Saturday, March 15, 2008

The crash you don't see

Norton's comments: For all these financial instruments that created so much liquidity in the market these last few years, there are no buyers:

  • mortgage-securitization market

  • structured-investment-vehicle market

  • collateralized-debt-obligation

  • leveraged-loan markets

  • auction-rate securities market

  • credit-default-swap market (is dying)


from MSN 2/29 Jon Markman:
"...Government-sponsored mortgage lenders Fannie Mae (FNM, news, msgs) and Freddie Mac (FRE, news, msgs) have caught a break, to be sure, with caps on their lending levels lifted this week, but business is still so poor, largely because of the corrosive effects of their credit derivatives books, as I explained in December, that they will still have a hard road to climb after the rally fades.
And most vividly, far from the gaze of dewy-eyed equity investors, the credit markets continue to crash. Auction-rate securities -- municipal bonds bought as cash equivalents through mainstream brokers because of bonds' modest yield advantages over certificates of deposit -- have been failing all month. How can everything be OK if investments sold to widows and orphans have completely lost their liquidity, with no end in sight? One Seattle stockbroker who put retirees' life savings into auction-rate notes told me he has suffered the first sleepless nights of his career, worrying over when his clients will be made whole....Until banks can identify a new set of chumps to buy complicated, expensive, illiquid investments at outrageous prices, there will be a big smokin' hole in their profit-and-loss statements."


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