Friday, February 13, 2009

CNBC's "House of Cards" Program On Financial Excess

I just finished watching more than half of CNBC's special program, "House of Cards," written by, I believe, and starring David Faber.

The program was extremely well done. It captured various elements of the financial and real estate systems, regulators, their interactions, and the consequences of all of their actions over the past eight years.

Of particular effect, and interest, was the inclusion of European municipal investors in CDOs, the mortgage- and other debt-backed structured finance instruments, as well as lenders and borrowers of mortgage money fueling the manufacture of such instruments.

As I listened to the mayor of Narvik, Norway, accuse American banks, European financial products salesmen, and ratings agencies of misleading her, and her town council, so that they bought CDOs, I could not help but detect a strong odor of denial.

The woman clearly admitted that the financial products vendor told the town's council that CDO yields would be higher than that of safer instruments. They bought this lie, and even admitted, after the fact, that they had no idea what they actually had purchased. Neither did their banker, nor, the banker thought, did the salesman of the products.

If you're like me, by now, you are asking yourself how anybody can protect these clueless municipalities from buying instruments they don't understand. Or even actually know, in detail.

It's one thing to buy a AAA-rated American municipal or corporate bond. It's quite another to buy a newly-issued, untested structured finance instrument, also AAA-rated, the yield on which is higher than expected.

Several California home buyers admitted they neither understood, nor could afford their mortgages. Yet they still accused their lenders of guilt in lending them the money for their house.

A mortgage banker solemnly asserted that, although he knew low-doc and no-doc mortgages would blow up, he had to lend, or else he'd have to close down, as other lenders made such loans.

Of course, he had to close eventually, because the few low-doc subprime loans he made, when in default, wiped out his firm.

Even Alan Greenspan impassively claimed that he could not have popped the housing finance bubble if he'd wanted to, because Congress would have been unhappy with the resulting halt in low-income housing sales, as well as the consequential economic recession.

It seems everyone has someone else to blame.

But nobody seems to really take responsibility for their own part. Greenspan blames Congress. Congress blames mortgage bankers, securitizers, and regulators. Regulators blame a lack of funding from Congress. Investors blame rating agencies. Congress blames rating agencies. Rating agencies claim they did nothing wrong. Lenders blame borrowers and securitizers.

When Faber ends the program asking each person what they learned, and if they feel guilty of any wrongdoing, they all claim to simply be a part of a chain of players and events which, together, caused the problem. Nobody took responsibility for his or her part.

Even the mayor of Narvik somewhat disingenuously claimed that she had learned two things; not to trust financiers in Armani suits, and; if something seems to good to be true, it probably is.

The sad thing is, that second lesson is the very first lesson in finance. And why was the Narvik town council borrowing against the municipal power generation plant's future revenues to buy CDOs without professional advice in the first place?

But perhaps the most searing and revealing moment in the entire program, during the time I watched, was the last scene. Faber is closing his interview with the guy, whose name escapes me, who was head of structured financial product creation for Bear Stearns. The man wisely and propitiously left the firm just weeks before its demise, and now pursues photography. He clearly was not ruined in the aftermath of the failed investment bank.

When Faber asks him if he feels guilty for his role in the mess, the man moves to speak. But cannot. He looks away, snorts, shrugs, but Faber and the camera will not be denied.

Eventually, holding back obvious grief, guilt, and shame, trying desperately to decide, in an instant, whether to admit the truth on global television, or not, the man sniffs and says he was just part of a larger chain....yada....yada....yada......

It's a very poignant and sad moment. You can actually see this man choose denial, lying, and a loss of ethics in favor of avoiding responsibility for his and his firm's actions in the overall financial markets excess of the past decade.

There were and are many guilty parties. There's no doubt about that. But at the end of the day, I can't help but focus on two types of parties in particular.

Those who borrowed money to buy houses using mortgages they both did not understand, and could not afford. And those institutional investors, including small town mayors and councils in Europe and America, who bought what they believed to be high yielding structured securities, for less money than was expected, as I wrote about here, thinking they were getting extra yield for free.

Granted, those in the middle of the chain, between these two types of parties, committed fraud, excess, and errors of judgment. But none of it would have been sustainable without the uncoerced behavior of mortgage borrowers and structured financial instrument buyers. These parties received what they asked for.

What happened to them was, truly, just. They simply don't want to admit that, and take responsibility now for their prior actions. It's easier for them to blame somebody else.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

The obvious flaw, intended or not, in this explanation is the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They simply leave them out of the picture after their scandals as if the backing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not essential to this which they were. They were the LARGEST buyers of subprime mortgages from 2004 to 2007. A big reason Wall Street, the bogey man in this production, bought and sold these securities AND was able to sell them, was the government backing - the insurance that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac represented.

Why should any one worry about the loans being paid when the government was the entity standing behind them; the insurance they would be paid regardless of the individual homeowners solvency?

Also, left out of this was the attempt by President Bush and the republican Senate Banking Committee to apply stricter regulations to Freddie and Fannie.

Makes one wonder what re writing of history is being attempted in this "documentary".

Anonymous said...

This show shoe be required viewing for everyone in America.

Anonymous said...

I COULDN'T AGREE WITH YOU MORE!! I'm an 18 year mortgage industry participant, and although I never participated in low or no-doc loans, I DID benefit from them in as far as a rising tide raises all ships. In addition, I benefited in the growth of stocks/mutual funds that all of these excesses made possible. I've now been unemployed for 15 months, and accept this the same as I accepted the paychecks that the rising markets made possible. I understand my role and the role of others--we ALL benefited and we are all now paying. Anyone who thinks they didn't have a role has a black belt in denial. I thought the CNBC program was spot on, non-political, accurate and informative. I wish everyone would watch it.

Slowjim said...

True, there are a lot of people who are responsible for their own poor decisions. I am trying to decide who has the most CRIMINAL responsibility. I believe it must be the Rating agencies like Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch. It would not have been possible to sell these securities in this kind of volume without the triple A ratings.

C Neul said...

Thank you all for your comments.

James, you may be correct, but, then again, anonymous1 makes a very valid point that I didn't consider until reading his comment.

I've written much in this blog, and some in its political companion, about Congress' role in pushing Freddie and Fannie into abetting all of this.

Then there are Kent Conrad's and Doddering Chris Dodd's bribe-taking, couple with Barney Frank's male lover's lobbying Fannie.

Anonymous1 is completely correct that Bush and the GOP Senators tried to cut back the size and risks taken by Fannie and Freddie, but Democrats in Congress scuttled that.

I do believe the omission of that is CNBC's way of keeping faith with its uber-liberal values.

Oh, and James, you should read my posts about the ratings agencies, including the talk I had with a friend who is a mid-senior level exec at one of them.

-CN

Anonymous said...

I personally tried to tell everyone I know to watch last night's program-(House of Cards), which was long over do, but well put. Unfortunately most of my friends were too busy of coarse.

I believe this is the primary reason for the major catastrophe in the first place...Everyone is too busy to think long and hard about the consiquences of their actions i.e...(Wall Street Pig's, Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, Fredie Mack),ect. All too often we would rather cash our paychecks, bonus check ect., and "hedge our bets" that we will figure out a way to dig our selves out of the problem and/or pass the blame and/or consiquences on to those who are un-educated or too poor to afford proper legal representation to defend one's self.

All I care about at this point after loosing my career in comercial international mortgage, the new house I can no long afford, half my life's savings, as well as all the time I lost-post, present and future trying to keep alive finacially, is too-"See these bastards fry."

Why do I get the sense that this will never happen at least to the level of making the top 2-3 layers pay all the money back that they stole.

God Bless all!

Gina said...

I have spent almost 14 yrs processing mortgage loans. My company and I originated many FHA loans and believe we are still in business today because we stayed away from the subprime. We provided loans to many families that had problem credit and little money. They were and still are good loans and our neighborhood watch numbers (issued by HUD according to default rates) have always been way below regional averages. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't there a difference in the Alt A, 80/20, stated income loans purchased by Fannie and Freddie? I believe many of them were higher risk and often "liar" loans, but there were high credit standards and in some cases required MI. These borrowers were generally savvier with their finances and more likely to have a handle on what they could truly afford. What I considered the "subprime" allowed sub 500 scores and no credible documentation. These subprime loans didn't carry any type of MI and only had the equity as security. And from what I took from the program were sold to Wall Street, not FNMA. I don't necessarily hold the loosening of credit as the culprit. Making homeownership available to more people was not a bad concept and there are a lot of people with less than perfect credit that make responsible home owners.

I place the biggest responsibility on the greedy, upstart subprime (my definition) lenders. I believe they prayed on borrowers that were not likely to understand the process or the obligation as well as borrowers that just didn't have good judgment. Then I place responsibility with the consumers for not educating themselves on such a major investment. I have worked with the type of borrowers most victimized by the scam. Many have a very limited understanding of finance, budgets and long term planning. They are told they can get a loan and believe someone wouldn't loan them that much money if they couldn't pay it back. They didn't realize the loan officer got paid as soon as they closed and was immediately out of the picture. The LO had no further responsibility to them or their lender. I have a college education and if I didn't work in the business could easily find all the disclosures, fine print, duplicated forms, etc overwhelming.

And there is no excuse for those on Wall Street that truly knew the source of these securities to allow them to make up such large parts of their portfolios. Once again, the only explanation is greed.

C Neul said...

Gina-

Thanks so much for your comment. Yes, of course, 'old fashioned' credit analysis could find and has found lower-income people who could responsibly take on modest mortgages in order to own a home.

I don't have your depth of intimate knowledge of mortgage finance, but I do believe that a significant amount of Fannie and Freddie securitized mortgages were 'subprime.' Specifically, we know that Congress used CRA to force banks to make questionable mortgage loans, and Angelo Mozillo pushed a lot of his riskier paper thru Fannie thanks to his greasing Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd.

No, not all of Fannie's and Freddie's paper was backed by too-risky, low-quality mortgages, but I believe as much as 50% of their recent years' issues were.

-CN

Anonymous said...

Please let's not lose site of the fact that all the $$$ being supplied to these "Mouse House" finance companies who targeted these...Allow me to say; "ill-educated" victims was coming out of Wall Street. This has been going on for years going back as recent as the mid-90's, 94-96. Wall Street was targeting poor neighborhoods back then in their home state and it worked so well they took it national. Please reference the article; (When the Roof Caves in: Forclosures in the city). It's preditory lending at it's finest. If the good in this is suppose to be that many were able to finally afford a home and are still making the payments then great for them...But at what cost to the rest of us? Wether or not one believes that the original intention was to get more people in to homes more then ever before in history. It was sweet music to Wall Street to finally have a "free reign"and unleash the beast-"Werewolf". Remember the so called stimulus plan "is no silver bullet".