Yesterday's two big financial stories, outside of the continuing soap opera "As The Euro Implodes," were John Mack's retirement from Morgan Stanley and the revelation that UBS rogue trader Kweku Adoboli lost $2B for the bank. Both stories dutifully appeared as prominent pieces in this morning's Wall Street Journal.
There is, however, a deliciously ironic link between the two tales. For me, it took finishing Michael Lewis' The Big Short to realize the connection. Here's the clue from the Journal piece,
"But in 2007, it hit a rough patch, losing $9 billion on a proprietary mortgage bet that cost the jobs of several of Mr. Mack's lieutenants, including Zoe Cruz, who was widely viewed as a top candidate to succeed Mr. Mack."
Now, it's tempting to think of the Morgan Stanley loss as not caused by a rogue trader. In fact, elsewhere in the Journal article on Mack, it contends,
"He's a battlefield commander who knows how to lead troops......Mr. Mack pushed traders to take more risk and sell more esoteric but profitable mortgage products. Briefly, that move paid off. In 2006, the firm enjoyed record results."
Funny, that's not at all how Michael Lewis described Howie Hubler's calculated $9B loss on mortgage-backed derivatives.
How do you suppose UBS suffered only a $2B loss and blamed it on a rogue trader, whereas John Mack presided over a $9B loss in 2007 and kept his job? In fact, he essentially lost the firm, as it required a federal bailout, plead to convert to a chartered commercial bank, and had to arrange other financing to remain solvent.
Yet Mack kept his job and never called Hubler's loss a rogue trade.
We don't yet know precisely how Adoboli accomplished his allegedly-undetected losing trade(s). One assumes, like Nick Leeson who brought down Barings Bank, he somehow fooled the various electronic systems purporting to monitor positions, desk P&Ls and risk.
But here's how Michael Lewis explains Morgan Stanley's star fixed income trader Howie Hubler's stunning $9B loss. For those wishing to follow along, I'm synopsizing Lewis' Chapter 9 in The Big Short (Norton, 2010), entitled A Death of Interest, pages 200-225. I'm not going to retype the chapter, nor major parts of it, as that would, I think, be a waste of my time, and probably violate Michael Lewis' copyright. Instead, I'm going to abstract the highlights of what went on at John Mack's (and Zoe Cruz's) Morgan Stanley during 2006 & 2007. But I heartily recommend, if you find any of this of interest, that you run over to Amazon and buy a copy (new or, as I prefer, used but 'like new' for only about $6) of Lewis's book.
Howie Hubler was a star trader of mortgage-backed bonds. Sometime in 2004, Hubler begins to realize that a lot of the bonds he's selling, for which Morgan Stanley, like Goldman Sachs, has built its own origination system to capture the entire profit stream, are of highly suspect quality. So he, in conjunction with a colleague, Mike Edman, hatch a proprietary swap which they convince some of their clients to sell to Morgan Stanley. This allows Hubler's desk to own protection, for a small annual fee, on billions of dollars of dodgy subprime-backed mortgage bonds.
Lewis writes,
"It's now April 2006, and the subprime mortgage bond machine is roaring. Howie Hubler is Morgan Stanley's star bond trader, and his group of eight traders is generating, by their estimate, around 20 percent of Morgan Stanley's profits. Their profits have risen from roughly $400 million in 2004 to $700 million in 2005, on their way to $1 billion in 2006. Hubler will be paid $25 million at the end of the year, but he's no longer happy working as an ordinary bond trader......"
Along the lines of my long-expressed belief, Lewis notes that "the best and the brightest Wall Street traders are quitting their big firms to work at hedge funds, where they can make not tens but hundreds of millions."
So Hubler wangles a deal with Morgan Stanley to set up his own proprietary trading group, take his existing desk's swaps positions with him, and get a sweet deal for his group to own a stake in the group, to be subsequently spun out from Morgan Stanley. In short, Hubler extorts Mack and Cruz to give his group a semi-private business and stake in its future value, in return for not bolting from Morgan Stanley.
Here is where the story becomes interesting as it relates to today's WSJ articles about a rogue UBS trader and John Mack being paid homage as a wise senior Wall Street CEO.
Hubler's new group is given a profit bogey of $2B, but is paying about 10% of that, or $200MM, in fees to maintain its swaps, or shorts on bad mortgage bonds. Hubler wants to eliminate this drain, so he sells credit default swaps on a much larger amount of allegedly higher-quality mortgage bonds. About $16B of bonds.
As Lewis puts it,
"In effect, Howie Hubler was betting that some of the triple-B-rated subprime bonds would go bad, but not all of them. He was smart enough to be cynical about his market, but not smart enough to realize how cynical he needed to be."
For some perspective, the original credit default swaps which Hubler and his colleagues sold to their customers only required a 4% default rate among the subprime mortgages backing the bonds, which Lewis writes was expected in good times, to allow the swaps to pay off.
Next, Lewis writes about how Zoe Cruz' risk management people ask for stress tests of Hubler's aggregate positions under scenarios involving a default rate of 10%. A rate Hubler's people, who, remember, are just traders- not PhDs in economics or seasoned mortgage industry researchers (like, for example, Lew Ranieri's original Salomon group contained)- protested would never occur.
I need to make a brief side point here on which I'll elaborate in a subsequent post. Value-at-risk is the main component of most trading desk risk management systems. I've worked on and been around these systems since my days at what is now Accenture consulting back in 1995. One of the problems with VAR systems is that, since they require and assume variance in valuation to impute the capital required for a position, and, thus the losses possible at some probability level, they don't work well with bespoke instruments. Like, say, credit default swaps or so-called 'off the run' fixed income instruments.
Since the entire credit default swap market, as it evolved among AIG, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, et.al, was a telephone bid/ask market in which valuation was an exercise in judgement, variation in values was meaningless. As my old, sometime-business partner Bob Mankin is fond of saying,
"A model can tell you what something was worth yesterday or may be worth tomorrow. But the only way to know what it's worth today is to sell a piece of it in the market to someone else."
Thus Morgan Stanley's risk group's slow realization that its VAR reports on Hubler's groups risks were also meaningless.
The 10% stress test showed that Hubler's group wasn't short subprime mortgage-backed bonds. It was long, and the 10% default scenario would create a $2.7B loss. Lewis notes that the actual eventual default rate on the bonds on which Hubler sold swaps, i.e., went long, became 40%.
Again, to synopsize, by mid-2007, Deutsche Bank, which had bought the swaps Hubler sold to get a $200MM income stream to offset his negative carry on his base position of being long credit default swaps on allegedly-worse subprime mortgage-backed bonds, called Hubler to demand payment on the shifting, now higher value of the swaps Hubler sold. Again, because they aren't exchange-traded or continuously-quoted instruments, their value was the subject of what, in effect, became a verbal pissing contest between Deutsche and Morgan Stanley. By later in 2007, Morgan Stanley had paid Deutsche Bank at least $3.7B, eventually losing the net $9.2B. Hubler had, as Lewis writes,
"...been allowed to resign in October 2007, with many millions of dollars the firm had promised him at the end of 2006. The total losses he left behind him were reported to the Morgan Stanley board as a bit more than $9 billion: the single largest trading loss in the history of Wall Street......Hubler and his traders thought they were smart guys put on earth to exploit the market's stupid inefficiencies. Instead, they simply contributed more inefficiency."
To further add to today's trading loss/John Mack retirement irony, Lewis continued, on page 216,
"The other, bigger, buyer was UBS- which took $2 billion in Howie Hubler's triple-A CDO's, along with a couple of hundred million dollars' worth of his short position in triple-B-rated bonds.....A few months later, seeking to explain to its shareholders the $37.4 billion it had lost in the U.S. subprime markets, UBS would publish a semi-frank report, in which it revealed that a small group of U.S. bond traders employed by UBS had lobbied hard right up until the end for the bank to buy even more of other Wall Street firms' subprime mortgage bonds.....said one UBS bond trader close to the action, "It was a very controversial trade in UBS. It was kept very, very secret.....He further explained that the traders at UBS who executed the trade were motivated mainly by their own models- which, at the moment of their trade, suggested they had turned a profit of $30 million." "
Small world, indeed, eh?
Now with all this information, stop and reflect with me for a moment.
You are John Mack. It is 2006. You meet with your chief risk officer, Zoe Cruz, to ask for a complete examination of Howie Hubler's group's positions, strategies, assumptions, forecasts, etc., because that single eight-person desk is generating, according to Lewis, roughly 20% of Morgan Stanley's profits. You tell Zoe to set aside an entire day- maybe two. You surely want to understand in detail how these eight traders are producing 20% of your firm's profits, and what concomitant risks they are taking to do so.
Or maybe you don't.
The same thing would seem to apply to Zoe Cruz, would it not? Wouldn't she want to protect herself by conducting such a thorough examination of Hubler's group's business, in order to brief Mack prior to presiding over a blow-up of that desk's business?
Evidently not.
Instead, Lewis quotes verbatim from Mack's December 19, 2007 investor phone call. I won't republish the detailed exchanges between Mack and his questioners, including Goldman Sachs analyst William Tanona. Instead, here's what Lewis wrote about Mack's statements,
"The meaningless flow of words might have left the audience with the sense that it was incapable of parsing the deep complexity of Morgan Stanley's bond trading business. What the words actually revealed was that the CEO himself didn't really understand the situation. John Mack was widely regarded among his CEO peers as relatively well informed about his bond firm's trading risks.....Yet not only had he failed to grasp what his traders were up to, back when they were still up to it; he couldn't even fully explain what they had done after they had lost $9 billion."
In a footnote to the verbatim exchange on page 218, Lewis also wrote,
"What John Mack's trying to say, without coming right out and saying that no one else at Morgan Stanley had a clue what risks Howie Hubler was running, is that no one else at Morgan Stanley had a clue what risks Howie Hubler was running- and neither did Howie Hubler."
In an earlier footnote on page 210, Lewis provides a brief discussion of the differing explanations offered by those close to Hubler and Cruz regarding who was ultimately responsible for Hubler's positions' losses- Hubler or Cruz? Lewis sides with those who believe Hubler hoodwinked Cruz into believing the positions' net risks were minimal.
So, what is my point at the end of this very long post involving today's WSJ articles about yesterday's two big breaking stories at UBS and Morgan Stanley, and their mortgage-backed credit default swaps losses four years ago?
It's that, to me, John Mack shouldn't be retiring now as chairman of Morgan Stanley. He should have been fired by his board in 2007 for allowing Hubler and Cruz to lose $9B on one desk. Then Cruz should have been fired, and Hubler, Cruz and Mack all sued by the Morgan Stanley for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty to the firm's shareholders.
That if Howie Hubler was allowed to exit with tens of millions of dollars, and no criminal charges, after putting a $9B hole in Morgan Stanley's 2007 balance sheet, maybe UBS' Adibolo isn't guilty of anything, either.
Maybe both Hubler and Adibolo are rogue traders, or neither one is.
Now, I know that the foregoing story paints Adibolo as a trader trying to hide his known losses, whereas Hubler is portrayed as just too inept to realize what he thought was a net short position in derivatives was actually a net long position.
Personally, I have some trouble really belieiving Hubler was that stupid. Or, if he was, are we actually to believe that people that stupid can make $25MM a year? Plus, Cruz's people did the stress test which alerted them, and Hubler, to just how risky his positions actually were. So, from that point on, it seems unarguable that all concerned at Morgan Stanley could or should have known the truth about Hubler's positions.
But Lewis' book provides details of how Morgan Stanley dithered over exiting the worsening parts of the group's positions. Was that rogue behavior? By Hubler? Cruz?
Something doesn't add up. That's why I don't see a real difference between Adibolo and Hubler. They both were given license to risk their firms' shareholders' capital, and both lost it in positions which should never apparently ever been allowed to exist.
And, yes, Zoe Cruz did lose her job. But not quite the way I suggested above. And neither she, nor Mack, nor, of course, Hubler were sued for violating their fiduciary duty to their firm's shareholders through either gross incompetence, given their compensation and senior positions, or calculated deceit.
I think Lewis' account puts this week's comparatively paltry $2B UBS loss in perspective. And suggests that UBS has an evidently continuing cultural blind spot that makes it vulnerable to rogue trading, however you choose to define the term.
Lewis' book also begs the question, in my view, that Hubler was also a rogue trader. And perhaps Mack was a rogue CEO all the while.
I suspect, if you asked him, that Michael Lewis would say the whole lot- Mack, Cruz, Hubler, Adibolo, UBS's senior management, the boards of Morgan Stanley and UBS- are rogues.
And that anybody who buys shares in those firms, or any of their Wall Street ilk, are foolish and deserve what happens to them. Because for less than twenty bucks, any of those shareholders could buy both of Lewis' appropriately well-regarded books, Liar's Poker and The Big Short, and thus be warned of the risks of owning shares of formerly-private investment banks or brokerage firms.
Friday, September 16, 2011
The Recent Shocking Changed US Income Levels & Distribution
This week's Wall Street Journal very disturbing articles concerning US income levels and distribution.
The first, on Monday was a front-page piece detailing Proctor & Gamble's product development efforts in reaction to what it terms a 'barbell' US income distribution. The longtime leader in household products has officially and pragmatically acknowledged that its middle-class customer base has shrunk, with most of it moving downmarket, and some of the remainder upmarket.
A P&G manager is quoted as noting the Gini coefficient, a measure of income disparity, for the US is now roughly equal to those of the Philippines and Mexico.
Then, on Wednesday, the Journal ran an article containing recent federal government data on US incomes. The big news is that the median income fell 7.1% from its 1999 peak, and is now equivalent to its value in 1996- 15 years ago.
It should be noted that the figure does not include transfer payments, which have grown much more ubiquitous with each decade. Still, a median household income of $49,445 isn't something to cheer about.
P&G's reactions tell you that, from a business perspective, the betting is on stagnant or falling US incomes, not rising ones across the population.
That seems to me to be a significant departure from prior economic assumptions. A change heralding very troubling implications for attempts to reduce US federal debt, while also trying to spur spending.
Common sense would suggest that the median income figure is the result of recent decades' effects on the nature of jobs in America. A bifurcation of fewer high-paying, high-value-adding positions, and more lower-paying jobs, while the middle-management, middle-class types of employment Americans have come to expect since the late 1940s was, in reality, a passing phenomenon that is now over.
The first, on Monday was a front-page piece detailing Proctor & Gamble's product development efforts in reaction to what it terms a 'barbell' US income distribution. The longtime leader in household products has officially and pragmatically acknowledged that its middle-class customer base has shrunk, with most of it moving downmarket, and some of the remainder upmarket.
A P&G manager is quoted as noting the Gini coefficient, a measure of income disparity, for the US is now roughly equal to those of the Philippines and Mexico.
Then, on Wednesday, the Journal ran an article containing recent federal government data on US incomes. The big news is that the median income fell 7.1% from its 1999 peak, and is now equivalent to its value in 1996- 15 years ago.
It should be noted that the figure does not include transfer payments, which have grown much more ubiquitous with each decade. Still, a median household income of $49,445 isn't something to cheer about.
P&G's reactions tell you that, from a business perspective, the betting is on stagnant or falling US incomes, not rising ones across the population.
That seems to me to be a significant departure from prior economic assumptions. A change heralding very troubling implications for attempts to reduce US federal debt, while also trying to spur spending.
Common sense would suggest that the median income figure is the result of recent decades' effects on the nature of jobs in America. A bifurcation of fewer high-paying, high-value-adding positions, and more lower-paying jobs, while the middle-management, middle-class types of employment Americans have come to expect since the late 1940s was, in reality, a passing phenomenon that is now over.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Kyle Bass On CNBC Yesterday
I saw Kyle Bass' appearance yesterday on David Faber's noontime CNBC program which originated from the Seeking Alpha conference.
Bass was on as a guest in order to solicit his unvarnished, blunt opinions regarding the European financial troubles. Specifically, the sovereign debt problems of Greece, Spain, Ireland and Italy, and the accompanying potential insolvency of European banks holding said paper.
When asked for his reaction to US Treasury Secretary Geithner's contention, in an interview earlier that day on CNBC, that no European bank would be allowed to fail "like Lehman did," Bass replied that, technically, he agreed with and believed Geithner's assertion. European regulators, Bass said, would not let any of their large banks just collapse as the US allowed Lehman to do. But in the next breath, Bass said,
'That doesn't mean the equity of those banks is worth anything. Nor their debt.'
He then proceeded to enumerate the problems he saw for any simple Euro-solution, including the myth of a single European-wide TARP-like fund.
In effect, in one sentence, Kyle Bass demolished Geithner's attempt to soothe markets regarding the European financial crisis and revealed the Treasury secretary's insistence that there won't be a European Lehman as a distinction without any real difference.
Then Bass said something which I'll return to, again, in a later post about Michael Lewis' The Big Short. Bass referred to primary market research which his fund commissioned among German citizens to ascertain the opinions of that nation's residents to bailing out the rest of Europe.
This sort of on-the-ground, gritty detailed research was also the hallmark of Bass and others during the building mortgage-backed securities fiasco of 2007-08. It temporarily stunned me that here was a hedge fund manager actually having extensive primary research conducted in order to better his odds of correctly resolving what he called, several times, the game theory problem of how the European financial system will evolve through the default, by whatever name you wish to call it, that Bass sees as inevitable and unavoidable.
Mind you, as far back as last summer and fall, Bass was on CNBC warning viewers that the apparent market values of sovereign debt, and the health of the region's large banks, were not accurate. That the situation was far more dire than it appeared.
I respect and very much enjoyed Bass' detailed explanation of the processes actually necessary, including, to use his term, 'that messy democratic process' of individual country legislatures voting to enact their individual TARP-like funds. I can't possibly capture in this piece the intensity and density of Bass' remarks, but they were extremely convincing on several points.
First, there will be European country defaults. Second, there will be corresponding private sector bank insolvencies. Third, a lot of money will be lost by holders of securities issued by the defaulting countries and bankrupt banks. Fifth, the effect on the US will involve both capital losses and overall economic trade reductions. Sixth, after all this, the global financial and economic systems will then have to pick up and move along, losses absorbed, and work with the resulting situations.
Bass was on as a guest in order to solicit his unvarnished, blunt opinions regarding the European financial troubles. Specifically, the sovereign debt problems of Greece, Spain, Ireland and Italy, and the accompanying potential insolvency of European banks holding said paper.
When asked for his reaction to US Treasury Secretary Geithner's contention, in an interview earlier that day on CNBC, that no European bank would be allowed to fail "like Lehman did," Bass replied that, technically, he agreed with and believed Geithner's assertion. European regulators, Bass said, would not let any of their large banks just collapse as the US allowed Lehman to do. But in the next breath, Bass said,
'That doesn't mean the equity of those banks is worth anything. Nor their debt.'
He then proceeded to enumerate the problems he saw for any simple Euro-solution, including the myth of a single European-wide TARP-like fund.
In effect, in one sentence, Kyle Bass demolished Geithner's attempt to soothe markets regarding the European financial crisis and revealed the Treasury secretary's insistence that there won't be a European Lehman as a distinction without any real difference.
Then Bass said something which I'll return to, again, in a later post about Michael Lewis' The Big Short. Bass referred to primary market research which his fund commissioned among German citizens to ascertain the opinions of that nation's residents to bailing out the rest of Europe.
This sort of on-the-ground, gritty detailed research was also the hallmark of Bass and others during the building mortgage-backed securities fiasco of 2007-08. It temporarily stunned me that here was a hedge fund manager actually having extensive primary research conducted in order to better his odds of correctly resolving what he called, several times, the game theory problem of how the European financial system will evolve through the default, by whatever name you wish to call it, that Bass sees as inevitable and unavoidable.
Mind you, as far back as last summer and fall, Bass was on CNBC warning viewers that the apparent market values of sovereign debt, and the health of the region's large banks, were not accurate. That the situation was far more dire than it appeared.
I respect and very much enjoyed Bass' detailed explanation of the processes actually necessary, including, to use his term, 'that messy democratic process' of individual country legislatures voting to enact their individual TARP-like funds. I can't possibly capture in this piece the intensity and density of Bass' remarks, but they were extremely convincing on several points.
First, there will be European country defaults. Second, there will be corresponding private sector bank insolvencies. Third, a lot of money will be lost by holders of securities issued by the defaulting countries and bankrupt banks. Fifth, the effect on the US will involve both capital losses and overall economic trade reductions. Sixth, after all this, the global financial and economic systems will then have to pick up and move along, losses absorbed, and work with the resulting situations.
About BofA's Planned Restructuring
The business press and cable channels early this week were all abuzz with articles and segments about Brian Moynihan's plans to cut $5B of expenses and 30,000 net employees from the sluggish financial utility that BofA has become.
My take on Moynihan is aptly captured in these prior posts (here and here), with the second link containing a link to my piece written upon Moynihan's selection as BofA's CEO.
Interestingly, I noted in that last linked post, the one written in December of 2009, when Moynihan was named CEO of BofA, that he said he planned no significant strategic changes at the bank.
Well, it's nearly two years later, BofA is under legal attack for its Countrywide liabilities. Rather than hike the dividend or buy back shares, Moynihan did a generous deal with Warren Buffett to get $5B of additional preferred equity on terms no average investor would ever hope to receive.
And now he's planning on paring back the bank's massive consumer business, largely in response to Dodd-Frank's making those businesses- credit cards, debit cards, consumer lending, mortgages- structurally less profitable. Fair enough. The regulatory environment changed, so Moynihan is reacting, as Dick Bove contended, by retrenching in those areas hardest hit by the new laws.
But from an investment viewpoint, I see BofA as a toxic mess to be shunned for at least three years. Which is not to say that if you buy the bank's equity now, you might not see a big pop in 3-4 years. It's just that between the wait, and the risk of concentrating assets on a single troubled company, the return/risk may not be as rich as you think it will be.
My proprietary equity performance research found turnarounds of the type being attempted at BofA to be highly risky and usually a failure. Between the average total return gain and the chances of such a turnaround succeeding, the expected total return is far lower than investing in more stable, consistently-performing companies.
Then there's the nature of the sector and the bank. BofA has 288,000 employees and $27B in annual expenses, according to a Wall Street Journal article in Tuesday's edition. Thus, expenses are to be cut by 18%, and the net number of employees by almost 10%. But there's an unspecified churn in that employee number, as bank officials have said they'll fire more than 30,000, then hire some new people. That's going to be great for morale, huh?
You can imagine the amount of carnage that will begin to occur in focused businesses and locations. Chances are that expenses won't fall by the entire $5B, 30,000 employees will go, net, and revenues will fall further than Moynihan's optimistic planners expect.
These types of drastic downsizings tend to underestimate how the damage to morale throughout a large company will sap efforts to continue to just do business. Revenues in consumer businesses will likely decline by more than expected, and institutional revenues won't necessarily be immune, either.
Generally, firms which are cutting personnel and spending don't grow. Their total returns aren't typically attractive, either.
If BofA's cost- and personnel-cutting program was to spark a turnaround of some a sort that resulted in the company repositioning itself, exiting bad businesses, or entering promising new ones, there might be a chance that, a few years from now, the company would be an attractive investment.
But that's not the kind of restructuring that BofA is doing. Rather, it's trying to cut levels of spending on existing businesses, while shifting resources around among businesses it will largely still operate.
Worse, the same CEO who said two years ago he wasn't going to do anything substantially different, then said he'd push cross-selling, is putatively leading this effort. The first linked post I included above notes that Moynihan has no prior experience that would lead you to believe he has the slightest value to add to this project.
If BofA's board wanted to increase the chances of this effort making a difference for the company's shareholders, they should probably name Moynihan as a special counsel for mortgage-related legal matters, and replace him with a proven turnaround artist of the caliber of Robert Miller. But that's not going to happen.
Do you think that someone of Moynihan's limited banking experience, uneven corporate performance background, and generally legal-oriented skill set is the guy to oversee, let alone restructure, a company so complex as BofA, a modern global money-center bank?
I don't. It's Chuck Prince all over again.
And if Moynihan, by some miracle, succeeds in cutting expenses and headcount? What then? If you bought the stock now, took a lot of risk, you get a pop. Then it's back to your regularly-scheduled sleepy financial utility with little hope for breakout total return performances.
The truth is, banks of BofA's ilk- Chase, Citi, WellsFargo- are all pretty much similarly-organized and operated financial utilities. Aside from occasional timing plays, none are likely, for the foreseeable future, absent regulatory changes or serious breakups, to offer investors much hope of consistently superior total returns.
My take on Moynihan is aptly captured in these prior posts (here and here), with the second link containing a link to my piece written upon Moynihan's selection as BofA's CEO.
Interestingly, I noted in that last linked post, the one written in December of 2009, when Moynihan was named CEO of BofA, that he said he planned no significant strategic changes at the bank.
Well, it's nearly two years later, BofA is under legal attack for its Countrywide liabilities. Rather than hike the dividend or buy back shares, Moynihan did a generous deal with Warren Buffett to get $5B of additional preferred equity on terms no average investor would ever hope to receive.
And now he's planning on paring back the bank's massive consumer business, largely in response to Dodd-Frank's making those businesses- credit cards, debit cards, consumer lending, mortgages- structurally less profitable. Fair enough. The regulatory environment changed, so Moynihan is reacting, as Dick Bove contended, by retrenching in those areas hardest hit by the new laws.
But from an investment viewpoint, I see BofA as a toxic mess to be shunned for at least three years. Which is not to say that if you buy the bank's equity now, you might not see a big pop in 3-4 years. It's just that between the wait, and the risk of concentrating assets on a single troubled company, the return/risk may not be as rich as you think it will be.
My proprietary equity performance research found turnarounds of the type being attempted at BofA to be highly risky and usually a failure. Between the average total return gain and the chances of such a turnaround succeeding, the expected total return is far lower than investing in more stable, consistently-performing companies.
Then there's the nature of the sector and the bank. BofA has 288,000 employees and $27B in annual expenses, according to a Wall Street Journal article in Tuesday's edition. Thus, expenses are to be cut by 18%, and the net number of employees by almost 10%. But there's an unspecified churn in that employee number, as bank officials have said they'll fire more than 30,000, then hire some new people. That's going to be great for morale, huh?
You can imagine the amount of carnage that will begin to occur in focused businesses and locations. Chances are that expenses won't fall by the entire $5B, 30,000 employees will go, net, and revenues will fall further than Moynihan's optimistic planners expect.
These types of drastic downsizings tend to underestimate how the damage to morale throughout a large company will sap efforts to continue to just do business. Revenues in consumer businesses will likely decline by more than expected, and institutional revenues won't necessarily be immune, either.
Generally, firms which are cutting personnel and spending don't grow. Their total returns aren't typically attractive, either.
If BofA's cost- and personnel-cutting program was to spark a turnaround of some a sort that resulted in the company repositioning itself, exiting bad businesses, or entering promising new ones, there might be a chance that, a few years from now, the company would be an attractive investment.
But that's not the kind of restructuring that BofA is doing. Rather, it's trying to cut levels of spending on existing businesses, while shifting resources around among businesses it will largely still operate.
Worse, the same CEO who said two years ago he wasn't going to do anything substantially different, then said he'd push cross-selling, is putatively leading this effort. The first linked post I included above notes that Moynihan has no prior experience that would lead you to believe he has the slightest value to add to this project.
If BofA's board wanted to increase the chances of this effort making a difference for the company's shareholders, they should probably name Moynihan as a special counsel for mortgage-related legal matters, and replace him with a proven turnaround artist of the caliber of Robert Miller. But that's not going to happen.
Do you think that someone of Moynihan's limited banking experience, uneven corporate performance background, and generally legal-oriented skill set is the guy to oversee, let alone restructure, a company so complex as BofA, a modern global money-center bank?
I don't. It's Chuck Prince all over again.
And if Moynihan, by some miracle, succeeds in cutting expenses and headcount? What then? If you bought the stock now, took a lot of risk, you get a pop. Then it's back to your regularly-scheduled sleepy financial utility with little hope for breakout total return performances.
The truth is, banks of BofA's ilk- Chase, Citi, WellsFargo- are all pretty much similarly-organized and operated financial utilities. Aside from occasional timing plays, none are likely, for the foreseeable future, absent regulatory changes or serious breakups, to offer investors much hope of consistently superior total returns.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
More On Michael Lewis' The Big Short
Last month I published this post based on a partial reading of Michael Lewis' 2010 book involving the recent financial crisis, The Big Short.
While away in New Hampshire late last month and early this month, I finished the book and have since been reflecting on it. I'll be publishing several posts in the near future on various aspects of Lewis' book.
At present, I think the topics will include:
-S&P's inept ratings analyses
-Regulatory failures
-Goldman Sachs' typically rapacious behavior
-Moral bakruptcy among fund managers
-The largely-unpublicized nature of structured instrument valuation and/or non-exchange-traded invesetments
And probably a few more as they occur to me.
While away in New Hampshire late last month and early this month, I finished the book and have since been reflecting on it. I'll be publishing several posts in the near future on various aspects of Lewis' book.
At present, I think the topics will include:
-S&P's inept ratings analyses
-Regulatory failures
-Goldman Sachs' typically rapacious behavior
-Moral bakruptcy among fund managers
-The largely-unpublicized nature of structured instrument valuation and/or non-exchange-traded invesetments
And probably a few more as they occur to me.
McGraw-Hill's Split Up
Only last month I wrote this post concerning outside pressure on McGraw-Hill to break itself up. Two years ago, this post discussed the fallout from Terry McGraw's push for growth on the cheap at his company's S&P Ratings unit.
It doesn't look like David Einhorn made money shorting McGraw-Hill's stock back then.
However, a glance at the firm's equity price since 1985 shows the McGraw's have created no value premium for shareholders, despite exposing them to the risk of owning just one equity.
The company, awkwardly diversified as it is between educational and other publishing, and financial services information, probably reached its zenith of value creation back in 2001. But since roughly 2007, the firm has pretty much tracked its own iconic S&P500 Index performance.
As I wrote in an earlier post, McGraw-Hill's current instantiation is the product of a bygone era in which the commonality among businesses was the physical printing and distribution of information. The planned split finally addresses this now-awkward fact by separating what is referred to as the company's education businesses from its financial information ones.
A decade or more ago, this may well have caused the value of the latter, which CEO Terry McGraw plans to lead, to soar. Now, with S&P's reputation tainted from its inept performance during the mortgage securitization boom/bust which led to the 2008 financial crisis, that may not be true.
I'll have more on that point in a later post.
Terry McGraw was cited in yesterday's Wall Street Journal as insisting this split is the fruit of a year-long effort inside the company, and that it is emphatically not in response to pressure from Jana Partners, an institutional investor in the company, or any other outside pressure.
That's hard to believe. Very few CEOs voluntarily engage in wholesale cuts in the size of their empire without heavy market pressure, e.g., Brian Moynihan at BofA and Jeff Immelt at the struggling GE.
Perhaps the more interesting question is whether the firm's rating business will ever be floated off on its own, if for no other reason than to firewall the other pieces of the firm from legal and reputational backlashes.
In any case, while it's possible the pieces of McGraw-Hill could do worse, going forward separately, than the whole, I suspect they won't. As separate and public companies, a really bad performance would probably led to acquisition by a competitor, while the focused nature of each resulting business group will give each the opportunity to be managed more appropriately to its needs, without distractions from resource allocation across such different types of businesses.
The nature of capital markets for the past 30 years has been to de-conglomerate, and McGraw-Hill is finally about to allow investors to do for themselves what this remaining conglomerate has unsuccessfully attempted to do for them for so long, i.e., diversify and allocate resources as they see fit, rather than pay a family management to do it badly.
It doesn't look like David Einhorn made money shorting McGraw-Hill's stock back then.
The company, awkwardly diversified as it is between educational and other publishing, and financial services information, probably reached its zenith of value creation back in 2001. But since roughly 2007, the firm has pretty much tracked its own iconic S&P500 Index performance.
As I wrote in an earlier post, McGraw-Hill's current instantiation is the product of a bygone era in which the commonality among businesses was the physical printing and distribution of information. The planned split finally addresses this now-awkward fact by separating what is referred to as the company's education businesses from its financial information ones.
A decade or more ago, this may well have caused the value of the latter, which CEO Terry McGraw plans to lead, to soar. Now, with S&P's reputation tainted from its inept performance during the mortgage securitization boom/bust which led to the 2008 financial crisis, that may not be true.
I'll have more on that point in a later post.
Terry McGraw was cited in yesterday's Wall Street Journal as insisting this split is the fruit of a year-long effort inside the company, and that it is emphatically not in response to pressure from Jana Partners, an institutional investor in the company, or any other outside pressure.
That's hard to believe. Very few CEOs voluntarily engage in wholesale cuts in the size of their empire without heavy market pressure, e.g., Brian Moynihan at BofA and Jeff Immelt at the struggling GE.
Perhaps the more interesting question is whether the firm's rating business will ever be floated off on its own, if for no other reason than to firewall the other pieces of the firm from legal and reputational backlashes.
In any case, while it's possible the pieces of McGraw-Hill could do worse, going forward separately, than the whole, I suspect they won't. As separate and public companies, a really bad performance would probably led to acquisition by a competitor, while the focused nature of each resulting business group will give each the opportunity to be managed more appropriately to its needs, without distractions from resource allocation across such different types of businesses.
The nature of capital markets for the past 30 years has been to de-conglomerate, and McGraw-Hill is finally about to allow investors to do for themselves what this remaining conglomerate has unsuccessfully attempted to do for them for so long, i.e., diversify and allocate resources as they see fit, rather than pay a family management to do it badly.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Jurgen Stark Sparks More Euro Jitters
I'm writing this post on Monday afternoon, while listening to some really serious black crepe-paper hanging on Bloomberg concerning Europe's debt problems. Yesterday's latest Euro-panic was apparently sparked by the resignation from the ECB of Germany's Jurgen Stark.
Here's what the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal reported on the subject,
"Germany's top representative on the European Central Bank resigned in an apparent protest Friday, dealing a severe blow to the steward of Europe's common currency amid the Continent's worsening debt crisis.
The ECB said Jürgen Stark, its chief economist, was resigning for "personal" reasons with nearly three years remaining in his term. But people familiar with the matter said his decision was driven by frustration over the bank's expanding role in backstopping the region's finances.
The surprise exit of Mr. Stark—the second senior German official to depart the ECB over ideological differences in recent months—jolted markets in Europe and the U.S., as concerns over the stability of the central bank's senior leadership added to fears about Greece and Europe's banks. The euro suffered its biggest one-day drop in two months, finishing at $1.3657, its lowest finish since February.
ECB officials have taken pains in recent weeks to counter growing criticism that the bank is overstepping its charter and assuming untold financial risk with its actions. Such worries are strongest in Germany, where the country's own central bank, the Bundesbank, is firmly rooted on the principle of independence from politics. Many Germans believe that tradition is at the core of their country's own economic success and worry that it is now being undermined.
"From a German perspective, this is not a very good sign," said Kai Karstensen, an economist at Ifo Institute in Munich.
The resignation is fueling a debate in Germany about whether the euro will become a less-stable currency thanks to the escalating euro-zone debt crisis. Such a debate could indirectly make it harder for Chancellor Angela Merkel to justify expensive government policies to prop up the euro.
"Stark is the second German central banker to leave the ship because he sees that the German stability culture can't be upheld in Europe," says Thorsten Polleit, economist at Barclays Capital in Frankfurt. "There's a clear potential now that the German public will become increasingly disenchanted with the euro project."
That disenchantment is already being expressed by leading politicians. German President Christian Wulff, whose position is largely ceremonial, has called the ECB's bond purchases "politically and legally questionable." The head of German's center-left SPD party, Sigmar Gabriel, has also denounced the purchases.
There are worries within Germany that vulnerable countries in Southern Europe will soon have a stranglehold on ECB decision-making. That impression could further undermine Germans' confidence in the euro at a time when their country is being asked to foot much of the bill to bail out the flagging members.
In an op-ed for the German business daily Handelsblatt, released late Friday, Mr. Stark wrote that government efforts to save the euro zone have fallen short. He called for a "far-reaching reform of the mechanism for decisions and sanctions."
"We find ourselves in a situation in which massive sustainability risks in public budgets are eroding financial stability," he wrote. "
The ECB, like the US Fed, is supposed to be apolitical. But, just as our Fed has shamelessly returned to the financing of Treasury debt since 2008, so, too, is the ECB working closely with the the EU by purchasing sovereign debt of countries in trouble. Now, however, it's clear that those countries include Spain and Italy. Two countries whose economic size will almost surely doom any Euro-wide attempt to rescue them. Italy is, in fact, the third-largest sovereign debt issuer in the world. Spain's economy is no Greece- it's substantial and it's in serious difficulty.
Yesterday afternoon's Bloomberg discussion rather bluntly included predictions of failure for many large European banks. Parallels to the situation of the US financial markets and banks just three years ago this month were explicitly made.
Don't forget that on several occasions, business media such as the Wall Street Journal have reported that US money market funds have significant positions in European bank commercial paper. Guess what happens if those banks become insolvent.
The Euro-funding crisis which is spreading from their sovereign debt to their private sector banks will arrive quite quickly on US shores in the form of 'broken-buck' money market funds which will then need...surprise, surprise....another Fed bailout!
Somehow, it seems truly ironic that eighty years after Hitler's Germany provoked such fear in Europe, the countries of that region are now running to (back) to Germany for financial rescue from their subsequent sovereign economic and financial mistakes. Who'd have guessed that the Germans would ultimately dictate the future of Europe not from the strength of their military, but from the strength of their economy?
Here's what the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal reported on the subject,
"Germany's top representative on the European Central Bank resigned in an apparent protest Friday, dealing a severe blow to the steward of Europe's common currency amid the Continent's worsening debt crisis.
The ECB said Jürgen Stark, its chief economist, was resigning for "personal" reasons with nearly three years remaining in his term. But people familiar with the matter said his decision was driven by frustration over the bank's expanding role in backstopping the region's finances.
The surprise exit of Mr. Stark—the second senior German official to depart the ECB over ideological differences in recent months—jolted markets in Europe and the U.S., as concerns over the stability of the central bank's senior leadership added to fears about Greece and Europe's banks. The euro suffered its biggest one-day drop in two months, finishing at $1.3657, its lowest finish since February.
ECB officials have taken pains in recent weeks to counter growing criticism that the bank is overstepping its charter and assuming untold financial risk with its actions. Such worries are strongest in Germany, where the country's own central bank, the Bundesbank, is firmly rooted on the principle of independence from politics. Many Germans believe that tradition is at the core of their country's own economic success and worry that it is now being undermined.
"From a German perspective, this is not a very good sign," said Kai Karstensen, an economist at Ifo Institute in Munich.
The resignation is fueling a debate in Germany about whether the euro will become a less-stable currency thanks to the escalating euro-zone debt crisis. Such a debate could indirectly make it harder for Chancellor Angela Merkel to justify expensive government policies to prop up the euro.
"Stark is the second German central banker to leave the ship because he sees that the German stability culture can't be upheld in Europe," says Thorsten Polleit, economist at Barclays Capital in Frankfurt. "There's a clear potential now that the German public will become increasingly disenchanted with the euro project."
That disenchantment is already being expressed by leading politicians. German President Christian Wulff, whose position is largely ceremonial, has called the ECB's bond purchases "politically and legally questionable." The head of German's center-left SPD party, Sigmar Gabriel, has also denounced the purchases.
There are worries within Germany that vulnerable countries in Southern Europe will soon have a stranglehold on ECB decision-making. That impression could further undermine Germans' confidence in the euro at a time when their country is being asked to foot much of the bill to bail out the flagging members.
In an op-ed for the German business daily Handelsblatt, released late Friday, Mr. Stark wrote that government efforts to save the euro zone have fallen short. He called for a "far-reaching reform of the mechanism for decisions and sanctions."
"We find ourselves in a situation in which massive sustainability risks in public budgets are eroding financial stability," he wrote. "
The ECB, like the US Fed, is supposed to be apolitical. But, just as our Fed has shamelessly returned to the financing of Treasury debt since 2008, so, too, is the ECB working closely with the the EU by purchasing sovereign debt of countries in trouble. Now, however, it's clear that those countries include Spain and Italy. Two countries whose economic size will almost surely doom any Euro-wide attempt to rescue them. Italy is, in fact, the third-largest sovereign debt issuer in the world. Spain's economy is no Greece- it's substantial and it's in serious difficulty.
Yesterday afternoon's Bloomberg discussion rather bluntly included predictions of failure for many large European banks. Parallels to the situation of the US financial markets and banks just three years ago this month were explicitly made.
Don't forget that on several occasions, business media such as the Wall Street Journal have reported that US money market funds have significant positions in European bank commercial paper. Guess what happens if those banks become insolvent.
The Euro-funding crisis which is spreading from their sovereign debt to their private sector banks will arrive quite quickly on US shores in the form of 'broken-buck' money market funds which will then need...surprise, surprise....another Fed bailout!
Somehow, it seems truly ironic that eighty years after Hitler's Germany provoked such fear in Europe, the countries of that region are now running to (back) to Germany for financial rescue from their subsequent sovereign economic and financial mistakes. Who'd have guessed that the Germans would ultimately dictate the future of Europe not from the strength of their military, but from the strength of their economy?
Monday, September 12, 2011
S&P500 Performance & John Bogle's Views
I spotted a little piece in last weekend's Wall Street Journal by Jason Zweig concerning Vanguard founder John Bogle's recent remarks on equity markets.
Bogle has written a clear and wonderful volume in the The Little Book series entitled Common Sense Investing. Bogle doesn't endorse active management of any equity portfolios- ever. The book explains why.
So it wasn't surprising that he spoke of equity market returns for the next decade averaging 7% per annum. He pointed out that this will double one's investment. It's reasonable to assume, knowing Bogle, that he would expect one to follow his advice by way of investing in a passive S&P500 Index fund.
Of course, many are fixated on the last decade's being a so-called 'lost decade' for equities.
Out of curiosity, then, I calculated the S&P500 Index annual average from January, 1970 through last Friday. Despite the flat performance during the last decade, the Index continues to have an average annual total return of 10.9%, before inflation.
One could do much, much worse than dollar-averaging into and out of the S&P over time. I suspect most retail investors have, indeed, done far, far worse.
And, to Bogle's point, paid handsomely for the privilege.
Bogle has written a clear and wonderful volume in the The Little Book series entitled Common Sense Investing. Bogle doesn't endorse active management of any equity portfolios- ever. The book explains why.
So it wasn't surprising that he spoke of equity market returns for the next decade averaging 7% per annum. He pointed out that this will double one's investment. It's reasonable to assume, knowing Bogle, that he would expect one to follow his advice by way of investing in a passive S&P500 Index fund.
Of course, many are fixated on the last decade's being a so-called 'lost decade' for equities.
Out of curiosity, then, I calculated the S&P500 Index annual average from January, 1970 through last Friday. Despite the flat performance during the last decade, the Index continues to have an average annual total return of 10.9%, before inflation.
One could do much, much worse than dollar-averaging into and out of the S&P over time. I suspect most retail investors have, indeed, done far, far worse.
And, to Bogle's point, paid handsomely for the privilege.
An Interim Report On Glenn Beck's New Online-Only Venture
Back in July, I wrote this post discussing Glenn Beck's move from Fox News to his own online-only media base, as well as Oprah Winfrey's recent move to her own cable network. I closed the post with these passages,
"Beck made sure his new venture is easily found, cheap to join, and ubiquitous. By emphasizing smart phones and tablets, plus political action projects, he's opened up his venture to younger audiences, as well as older ones.
Whether Winfrey or Beck proves to be more financially successful might be less important for the old media world, in the long run, than that both former conventional media stars bolted their former homes to control their future media destinies with so much apparent ease. How they fare may vary, of course, as Winfrey's management headaches attest. But their example may begin to sink in with more conventional entertainment creators who, until now, have sold their television series to broadcast and cable networks.
How long will it be before Glee, MadMen and Psyche simply go to websites and enjoy 100% of subscriber fees, selling by the episode, season or more, via credit cards and PayPal?"
This morning's edition of the Wall Street Journal provides some interim information on Beck's move. First, it refers to "clashes with network management" as part of Beck's motivation for the move. I'm sure Fox was getting pressure from various sources, given Beck's unvarnished, in-your-face style of confrontational video journalism.
But, as Beck explained in his web-based infomercial for his new online network, which aired immediately after he closed his last Fox News program, he had been urged by others to make such a move earlier than just this year.
According to the Journal piece,
"Because Mr. Beck owns the show and the network, he could make substantially more than the $2.5 million salary he got each year at Fox. GBTV is on track to take in more than $20 million in revenue in its debut year, according to a person close to the company.
The television industry will be watching closely to see whether the TV host can preserve his popularity while migrating to the Web, where efforts to get consumers to pay to watch online-only channels are just beginning.
When Mr. Beck announced GBTV in June, the network had 80,000 subscribers. In the months since, GBTV subscribers have swelled to more than 230,000, according to people close to the network, even though Mr. Beck's show hasn't yet begun.
The audience is far less than the more than 2.2 million daily viewers his program on Fox drew, on average, over its 27-month run, which ended in June after clashes with the network's management.
But it is more than the average 156,000 people who were watching the Oprah Winfrey Network in June.
Like GBTV, OWN was started by a major TV personality, but it's available through a traditional cable subscription. By contrast, Mr. Beck's network is available a la carte to subscribers who pay $9.95 a month to stream the network on gbtv.com and over interconnected devices such as tablets and mobile phones. The network's programming includes a reality show about the making of GBTV and a program anchored by Mr. Beck's co-hosts from his nationally syndicated radio show, which draws 10 million weekly listeners. A block of children's programming is slated to start later this month.
Mr. Beck said one of the reasons he ditched a network for the Web was a desire to reach out to young people. "I think networks are a thing of the past," he said. "I don't know anybody under 30 who is watching television the way I watched television. Technology has allowed people to change the way they consume the news, and we want to be where people are going." "
I'm impressed. Beck is already drawing almost 50% more in directly paying audience than Winfrey is via included cable distribution. Not to mention that Beck's program, which aired on Fox at 5PM, can now reach subscribers via wireless iPads and smartphones while the adults commute home from work. And Beck isn't wrong in his views, presented in the last paragraph of the quoted text. He's playing a long game for younger hearts and minds which don't see a few bucks per month as too much to pay for video programming.
In fact, Beck is teaching people to more aggressively disintermediate their cable television bills by beginning to pay directly for individual channels. The Journal article contends that Beck's subscription is $9.99/month, buy my July post, written soon after I watched the channel's infomercial, clearly states that the price closer to $5/month. I believe it was a charter-member price. But isn't it likely that, over time, Beck's channel will offer attractive renewal prices, or significantly lower rates for annual members? Not to mention begin to offer private social-networking marketing deals a la Groupon and LivingSocial? And discounts for referring friends to become subscribers?
Of course he will.
I don't have much doubt that Beck's experiment will succeed, even if not immediately. I believe he's shown insight in identifying how to secure editorial independence, the entire cashflow stream of a network, and adapt to video buying and viewing habits made possible and becoming predominant, thanks to evolving technology.
And, in time, I suspect, because of the nature of Beck's topics and audience, he'll have shown himself to be shrewder than Winfrey by assuming full ownership and risk, but retaining total control and financial rewards.
"Beck made sure his new venture is easily found, cheap to join, and ubiquitous. By emphasizing smart phones and tablets, plus political action projects, he's opened up his venture to younger audiences, as well as older ones.
Whether Winfrey or Beck proves to be more financially successful might be less important for the old media world, in the long run, than that both former conventional media stars bolted their former homes to control their future media destinies with so much apparent ease. How they fare may vary, of course, as Winfrey's management headaches attest. But their example may begin to sink in with more conventional entertainment creators who, until now, have sold their television series to broadcast and cable networks.
How long will it be before Glee, MadMen and Psyche simply go to websites and enjoy 100% of subscriber fees, selling by the episode, season or more, via credit cards and PayPal?"
This morning's edition of the Wall Street Journal provides some interim information on Beck's move. First, it refers to "clashes with network management" as part of Beck's motivation for the move. I'm sure Fox was getting pressure from various sources, given Beck's unvarnished, in-your-face style of confrontational video journalism.
But, as Beck explained in his web-based infomercial for his new online network, which aired immediately after he closed his last Fox News program, he had been urged by others to make such a move earlier than just this year.
According to the Journal piece,
"Because Mr. Beck owns the show and the network, he could make substantially more than the $2.5 million salary he got each year at Fox. GBTV is on track to take in more than $20 million in revenue in its debut year, according to a person close to the company.
The television industry will be watching closely to see whether the TV host can preserve his popularity while migrating to the Web, where efforts to get consumers to pay to watch online-only channels are just beginning.
When Mr. Beck announced GBTV in June, the network had 80,000 subscribers. In the months since, GBTV subscribers have swelled to more than 230,000, according to people close to the network, even though Mr. Beck's show hasn't yet begun.
The audience is far less than the more than 2.2 million daily viewers his program on Fox drew, on average, over its 27-month run, which ended in June after clashes with the network's management.
But it is more than the average 156,000 people who were watching the Oprah Winfrey Network in June.
Like GBTV, OWN was started by a major TV personality, but it's available through a traditional cable subscription. By contrast, Mr. Beck's network is available a la carte to subscribers who pay $9.95 a month to stream the network on gbtv.com and over interconnected devices such as tablets and mobile phones. The network's programming includes a reality show about the making of GBTV and a program anchored by Mr. Beck's co-hosts from his nationally syndicated radio show, which draws 10 million weekly listeners. A block of children's programming is slated to start later this month.
Mr. Beck said one of the reasons he ditched a network for the Web was a desire to reach out to young people. "I think networks are a thing of the past," he said. "I don't know anybody under 30 who is watching television the way I watched television. Technology has allowed people to change the way they consume the news, and we want to be where people are going." "
I'm impressed. Beck is already drawing almost 50% more in directly paying audience than Winfrey is via included cable distribution. Not to mention that Beck's program, which aired on Fox at 5PM, can now reach subscribers via wireless iPads and smartphones while the adults commute home from work. And Beck isn't wrong in his views, presented in the last paragraph of the quoted text. He's playing a long game for younger hearts and minds which don't see a few bucks per month as too much to pay for video programming.
In fact, Beck is teaching people to more aggressively disintermediate their cable television bills by beginning to pay directly for individual channels. The Journal article contends that Beck's subscription is $9.99/month, buy my July post, written soon after I watched the channel's infomercial, clearly states that the price closer to $5/month. I believe it was a charter-member price. But isn't it likely that, over time, Beck's channel will offer attractive renewal prices, or significantly lower rates for annual members? Not to mention begin to offer private social-networking marketing deals a la Groupon and LivingSocial? And discounts for referring friends to become subscribers?
Of course he will.
I don't have much doubt that Beck's experiment will succeed, even if not immediately. I believe he's shown insight in identifying how to secure editorial independence, the entire cashflow stream of a network, and adapt to video buying and viewing habits made possible and becoming predominant, thanks to evolving technology.
And, in time, I suspect, because of the nature of Beck's topics and audience, he'll have shown himself to be shrewder than Winfrey by assuming full ownership and risk, but retaining total control and financial rewards.
Friday, September 09, 2011
The Wall Street Journal's Warm Fuzzy Review of 10 Years of GE Under Jeff Immelt
In this week's Tuesday edition of the Wall Street Journal, the feature article on the front page of the Marketplace section was a long piece discussing Jeff Immelt's 10-year anniversary as GE's CEO.
It's worth observing, in this age of blogging, how advertising-paid media still refrain from the blunt honesty of a blog like, well, this one. I've criticized Immelt for over five years, just based on the cold, available facts of GE's and Immelt's performance, Immelt's outrageous compensation, and the comparable S&P500 performance.
With the same information, the Journal was significantly kinder and less pointed in its evaluation of Immelt's reign.
For example, take the article's second paragraph,
"The part he might want to leave out: GE's stock ended that week in August down 15% from the start of the year and 61% lower than when he took over as chairman and chief executive of the industrial conglomerate 10 years ago."
Fine as far as it goes, but how about comparing GE to the index? The nearby price chart for GE and the S&P500 Index show that, while the index has been roughly flat for 10 years, GE has fallen precipitously. So much so, in fact, that Immelt has nearly wiped out the entire GE performance premium earned since 1960!
Great job, Jeff!
Why doesn't the Journal provide this objective measure? Probably because they'd like to continue to run GE advertising and have the occasional interview with GE senior management.
So much for real analysis of business news, eh?
But here's something even more bizarre. The next passage in the article reads,
"If I had to grade him, he is a solid B student, not lighting the world on fire," says Peter Klein, a senior portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management in Cleveland, which holds GE shares. "The pieces now are probably at a point where they are getting polished and getting attention that profitability will improve." "
Is it just me, or is Klein more of an embarrassment to Fifth Third than Immelt may be to GE? Or this article to the WSJ? After reading Klein's rating of a guy who destroyed 40 years of value at GE, calling him a "solid B student," would you invest in his portfolio? Or anything at Fifth Third?
How completely destructive must a CEO be to earn a 'D' from Klein, if GE under Immelt is a "solid B?"
Then there's this laughable section,
"Inside the 131-year-old company, where executives are more accustomed to accolades than censure from Wall Street, the sluggish share price has created palpable frustration. Mr. Immelt counters that only two other companies, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell, have made more money over the past decade. GE has paid out $87 billion in dividends over the period and is sitting on a company record $189 billion book of orders."
This is more of Immelt's deliberate ignorance of modern finance, in favor of the hoary old notion that simply being big is good enough.
Ever hear of total return, Jeff? And where's the Journal's criticism of a CEO so brazenly old-fashioned as to flaunt the notion of earning a competitive return for the risk he's taking on his shareholders' behalf?
The stupidity and ineptitude at GE clearly extends to its board, as we read in these passages,
"Size is working against GE as well. Mr. Welch took GE to nearly $130 billion in revenue from less than $30 billion. Today the company has $150 billion in revenue, but continuing double-digit gains is tough at that scale.
"Is it going to grow the way it did 25 years ago when it was a third or a quarter of the size? No, the math just works against you," says Ralph Larsen, the lead independent director on GE's board."
That's all that Larsen can manage to articulate about Immelt's colossal failure as CEO? Maybe he's best buddies with another firm's board member, a chairman, no less, currently under fire. Reading Larsen's quote, what sane investor would buy, or continue to hold, GE shares?
The Journal article at least includes someone else's criticisms of Immelt's bad timing on acquisitions and disposals,
"Some former GE executives and investors say Mr. Immelt sells late and buys too high.
"GE hasn't been as strategically adept as it was 25 years ago," says Jack De Gan, chief investment officer for Harbor Advisory Corp. in Portsmouth, N.H.
GE sold its plastics business after the market peaked and jumped into subprime lending too late to reap the rewards, exiting with a $1 billion loss, critics say. The company failed in a 2008 attempt to sell its slow-growth, low-margin appliance business and scrapped the plan a year later.
Mr. Immelt bought security companies after 9/11, agreed to a big premium to acquire U.K. medical research company Amersham in 2003 and is buying into the oil business with prices much higher than they were in the first half of his tenure. Buying Enron's wind business out of bankruptcy created a new business for GE, but multiple acquisitions in water treatment haven't paid off.
Mr. Immelt rejects the criticism. He says the dispositions of plastics and insurance were "home runs" and that the acquisitions were a mixed bag. "You can't do a lot of deals and have them all be great.""
Leave it to Immelt to simply stonewall the facts when he doesn't like them. The record on his disposal of plastics, NBC/Universal and parts of its financial business is quite clear, and it's not pretty.
The simple truth is that GE is an anachronism- a dinosaur. As a diversified conglomerate in an age of hyper-efficient capital markets and ultra-low brokerage fees, there is no longer any reason for such a corporation to exist. It should have been split into its large constituent businesses many years ago. That Jack Welch was able to confuse and bedazzle analysts and investors for so long with his charm and character just served to obscure this truth.
If Welch had truly had shareholder interests at heart, he'd have broken up GE after he stabilized it in the early 1980s. Then he'd have avoided the disastrous RCA and Kidder Peabody acquisitions, as well as the mistaken swelling of GE Capital, while allowing shareholders to directly benefit from each large unit's individual performances.
It's worth observing, in this age of blogging, how advertising-paid media still refrain from the blunt honesty of a blog like, well, this one. I've criticized Immelt for over five years, just based on the cold, available facts of GE's and Immelt's performance, Immelt's outrageous compensation, and the comparable S&P500 performance.
With the same information, the Journal was significantly kinder and less pointed in its evaluation of Immelt's reign.
For example, take the article's second paragraph,
"The part he might want to leave out: GE's stock ended that week in August down 15% from the start of the year and 61% lower than when he took over as chairman and chief executive of the industrial conglomerate 10 years ago."
Great job, Jeff!
Why doesn't the Journal provide this objective measure? Probably because they'd like to continue to run GE advertising and have the occasional interview with GE senior management.
So much for real analysis of business news, eh?
But here's something even more bizarre. The next passage in the article reads,
"If I had to grade him, he is a solid B student, not lighting the world on fire," says Peter Klein, a senior portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management in Cleveland, which holds GE shares. "The pieces now are probably at a point where they are getting polished and getting attention that profitability will improve." "
Is it just me, or is Klein more of an embarrassment to Fifth Third than Immelt may be to GE? Or this article to the WSJ? After reading Klein's rating of a guy who destroyed 40 years of value at GE, calling him a "solid B student," would you invest in his portfolio? Or anything at Fifth Third?
How completely destructive must a CEO be to earn a 'D' from Klein, if GE under Immelt is a "solid B?"
Then there's this laughable section,
"Inside the 131-year-old company, where executives are more accustomed to accolades than censure from Wall Street, the sluggish share price has created palpable frustration. Mr. Immelt counters that only two other companies, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell, have made more money over the past decade. GE has paid out $87 billion in dividends over the period and is sitting on a company record $189 billion book of orders."
This is more of Immelt's deliberate ignorance of modern finance, in favor of the hoary old notion that simply being big is good enough.
Ever hear of total return, Jeff? And where's the Journal's criticism of a CEO so brazenly old-fashioned as to flaunt the notion of earning a competitive return for the risk he's taking on his shareholders' behalf?
The stupidity and ineptitude at GE clearly extends to its board, as we read in these passages,
"Size is working against GE as well. Mr. Welch took GE to nearly $130 billion in revenue from less than $30 billion. Today the company has $150 billion in revenue, but continuing double-digit gains is tough at that scale.
"Is it going to grow the way it did 25 years ago when it was a third or a quarter of the size? No, the math just works against you," says Ralph Larsen, the lead independent director on GE's board."
That's all that Larsen can manage to articulate about Immelt's colossal failure as CEO? Maybe he's best buddies with another firm's board member, a chairman, no less, currently under fire. Reading Larsen's quote, what sane investor would buy, or continue to hold, GE shares?
The Journal article at least includes someone else's criticisms of Immelt's bad timing on acquisitions and disposals,
"Some former GE executives and investors say Mr. Immelt sells late and buys too high.
"GE hasn't been as strategically adept as it was 25 years ago," says Jack De Gan, chief investment officer for Harbor Advisory Corp. in Portsmouth, N.H.
GE sold its plastics business after the market peaked and jumped into subprime lending too late to reap the rewards, exiting with a $1 billion loss, critics say. The company failed in a 2008 attempt to sell its slow-growth, low-margin appliance business and scrapped the plan a year later.
Mr. Immelt bought security companies after 9/11, agreed to a big premium to acquire U.K. medical research company Amersham in 2003 and is buying into the oil business with prices much higher than they were in the first half of his tenure. Buying Enron's wind business out of bankruptcy created a new business for GE, but multiple acquisitions in water treatment haven't paid off.
Mr. Immelt rejects the criticism. He says the dispositions of plastics and insurance were "home runs" and that the acquisitions were a mixed bag. "You can't do a lot of deals and have them all be great.""
Leave it to Immelt to simply stonewall the facts when he doesn't like them. The record on his disposal of plastics, NBC/Universal and parts of its financial business is quite clear, and it's not pretty.
The simple truth is that GE is an anachronism- a dinosaur. As a diversified conglomerate in an age of hyper-efficient capital markets and ultra-low brokerage fees, there is no longer any reason for such a corporation to exist. It should have been split into its large constituent businesses many years ago. That Jack Welch was able to confuse and bedazzle analysts and investors for so long with his charm and character just served to obscure this truth.
If Welch had truly had shareholder interests at heart, he'd have broken up GE after he stabilized it in the early 1980s. Then he'd have avoided the disastrous RCA and Kidder Peabody acquisitions, as well as the mistaken swelling of GE Capital, while allowing shareholders to directly benefit from each large unit's individual performances.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
More Disappointment Involving CNBC's Guests and Guest Hosts
This morning I happened to catch a few minutes of self-aggrandizing New York Times columnist Tom Friedman on CNBC. It seems he and a co-author are out with a new book which celebrates the decline of the US. I write celebrate because, despite what Friedman likes to portray himself as on CNBC- a champion of individual initiative- he is, after all, a liberal Times columnist who never met a government program he doesn't like.
Today, he was breaking the shocking news that globalization of competitions means that every worker is now subject to those forces.
What previously unthought insight will Friedman provide us with next?
Of course, I'm being sarcastic. I wrote this post in late June, spurred by Michael Spence's WSJ editorial, regarding how globalization has likely rendered a global lowest-ranking group of people unfit for competitive employment. Specifically, I contended,
"Every nation has some bottom quartile of adults in terms of intellect, skills and education. In fortunate times, the nation can employ those people in lower-value-added jobs like construction, basic materials extraction or simple fabrication of materials and goods.
But the days of America being competitive at producing commodities is long gone. And, with it, I believe, a brief, probably unreproducible period from 1945-1970, in which lesser-educated and -intelligent Americans could make middle-class wages and enjoy "30-and-out" careers with bountiful pensions and healthcare.
My late father's cohort, he being born in 1927, enjoyed this golden era. Those before did not, nor those who followed.
It seems to me that Americans have become used to two generations, my father's and the early baby-boomers, of economically-lucky circumstances and have cemented their financial life expectations at an unsustainable level.
Today, the only long term sustainably-competitive businesses and jobs are those which can continue to innovate, create value and move forward technologically and in terms of meeting consumer needs. Static professions and jobs are all seeing declining wages and benefits.
While I'm not happy to acknowledge this, I must admit that today's interlinked global economy can no longer inexpensively shield and support the lowest quartile, decile, or whatever economically-determined least-productive, -skilled and -employable portion of any nation's workforce.
Nobody's worried about the workforce at Google, Amazon or Facebook. But the marginal banker, auto assembler or generic factory worker is a real problem for all of us. If they can't be re-employed at anywhere near their historic standards of living, how does that affect and change the US?
Here's what the modern interlinked global economy has done. It's forced economically-mature, once-vibrant advanced economies to decide, with their antiquated mix of unions, defined benefit pensions and health care systems and raised expectations, how to deal with the costs of supporting the now-unemployable citizens who have been taught for one or two generations to expect lavish standards of living by historic comparison.
A well-educated, bright, risk-taking young person who is comfortable with a long, changing, working life will probably get a reasonable facsimile of "the American Dream." Others will not.
I think it's time we acknowledged that, in America, a high-school graduate with an average intellect and skill set has a near-zero chance of achieving "the American dream" of a good-paying, secure job leading to a comfortable, decent home, spouse and family, health care, pension, vacations and a pleasant retirement after age 70.
Thanks to the global ubiquity of better education, I would guess that even an average US college graduate can't count on that dream anymore, either.
America won't, as a nation, I believe, be able to protect and employ it's least-productive citizens without paying unaffordable social costs. The time for that has long since passed, and, absent another devastating, global-economy-wrecking war, natural disaster or crisis, I don't see it ever returning."
Friedman solemnly intoned that now every US worker must adopt two attitudes- that of an immigrant (being hungry) and of an artisan (provide unique skills).
I don't disagree with Friedman, but I've been thinking and behaving along those lines since 1983. That's when I left a dissolving AT&T. Looking up the management chain above me, I realized none of those self-satisfied, but mostly insecure executives were going to magically protect me or my job. When I went seeking other employment, and landed at Chase Manhattan, that view was reinforced, along with Friedman's second point.
Within just a year or so of arriving at the bank, it began its first rounds of hiring freezes, then layoffs. It was at that time that I began, with my late business partner, Debbie Smith, to create a body of intellectual property that was severable from my employer and transportable to other venues.
I view Friedman's current realizations as ones that I came to nearly 30 years ago. Rather than write about them, I, as tens of thousands of other entreprenurially-oriented Americans also have done, I behaved according to these understandings.
From his longstanding, cushy job at the liberal New York Times, Friedman seems so isolated from reality that his every thought seems, to him, worthy of a book informing us lesser beings of the truth he just discovered.
But I have another story of a fairly frequent CNBC guest which is interesting for another reason. It's in the vein of my posts about how the ethically-challenged network continues to use also ethically-challenged Steve Rattner as a guest-host and guest. Searching on "Rattner" on this blog will provide you with a list of posts, among which are some that detail his run-ins with the SEC and implicit admission of some pretty serious misbehaviors concerning 'pay to play' asset management.
On the theme of "it's a small world after all," I happened to make the acquaintance, on my recent hiking trip to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, of a criminal practice attorney whom I'll call Dave. Learning of my professional activities in equity investing, and one-time hedge fund partnership with a former Salomon Brothers partner of some repute, he asked if I knew a hedge fund manager whom I'll call Mr. O. O is a periodic guest on CNBC.
When I related my close 'degrees of separation,' but not personally-direct, connection to O through the former Salomon partner, Dave related the following story.
Dave has a client who was induced to participate in one of O's hedge fund investments. I should clarify that, when O appears on CNBC, he's always portrayed as a large-cap US equities investor. His background is one of being an equity strategist at a noted Wall Street firm some years ago. He usually speaks of specific US equities, effectively talking his book.
In this case, however, the investment was an energy project in either Russia or one of its former Republics. The investment went bad, and Dave's client's stake was entirely lost.
Dave then recounted some of the developments of the subsequent lawsuit over the investment. It seems that there were violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is the law that forbids US firms from paying bribes overseas in order to secure business. Dave told me that O escaped conviction but was pretty clearly involved. One of O's lieutenants, however, was not so lucky, was convicted, and did jail time.
Needless to say, O continues to appear on CNBC. This, and the use of people like Rattner, with whom Dave was also familiar, in the same manner as I am, was why, Dave explained, he doesn't even bother to watch the network anymore.
What struck me as interesting new information from Dave was that O's hedge fund apparently involves not-inconsequential investment activity in vehicles which are quite far afield from the traditional, liquid US equities with which he and his fund are typically identified. And they would seem to be fairly important as a proportion of the fund's activities, if members of the fund's management are being convicted of violating federal laws in order to operate said investments.
Maybe CNBC should do themed mornings with guest hosts and guests who all share a trait, like having entered into a settlement with the SEC, or having employees convicted of violating federal laws in the course of managing fund investments.
Today, he was breaking the shocking news that globalization of competitions means that every worker is now subject to those forces.
What previously unthought insight will Friedman provide us with next?
Of course, I'm being sarcastic. I wrote this post in late June, spurred by Michael Spence's WSJ editorial, regarding how globalization has likely rendered a global lowest-ranking group of people unfit for competitive employment. Specifically, I contended,
"Every nation has some bottom quartile of adults in terms of intellect, skills and education. In fortunate times, the nation can employ those people in lower-value-added jobs like construction, basic materials extraction or simple fabrication of materials and goods.
But the days of America being competitive at producing commodities is long gone. And, with it, I believe, a brief, probably unreproducible period from 1945-1970, in which lesser-educated and -intelligent Americans could make middle-class wages and enjoy "30-and-out" careers with bountiful pensions and healthcare.
My late father's cohort, he being born in 1927, enjoyed this golden era. Those before did not, nor those who followed.
It seems to me that Americans have become used to two generations, my father's and the early baby-boomers, of economically-lucky circumstances and have cemented their financial life expectations at an unsustainable level.
Today, the only long term sustainably-competitive businesses and jobs are those which can continue to innovate, create value and move forward technologically and in terms of meeting consumer needs. Static professions and jobs are all seeing declining wages and benefits.
While I'm not happy to acknowledge this, I must admit that today's interlinked global economy can no longer inexpensively shield and support the lowest quartile, decile, or whatever economically-determined least-productive, -skilled and -employable portion of any nation's workforce.
Nobody's worried about the workforce at Google, Amazon or Facebook. But the marginal banker, auto assembler or generic factory worker is a real problem for all of us. If they can't be re-employed at anywhere near their historic standards of living, how does that affect and change the US?
Here's what the modern interlinked global economy has done. It's forced economically-mature, once-vibrant advanced economies to decide, with their antiquated mix of unions, defined benefit pensions and health care systems and raised expectations, how to deal with the costs of supporting the now-unemployable citizens who have been taught for one or two generations to expect lavish standards of living by historic comparison.
A well-educated, bright, risk-taking young person who is comfortable with a long, changing, working life will probably get a reasonable facsimile of "the American Dream." Others will not.
I think it's time we acknowledged that, in America, a high-school graduate with an average intellect and skill set has a near-zero chance of achieving "the American dream" of a good-paying, secure job leading to a comfortable, decent home, spouse and family, health care, pension, vacations and a pleasant retirement after age 70.
Thanks to the global ubiquity of better education, I would guess that even an average US college graduate can't count on that dream anymore, either.
America won't, as a nation, I believe, be able to protect and employ it's least-productive citizens without paying unaffordable social costs. The time for that has long since passed, and, absent another devastating, global-economy-wrecking war, natural disaster or crisis, I don't see it ever returning."
Friedman solemnly intoned that now every US worker must adopt two attitudes- that of an immigrant (being hungry) and of an artisan (provide unique skills).
I don't disagree with Friedman, but I've been thinking and behaving along those lines since 1983. That's when I left a dissolving AT&T. Looking up the management chain above me, I realized none of those self-satisfied, but mostly insecure executives were going to magically protect me or my job. When I went seeking other employment, and landed at Chase Manhattan, that view was reinforced, along with Friedman's second point.
Within just a year or so of arriving at the bank, it began its first rounds of hiring freezes, then layoffs. It was at that time that I began, with my late business partner, Debbie Smith, to create a body of intellectual property that was severable from my employer and transportable to other venues.
I view Friedman's current realizations as ones that I came to nearly 30 years ago. Rather than write about them, I, as tens of thousands of other entreprenurially-oriented Americans also have done, I behaved according to these understandings.
From his longstanding, cushy job at the liberal New York Times, Friedman seems so isolated from reality that his every thought seems, to him, worthy of a book informing us lesser beings of the truth he just discovered.
But I have another story of a fairly frequent CNBC guest which is interesting for another reason. It's in the vein of my posts about how the ethically-challenged network continues to use also ethically-challenged Steve Rattner as a guest-host and guest. Searching on "Rattner" on this blog will provide you with a list of posts, among which are some that detail his run-ins with the SEC and implicit admission of some pretty serious misbehaviors concerning 'pay to play' asset management.
On the theme of "it's a small world after all," I happened to make the acquaintance, on my recent hiking trip to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, of a criminal practice attorney whom I'll call Dave. Learning of my professional activities in equity investing, and one-time hedge fund partnership with a former Salomon Brothers partner of some repute, he asked if I knew a hedge fund manager whom I'll call Mr. O. O is a periodic guest on CNBC.
When I related my close 'degrees of separation,' but not personally-direct, connection to O through the former Salomon partner, Dave related the following story.
Dave has a client who was induced to participate in one of O's hedge fund investments. I should clarify that, when O appears on CNBC, he's always portrayed as a large-cap US equities investor. His background is one of being an equity strategist at a noted Wall Street firm some years ago. He usually speaks of specific US equities, effectively talking his book.
In this case, however, the investment was an energy project in either Russia or one of its former Republics. The investment went bad, and Dave's client's stake was entirely lost.
Dave then recounted some of the developments of the subsequent lawsuit over the investment. It seems that there were violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is the law that forbids US firms from paying bribes overseas in order to secure business. Dave told me that O escaped conviction but was pretty clearly involved. One of O's lieutenants, however, was not so lucky, was convicted, and did jail time.
Needless to say, O continues to appear on CNBC. This, and the use of people like Rattner, with whom Dave was also familiar, in the same manner as I am, was why, Dave explained, he doesn't even bother to watch the network anymore.
What struck me as interesting new information from Dave was that O's hedge fund apparently involves not-inconsequential investment activity in vehicles which are quite far afield from the traditional, liquid US equities with which he and his fund are typically identified. And they would seem to be fairly important as a proportion of the fund's activities, if members of the fund's management are being convicted of violating federal laws in order to operate said investments.
Maybe CNBC should do themed mornings with guest hosts and guests who all share a trait, like having entered into a settlement with the SEC, or having employees convicted of violating federal laws in the course of managing fund investments.
One More Parallel Between GE & Yahoo
After I wrote this post yesterday, I heard and read some more punditry regarding Yahoo. The salient points which I found insightful, as I don't follow Yahoo as if I were an analyst, were that the firm's breakup value is almost certainly far higher than its current value because of its passive investment in Alibaba.
Thus, another parallel between GE and Yahoo arose. Both essentially shouldn't exist as they are any longer. I've argued for years that GE should have been split up after Welch left. It appears that Bartz should have set about spinning out the Alibaba investment from the start, which would have increased shareholder value by putting that extra piece of equity paper into each shareholder's hands.
What was left could then have been either restructured to actually make some money, or sold for parts to another online-oriented firm.
One more parallel? Roy Bostwick, Yahoo's chairman, is a long-standing board member. When I heard how much he paid Terry Semel for presiding over the firm's stall- hundreds of millions of dollars- I realized that, like GE, Yahoo also has a lapdog board. Between Jerry Yang and Bostwick, the board's ineptitude is so enormous as to basically absolve Bartz of any failure. Bostwick is such a shadowy chairman that yesterday was the first I'd heard of him in ages. Yet, when his long, sorry involvement in the firm was catalogued by an analyst on Bloomberg, it became clear that Bostwick, far more than Bartz, owns the current Yahoo mess.
Reading the Wall Street Journal's piece this morning on Bartz's dismissal, I was amused to see that the board set as her goals to halt the viewership slide, raise revenues, and improve the price of the firm's equity. All reasonable over time, perhaps, but not on a quarterly basis. Further, if Bartz hadn't done it in two years, another 6 months was unlikely to matter.
No, what's becoming clear in Yahoo's case is that the real solution was and remains one that Bartz probably wasn't allowed to consider- sell or spinoff the valuable parts to unlock value, then deal with the detritus.
Thus, another parallel between GE and Yahoo arose. Both essentially shouldn't exist as they are any longer. I've argued for years that GE should have been split up after Welch left. It appears that Bartz should have set about spinning out the Alibaba investment from the start, which would have increased shareholder value by putting that extra piece of equity paper into each shareholder's hands.
What was left could then have been either restructured to actually make some money, or sold for parts to another online-oriented firm.
One more parallel? Roy Bostwick, Yahoo's chairman, is a long-standing board member. When I heard how much he paid Terry Semel for presiding over the firm's stall- hundreds of millions of dollars- I realized that, like GE, Yahoo also has a lapdog board. Between Jerry Yang and Bostwick, the board's ineptitude is so enormous as to basically absolve Bartz of any failure. Bostwick is such a shadowy chairman that yesterday was the first I'd heard of him in ages. Yet, when his long, sorry involvement in the firm was catalogued by an analyst on Bloomberg, it became clear that Bostwick, far more than Bartz, owns the current Yahoo mess.
Reading the Wall Street Journal's piece this morning on Bartz's dismissal, I was amused to see that the board set as her goals to halt the viewership slide, raise revenues, and improve the price of the firm's equity. All reasonable over time, perhaps, but not on a quarterly basis. Further, if Bartz hadn't done it in two years, another 6 months was unlikely to matter.
No, what's becoming clear in Yahoo's case is that the real solution was and remains one that Bartz probably wasn't allowed to consider- sell or spinoff the valuable parts to unlock value, then deal with the detritus.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Dick Bove's Sensible Comments on BofA's Executive Changes
I rarely find that longtime banking analyst Dick Bove has much of interest to say. His buy ratings on large banks are often so short-term as to be encouraging retail investors to time their trading to quarters.
But this morning, Bove had several useful comments regarding BofA CEO Brian Moynihan's so-called Tuesday afternoon massacre, in which Sally Crawchuck and Joe Price, both consumer senior executives, were fired. Two institutional banking executives were elevated in rank.
Bove sees the moves as reasonable reactions to Dodd-Frank, which has made consumer banking more difficult and less profitable. He further forecast 600 branch closures and 30,000 employees shed on the consumer side of BofA in the next two years, as the bank shifts resources from consumer to institutional businesses.
That makes sense.
But perhaps the shrewdest insight Bove made was one worthy of my old boss, Gerry Weiss, of Chase Manhattan Bank. By reshuffling senior executives, Moynihan, in Bove's opinion, bought himself several years time as CEO.
It's an old trick, yet, still works. A struggling CEO, rather than wait for the board to fire him, moves first and rearranges the deck chairs himself. This allows him to do three things: blame the fired execs for problems, claim to be (and look) forceful in making the changes, then, most importantly, use the new appointments to buy himself time while the newly-promoted managers and organization structures pan out.
It should not surprise that CEOs using these maneuvers are typically the ones whose companies are in the most trouble. Here, Bove and I part company. I believe Bove, with Tom Brown, predictably, both reacted with even more praise for the large, stumbling bank.
I believe it signals just how troubled BofA actually is. Moynihan's had plenty of time to do this, and Dodd-Frank is a year old. Either he's slow- take that any way you wish- or he realized, with this summer's appalling collapse of BofA's stock price, that if he didn't act soon, he'd be out.
But this morning, Bove had several useful comments regarding BofA CEO Brian Moynihan's so-called Tuesday afternoon massacre, in which Sally Crawchuck and Joe Price, both consumer senior executives, were fired. Two institutional banking executives were elevated in rank.
Bove sees the moves as reasonable reactions to Dodd-Frank, which has made consumer banking more difficult and less profitable. He further forecast 600 branch closures and 30,000 employees shed on the consumer side of BofA in the next two years, as the bank shifts resources from consumer to institutional businesses.
That makes sense.
But perhaps the shrewdest insight Bove made was one worthy of my old boss, Gerry Weiss, of Chase Manhattan Bank. By reshuffling senior executives, Moynihan, in Bove's opinion, bought himself several years time as CEO.
It's an old trick, yet, still works. A struggling CEO, rather than wait for the board to fire him, moves first and rearranges the deck chairs himself. This allows him to do three things: blame the fired execs for problems, claim to be (and look) forceful in making the changes, then, most importantly, use the new appointments to buy himself time while the newly-promoted managers and organization structures pan out.
It should not surprise that CEOs using these maneuvers are typically the ones whose companies are in the most trouble. Here, Bove and I part company. I believe Bove, with Tom Brown, predictably, both reacted with even more praise for the large, stumbling bank.
I believe it signals just how troubled BofA actually is. Moynihan's had plenty of time to do this, and Dodd-Frank is a year old. Either he's slow- take that any way you wish- or he realized, with this summer's appalling collapse of BofA's stock price, that if he didn't act soon, he'd be out.
Carol Bartz Fired....Why Not Jeff Immelt Too?
One of the big business news items out this morning was Carol Bartz' firing in a phone conversation late yesterday. Pundits on both CNBC and Bloomberg were all over the story this morning, harping on the flat performance of Yahoo's stock during her 21/2 year tenure which began in early 2009.
Meanwhile, just yesterday the Wall Street Journal did a Marketplace section lead feature on GE's hapless CEO Jeff Immelt. More details on that in a later post.
For now, let's look at a chart I think I can safely guarantee you will see nowhere else this morning. It's the past five years of performance for the S&P500 Index, Yahoo and GE.
Look closely at the chart from early 2009 onward. I last wrote about Bartz and Yahoo here, in early July, when the rumors of her exit began to heat up in earnest. I noted there that, under Bartz, at least Yahoo's price had stabilized- stalled- in contrast to its decline prior to Jerry Yang begging her to become the firm's CEO. The chart illustrating that is in the linked post.
Exact timing to the day is impossible to do from this chart, but, generally, from early 2009, when Bartz assumed the helm at Yahoo, to now, both GE and Yahoo have had about the same relative stock price performance- up slightly, but much less than the S&P500, which rose more than 30%.
So doesn't that make you wonder why Bartz is getting axed, while Immelt gets a softball puff piece in the Journal, complete with friendly reviews from a fund manager?
For the full five years, Immelt's down nearly 60%! And so is Yahoo.
Regarding Bartz, I stand by my comments of my early July post,
"Personally, I think Yahoo's sluggish performance is less about Bartz and more about the wreck she inherited. A wreck with nearly nothing left on which to build the fabled "turnaround."
As I've contended in many posts, after Jerry Yang screwed up the exit strategy of selling the firm to Microsoft, there was little left to do. For shareholders, just selling and walking away was the best option.
Whether Bartz ought to be replaced or not is probably moot. Yahoo's fortunes are unlikely to improve under any other CEO. At this point, though, there may not be any buyers for the firm at prices that the board and shareholders will tolerate, so badly has the firm been mismanaged since when Terry Semel ran it."
Anytime a marquee CEO is bought by a desperate, failing firm, that CEO really has no downside. If s/he succeeds, everyone applauds yet another lustrous chapter in her/his turnaround and leadership career. If s/he fails, many judge the situation inherited as too far gone for even that well-regarded CEO to salvage.
Remember, just 21/2 years ago, Yahoo wanted Bartz so badly that they gave her a contract that runs through 2013.
Not surprisingly, as my many posts about GE under Immelt contend, I believe he should have been gone over five years ago, and GE broken up into its large business units. It's an aged, diversified conglomerate with absolutely no reason for being in the modern financial era.
So if Carol Bartz deserves to be fired for her last 2 1/2 years of performance at Yahoo, so, too, does GE CEO Jeff Immelt.
For now, let's look at a chart I think I can safely guarantee you will see nowhere else this morning. It's the past five years of performance for the S&P500 Index, Yahoo and GE.
Look closely at the chart from early 2009 onward. I last wrote about Bartz and Yahoo here, in early July, when the rumors of her exit began to heat up in earnest. I noted there that, under Bartz, at least Yahoo's price had stabilized- stalled- in contrast to its decline prior to Jerry Yang begging her to become the firm's CEO. The chart illustrating that is in the linked post.
Exact timing to the day is impossible to do from this chart, but, generally, from early 2009, when Bartz assumed the helm at Yahoo, to now, both GE and Yahoo have had about the same relative stock price performance- up slightly, but much less than the S&P500, which rose more than 30%.
So doesn't that make you wonder why Bartz is getting axed, while Immelt gets a softball puff piece in the Journal, complete with friendly reviews from a fund manager?
For the full five years, Immelt's down nearly 60%! And so is Yahoo.
Regarding Bartz, I stand by my comments of my early July post,
"Personally, I think Yahoo's sluggish performance is less about Bartz and more about the wreck she inherited. A wreck with nearly nothing left on which to build the fabled "turnaround."
As I've contended in many posts, after Jerry Yang screwed up the exit strategy of selling the firm to Microsoft, there was little left to do. For shareholders, just selling and walking away was the best option.
Whether Bartz ought to be replaced or not is probably moot. Yahoo's fortunes are unlikely to improve under any other CEO. At this point, though, there may not be any buyers for the firm at prices that the board and shareholders will tolerate, so badly has the firm been mismanaged since when Terry Semel ran it."
Anytime a marquee CEO is bought by a desperate, failing firm, that CEO really has no downside. If s/he succeeds, everyone applauds yet another lustrous chapter in her/his turnaround and leadership career. If s/he fails, many judge the situation inherited as too far gone for even that well-regarded CEO to salvage.
Remember, just 21/2 years ago, Yahoo wanted Bartz so badly that they gave her a contract that runs through 2013.
Not surprisingly, as my many posts about GE under Immelt contend, I believe he should have been gone over five years ago, and GE broken up into its large business units. It's an aged, diversified conglomerate with absolutely no reason for being in the modern financial era.
So if Carol Bartz deserves to be fired for her last 2 1/2 years of performance at Yahoo, so, too, does GE CEO Jeff Immelt.
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
How Not To Create Jobs
I returned from some time away just before Labor Day to read and hear that the administration is now really focused on jobs!
Nice, but it demonstrates a predictable, lamentable failure to comprehend the nature of job creation.
Many politicians of both parties speak of jobs as if they are simply units of income-production which magically appear if and when government does things with taxes. Currently, the thinking is to spur job creation by lowering the after-tax cost of employees with various employment tax reductions.
As it happens, I met a genuine small businessman on last week while hiking in New Hampshire's White Mountains. While discussing the recent behavior of US equity markets, social welfare programs and the economy, I asked him if lowering the costs of hiring and paying workers would lead him to bring on more people.
It would not. He owns and operates a picture-framing business. Over the past few years, he's had to lay off most of his small staff. As is often the case, family members will assist him to meet peak demand. But he only has one remaining full time employee.
He confirmed that he could only hire another worker if demand for his services rose and remained steady. That might take 6 months to a year. But there's simply no way, in this economy, that a reduction in payroll taxes will have any effect on his hiring plans.
The current political thinking about reversing causality, and the confirmation of my view which I received from my fellow hiker, led me to recall the words of an old grad school professor.
Morris Gomberg, one-time labor leader and, many years ago, management professor at Penn's business school, was lampooning federal inflation-fighting efforts. I remember Gomberg laughing at the notion of government capping prices, thus expecting that by manipulating an output, inputs would react accordingly and fall, too.
He quickly offered a comparison that went something like this,
'It's like you want someone to eat less, so you shove what comes out of them back in. What you would get, instead, is a very foul and disgusting mess.'
So it is with this equally backward notion of attempting to game payroll taxes, which is a result of hiring, hoping that by temporarily lowering them, hiring will magically appear. It is a sad statement on the state of government that the best economists federal money can buy don't have a clue regarding what drives job creation. At best, their tax reductions could affect the prices at which additional labor would be hired, meaning a total after-tax cost could be maintained and more paid to workers, or the savings kept and workers paid no more. But the payroll tax gimmick won't spur raw demand for hiring.
It's the prospect, for a business owner, of steadily rising demand for his products or services which cause him to add employees. Not a totally unrelated cost element being temporarily lowered.
Of course, the federal government tried several times in the past three years to stoke demand via its stimulus programs. Nothing worked.
So now it's on to completely unrealistic fantasy schemes which display a gross lack of appreciation for how businesses actually function.
Nice, but it demonstrates a predictable, lamentable failure to comprehend the nature of job creation.
Many politicians of both parties speak of jobs as if they are simply units of income-production which magically appear if and when government does things with taxes. Currently, the thinking is to spur job creation by lowering the after-tax cost of employees with various employment tax reductions.
As it happens, I met a genuine small businessman on last week while hiking in New Hampshire's White Mountains. While discussing the recent behavior of US equity markets, social welfare programs and the economy, I asked him if lowering the costs of hiring and paying workers would lead him to bring on more people.
It would not. He owns and operates a picture-framing business. Over the past few years, he's had to lay off most of his small staff. As is often the case, family members will assist him to meet peak demand. But he only has one remaining full time employee.
He confirmed that he could only hire another worker if demand for his services rose and remained steady. That might take 6 months to a year. But there's simply no way, in this economy, that a reduction in payroll taxes will have any effect on his hiring plans.
The current political thinking about reversing causality, and the confirmation of my view which I received from my fellow hiker, led me to recall the words of an old grad school professor.
Morris Gomberg, one-time labor leader and, many years ago, management professor at Penn's business school, was lampooning federal inflation-fighting efforts. I remember Gomberg laughing at the notion of government capping prices, thus expecting that by manipulating an output, inputs would react accordingly and fall, too.
He quickly offered a comparison that went something like this,
'It's like you want someone to eat less, so you shove what comes out of them back in. What you would get, instead, is a very foul and disgusting mess.'
So it is with this equally backward notion of attempting to game payroll taxes, which is a result of hiring, hoping that by temporarily lowering them, hiring will magically appear. It is a sad statement on the state of government that the best economists federal money can buy don't have a clue regarding what drives job creation. At best, their tax reductions could affect the prices at which additional labor would be hired, meaning a total after-tax cost could be maintained and more paid to workers, or the savings kept and workers paid no more. But the payroll tax gimmick won't spur raw demand for hiring.
It's the prospect, for a business owner, of steadily rising demand for his products or services which cause him to add employees. Not a totally unrelated cost element being temporarily lowered.
Of course, the federal government tried several times in the past three years to stoke demand via its stimulus programs. Nothing worked.
So now it's on to completely unrealistic fantasy schemes which display a gross lack of appreciation for how businesses actually function.
Equities & Friday's Jobs Numbers
I was away for most of last week, having set two posts to auto-publish. The post for 31 August failed, per Blogger's frequent problems with scheduled posts, so I manually published it this morning.
When I began to clear my inbox over the weekend, I noted the precipitous fall in the S&P500 on Friday after fairly uneventful days from Tuesday through Thursday. Guessing I'd read of some significant event or news for that day, I was not surprised in the least to learn of the jobs report showing no net employment increase for August. The net result for the S&P for last week was to end essentially flat.
Happily, when I checked the values of the equity portfolios selected by my proprietary quantitative process, I saw that they continue to average more than 10 percentage points of total return above the S&P returns for the respective matching timeframes. For 2011, at Friday's close, the index had lost 6.65%. As of late morning today, it's lost more than an additional 2%.
The pundits and co-anchors on CNBC and Bloomberg all have 'this might be a rerun of 2008' looks on their faces and distress in the tones of their voices. Finally, after many months of administration attempts to make mountains out of pathetically weak economic data, said data is looking decidedly worse, and these financial news network on-air staff can't hide it anymore.
Between continued investor nervousness about European debt problems, and their hyper-sensitivity to bad US economic data, it probably won't take much non-good news during September to drive equity markets down even further.
When I began to clear my inbox over the weekend, I noted the precipitous fall in the S&P500 on Friday after fairly uneventful days from Tuesday through Thursday. Guessing I'd read of some significant event or news for that day, I was not surprised in the least to learn of the jobs report showing no net employment increase for August. The net result for the S&P for last week was to end essentially flat.
Happily, when I checked the values of the equity portfolios selected by my proprietary quantitative process, I saw that they continue to average more than 10 percentage points of total return above the S&P returns for the respective matching timeframes. For 2011, at Friday's close, the index had lost 6.65%. As of late morning today, it's lost more than an additional 2%.
The pundits and co-anchors on CNBC and Bloomberg all have 'this might be a rerun of 2008' looks on their faces and distress in the tones of their voices. Finally, after many months of administration attempts to make mountains out of pathetically weak economic data, said data is looking decidedly worse, and these financial news network on-air staff can't hide it anymore.
Between continued investor nervousness about European debt problems, and their hyper-sensitivity to bad US economic data, it probably won't take much non-good news during September to drive equity markets down even further.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
A Reminder of Why Sell-Side Analysts Add So Little Value
On Monday I caught the second half of Tom Keene's noontime Bloomberg program. Within the space of just 20 minutes, I had two reminders of why sell side analysis provides so little value to investors.
First, I caught Citigroup's Deane Dray's monologue on why he prefers GE instead of UT.My 2008 post on the two conglomerates couldn't be more different. Dray essentially cast doubt on UT's decades of consistent performance, while essentially arguing for a timing play on GE.
The price chart on the left illustrates the point of my 2008 piece, even three years later. Dray, however, thinks UT's decade of impressive share price growth, which has outstripped both the S&P500 Index and Immelt's hapless GE, is just a souffle waiting to deflate. He apparently believes GE will experience a magical mean-reversion, despite the lack of adult leadership at the top.
Along with that, Dray talked about 3M, mixing in discussions of economic expansion phases and relative merits of the various firms. That took me aback, since I've seen work suggesting that the concept of simplistic, always-sequential and reliable economic phase occurrence is largely a myth. Not to mention, as I listened to Dray, that one would need to be correctly forecasting the phases flawlessly for his approach to work- if it does.
Honestly, that sort of 'analysis' seems to me to descend to the levels of voodoo.
Next up was Paul Miller of FBR. Miller spent his time questioning BofA's purchase of Countrywide. Well, I was already there the day after the acquisition. Does that make me a standout bank equity analyst or seer? No, I think it just makes me a sensible business person with some banking experience who saw one ailing firm buying a near-dead one and drew the obvious conclusion that the deal wasn't going to rehabilitate the former.
Moreover, Miller missed the essence of what BofA really is. At its core is, of course, the old BofA retail California franchise. But to that has been glued North Carolina National Bank's, a/k/a Hugh McColl's Nationsbank's dispersed bank acquisitions in the Southeastern US, plus, later, by McColl's lieutenant, Ken Lewis, the dying Countrywide and staggering Merrill Lynch. Which is to say, an unfocused mess of a financial utility which paid too much for its last two mistakes, which were pursued in the same spirit of the banking acquisitions which bulked up the original NCNB. In fact, BofA itself was stumbling when Nationsbank captured it in 1998.
The second chart compares the S&P500 with BofA's share price from 1985. It's not a pretty picture. Lewis' tenure from 2001-2009, was marked by the bank essentially treading water relative to the index. The latter fell after the technology bubble burst in 2000, against which BofA appeared to rise. But a decade later, the bank is back where it was 26 years earlier, while the index only fell slightly.
You needn't have been a genius, or, I guess, Paul Miller to have had doubts about BofA for at least the past three years. Probably a lot more than that.
Why Tom Keene happened to have these two analysts as guests on Monday, I don't know. But it troubles me a bit that he seemed so enamored with both of them, when their comments were so unremarkable, when not specious.
The price chart on the left illustrates the point of my 2008 piece, even three years later. Dray, however, thinks UT's decade of impressive share price growth, which has outstripped both the S&P500 Index and Immelt's hapless GE, is just a souffle waiting to deflate. He apparently believes GE will experience a magical mean-reversion, despite the lack of adult leadership at the top.
Along with that, Dray talked about 3M, mixing in discussions of economic expansion phases and relative merits of the various firms. That took me aback, since I've seen work suggesting that the concept of simplistic, always-sequential and reliable economic phase occurrence is largely a myth. Not to mention, as I listened to Dray, that one would need to be correctly forecasting the phases flawlessly for his approach to work- if it does.
Honestly, that sort of 'analysis' seems to me to descend to the levels of voodoo.
Next up was Paul Miller of FBR. Miller spent his time questioning BofA's purchase of Countrywide. Well, I was already there the day after the acquisition. Does that make me a standout bank equity analyst or seer? No, I think it just makes me a sensible business person with some banking experience who saw one ailing firm buying a near-dead one and drew the obvious conclusion that the deal wasn't going to rehabilitate the former.
The second chart compares the S&P500 with BofA's share price from 1985. It's not a pretty picture. Lewis' tenure from 2001-2009, was marked by the bank essentially treading water relative to the index. The latter fell after the technology bubble burst in 2000, against which BofA appeared to rise. But a decade later, the bank is back where it was 26 years earlier, while the index only fell slightly.
You needn't have been a genius, or, I guess, Paul Miller to have had doubts about BofA for at least the past three years. Probably a lot more than that.
Why Tom Keene happened to have these two analysts as guests on Monday, I don't know. But it troubles me a bit that he seemed so enamored with both of them, when their comments were so unremarkable, when not specious.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Alan Krueger's Appointment as Administration's Chief Economist
I was somewhat stunned to learn that Alan Krueger's appointment as the administration's chief economic advisor makes him the third in.....three years.
Good God! Can the US be so badly off that we literally have changed chief economists an average of once each year in this administration?
I heard various pundits praising Krueger. Douglas Holz-Eakins described him as well-qualified. Bloomberg's Tom Keene said that Krueger 'knows more about the American wage' than anyone else.
Great, Tom. Too bad what our nation needs is capital investment in business which will draw with it more employment. Jobs don't just grow by themselves.
While I'm on the subject, I would observe that the recent anemic US quarterly GDP growth rates hardly constitute the sort of activity which one associates with an expanding effect of Samuelson's accelerator-multiplier effect. A table in a weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal editorial by Alan Reynolds showed private sector quarterly GDP growth to have been worse than the topline numbers, including two recent negative quarters.
I don't care how much Krueger knows about wages, nor how vociferous he is about employment tax credits. Without sufficiently positive and sustained US GDP growth, no amount of temporary tax breaks are going to bring about a sustained private sector recovery.
However, according to recent surveys of business owners, the results of which I've seen and heard on CNBC and/or Bloomberg, an investment climate of less uncertainty regarding government intrusion, less regulation, and lower tax rates on capital gains and profits would all have a more positive effect than minor fiddling with payroll taxes.
Maybe we should find an economist who believes those things and make her/him the nation's new chief economist for this year.
Good God! Can the US be so badly off that we literally have changed chief economists an average of once each year in this administration?
I heard various pundits praising Krueger. Douglas Holz-Eakins described him as well-qualified. Bloomberg's Tom Keene said that Krueger 'knows more about the American wage' than anyone else.
Great, Tom. Too bad what our nation needs is capital investment in business which will draw with it more employment. Jobs don't just grow by themselves.
While I'm on the subject, I would observe that the recent anemic US quarterly GDP growth rates hardly constitute the sort of activity which one associates with an expanding effect of Samuelson's accelerator-multiplier effect. A table in a weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal editorial by Alan Reynolds showed private sector quarterly GDP growth to have been worse than the topline numbers, including two recent negative quarters.
I don't care how much Krueger knows about wages, nor how vociferous he is about employment tax credits. Without sufficiently positive and sustained US GDP growth, no amount of temporary tax breaks are going to bring about a sustained private sector recovery.
However, according to recent surveys of business owners, the results of which I've seen and heard on CNBC and/or Bloomberg, an investment climate of less uncertainty regarding government intrusion, less regulation, and lower tax rates on capital gains and profits would all have a more positive effect than minor fiddling with payroll taxes.
Maybe we should find an economist who believes those things and make her/him the nation's new chief economist for this year.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Economic Denial from the OECD
Last Wednesday's Wall Street Journal contained an editorial by Jose Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the OECD. It's a study in either institutional denial or simply complete ignorance of economic reality.
Gurria wrote of the recent pronouncements by Sarkozy and Merkel,
"The new Franco-German proposal to strengthen euro-area governance and to speak with one voice is welcome. That clearly has been lacking. But even more important is the call from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that the commitment to balanced budgets over the medium term should become legally binding in euro-area countries. Sounder national regulations and institutions coupled with stronger European Union rules and discipline will reduce the need to use the European Financial Stability Fund, which was established last year to issue guaranteed debt to member countries that can't borrow in the markets."
Can you seriously imagine "legally binding" balanced budgets "in the euro-area countries?" The US is one nation and we can't even manage it. The harsh truth that the Euro has benefited southern European economies, to the detriment of the northern ones, is apparently too bitter a pill for Gurria to swallow.
Then Gurria moves to the ECB. Here, he openly calls for the bank to prop up bad sovereign debt, which will insure that private credit risks gone bad become taxpayer obligations.
"The European Central Bank should for the time being continue to play a key role in crisis containment, not least as a buyer of last resort of sovereign debt. But we need to consider greater involvement by private-sector creditors to tackle the debt problems of some European nations, so that the resources of taxpayers support the growth prospects of the countries in trouble rather than being used to pay their private creditors."
Just guessing here, but I would think that means German and perhaps French taxpayers, those being the largest European economies. Curiously, Gurria seems to be hypocritical within a single paragraph. First he argues for the ECB to rescue troubled Euro banks, then writes that those banks need to clean up their own messes. Which do you suppose he actually means?
The secretary-general then turns to general monetary and fiscal policy, writing,
"Given the weaker outlook, central banks should postpone or even reverse their previous plans for tightening. The U.S. Federal Reserve's signal that it expects rates to stay exceptionally low for another two years is very forceful.
Given that state coffers are empty in most cases, governments need to go structural. Reforms to product and labor markets should be a primary focus of the long-term strategy to restore sustained growth. This will create jobs and help tackle debt."
Pretty funny, eh? Near-zero rates, which distort private investment decisions and suppress investment generally, are lauded. Meanwhile, governments will magically "reform...product and labor markets" because that will "restore sustained growth....(and) create jobs."
I know that in America, low rates have completely screwed up asset pricing since 2008. Meanwhile, lots of government intervention, such as abrogating bankruptcy laws and favoring unions in the GM and Chrysler bailouts, plus obstructing business with lots of new regulations, has slowed business activity and hiring to a near-halt.
But my favorite head-in-the-sand passage by Gurria is this one,
"Governments should also go social, focusing on policies to help those made most vulnerable by the crisis. The urgency of this is evident in the streets of a growing number of cities in countries at different levels of development. Unemployment benefits or targeted job-creating measures should be enhanced, both to reduce hardship and to stimulate demand. Help for overindebted households and those with "underwater" mortgages also needs to be more effective. Giving people hope and a sense of common purpose is not only crucial for their involvement but also for creating the necessary consensus to support the reforms."
Already-lush unemployment benefits are to be further sweetened. Again, we see the wrong-headed notion that paying more for people not to work is really a 'demand stimulus'.
Let's hope Gurria doesn't actually hold an economics degree.
Then he addresses housing by declaring that those who unwisely bought homes in hopes of ever-rising prices, and now cannot afford those homes, should not be expected to comply with standing legal processes of loss, foreclosure and resale, at lower prices, to families who can actually afford the houses. Instead, more financial aid must be given so those who took unwise risks may continue to enjoy the benefits of those risks without any of the pain of their mistakes.
Nevermind the support of those who behaved prudently and now could afford those homes as their foreclosure provides housing markets with their much-needed bottoms.
Well, with economic thinking like this, is it any wonder nobody looks to the OECD to help solve any serious global economic problems?
Gurria wrote of the recent pronouncements by Sarkozy and Merkel,
"The new Franco-German proposal to strengthen euro-area governance and to speak with one voice is welcome. That clearly has been lacking. But even more important is the call from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that the commitment to balanced budgets over the medium term should become legally binding in euro-area countries. Sounder national regulations and institutions coupled with stronger European Union rules and discipline will reduce the need to use the European Financial Stability Fund, which was established last year to issue guaranteed debt to member countries that can't borrow in the markets."
Can you seriously imagine "legally binding" balanced budgets "in the euro-area countries?" The US is one nation and we can't even manage it. The harsh truth that the Euro has benefited southern European economies, to the detriment of the northern ones, is apparently too bitter a pill for Gurria to swallow.
Then Gurria moves to the ECB. Here, he openly calls for the bank to prop up bad sovereign debt, which will insure that private credit risks gone bad become taxpayer obligations.
"The European Central Bank should for the time being continue to play a key role in crisis containment, not least as a buyer of last resort of sovereign debt. But we need to consider greater involvement by private-sector creditors to tackle the debt problems of some European nations, so that the resources of taxpayers support the growth prospects of the countries in trouble rather than being used to pay their private creditors."
Just guessing here, but I would think that means German and perhaps French taxpayers, those being the largest European economies. Curiously, Gurria seems to be hypocritical within a single paragraph. First he argues for the ECB to rescue troubled Euro banks, then writes that those banks need to clean up their own messes. Which do you suppose he actually means?
The secretary-general then turns to general monetary and fiscal policy, writing,
"Given the weaker outlook, central banks should postpone or even reverse their previous plans for tightening. The U.S. Federal Reserve's signal that it expects rates to stay exceptionally low for another two years is very forceful.
Given that state coffers are empty in most cases, governments need to go structural. Reforms to product and labor markets should be a primary focus of the long-term strategy to restore sustained growth. This will create jobs and help tackle debt."
Pretty funny, eh? Near-zero rates, which distort private investment decisions and suppress investment generally, are lauded. Meanwhile, governments will magically "reform...product and labor markets" because that will "restore sustained growth....(and) create jobs."
I know that in America, low rates have completely screwed up asset pricing since 2008. Meanwhile, lots of government intervention, such as abrogating bankruptcy laws and favoring unions in the GM and Chrysler bailouts, plus obstructing business with lots of new regulations, has slowed business activity and hiring to a near-halt.
But my favorite head-in-the-sand passage by Gurria is this one,
"Governments should also go social, focusing on policies to help those made most vulnerable by the crisis. The urgency of this is evident in the streets of a growing number of cities in countries at different levels of development. Unemployment benefits or targeted job-creating measures should be enhanced, both to reduce hardship and to stimulate demand. Help for overindebted households and those with "underwater" mortgages also needs to be more effective. Giving people hope and a sense of common purpose is not only crucial for their involvement but also for creating the necessary consensus to support the reforms."
Already-lush unemployment benefits are to be further sweetened. Again, we see the wrong-headed notion that paying more for people not to work is really a 'demand stimulus'.
Let's hope Gurria doesn't actually hold an economics degree.
Then he addresses housing by declaring that those who unwisely bought homes in hopes of ever-rising prices, and now cannot afford those homes, should not be expected to comply with standing legal processes of loss, foreclosure and resale, at lower prices, to families who can actually afford the houses. Instead, more financial aid must be given so those who took unwise risks may continue to enjoy the benefits of those risks without any of the pain of their mistakes.
Nevermind the support of those who behaved prudently and now could afford those homes as their foreclosure provides housing markets with their much-needed bottoms.
Well, with economic thinking like this, is it any wonder nobody looks to the OECD to help solve any serious global economic problems?
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