a rough ride.

How Can Anyone Claim That The Housing Crisis Is Over When The Delinquency Rate On U.S. Mortgages Continues To Explode At An Exponential Rate?

Housing prices have stabilized and are actually slightly increasing in some areas.  The tax breaks passed by Congress have encouraged more first-time home buyers to get into the market.  So is the U.S. housing crisis over?  Will the real estate market be back to normal in no time?  Well, if you listen to many of the talking heads on the news channels, you might be tempted to think that the worst of the housing crisis is behind us and that we are headed towards recovery.  But that is not what is happening.  The truth is that we are just now getting ready for round 2 of the real estate nightmare.

Where is the evidence to back that assertion up?  Well, just consider the chart below.  The delinquency rate on U.S. residential mortgages continues to explode at an exponential  rate….

Please note that the rate of mortgage delinquencies is now much, much higher than it was when the housing market was crashing so hard in 2007 and 2008.  More people than ever are falling seriously behind on their mortgages, and that means that more homes than ever are in danger of being foreclosed.

Now it is true that there are some signs that the rate of serious mortgage delinquencies is starting to stabilize, but the reality is that we will experience only a momentary pause.

Why?

A massive second wave of adjustable rate mortgages is scheduled to reset beginning this year, and if it goes anything like the “first wave” did, the results could be absolutely catastrophic for the U.S. economy.  Just check out the chart below….

This coming second wave could result in another huge mountain of foreclosures being forced on to the market.

So is the housing crisis over?

No.

Not even close.

Unless something really dramatic happens, the U.S. housing market is going to experience pain so intense that it is hard to even imagine.  Millions more Americans could lose their homes and scores of banks could end up being shut down.

Let’s hope that things end up being not quite as bad as it looks like they could be.

But you know what they say: “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst”.

Thrive Life

 

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