Next Stop...Zero?

In recent weeks, the "smart money" has been betting that it's time to buy financials. Many seem to think that the Bear Stearns bailout marked some sort of "capitulation" low.

However, as has been the case for months now, it seems that they cannot see the forest for the trees. A humongous credit bubble is bursting and there is still plenty of pain to go around.

In fact, if the following report, "Fed Eyes Nordic-Style Nationalisation of US Banks," from the Daily Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard turns out to be true, the low we saw in the financials two weeks ago may prove to have been a high point for the sector.

The US Federal Reserve is examining the Nordic bank nationalisations of the 1990s as a possible interim solution to the US financial crisis.

The Fed has been criticised for its rescue of Bear Stearns, which critics say has degenerated into a taxpayer gift to rich bankers.

A senior official at one of the Scandinavian central banks told The Daily Telegraph that Fed strategists had stepped up contacts to learn how Norway, Sweden and Finland managed their traumatic crisis from 1991 to 1993, which brought the region's economy to its knees.

It is understood that Fed vice-chairman Don Kohn remains very concerned by the depth of the US crisis and is eyeing the Nordic approach for contingency options.

Scandinavia's bank rescue proved successful and is now a model for central bankers, unlike Japan's drawn-out response, where ailing banks were propped up in a half-public limbo for years.

While the responses varied in each Nordic country, there a was major effort to avoid the sort of "moral hazard" that has bedevilled efforts by the Fed and the Bank of England in trying to stabilise their banking systems.

Norway ensured that shareholders of insolvent lenders received nothing and the senior management was entirely purged. Two of the country's top four banks - Christiania Bank and Fokus - were seized by force majeure.

"We were determined not to get caught in the game we've seen with Bear Stearns where shareholders make money out of the rescue," said one Norwegian adviser.

"The law was amended so that we could take 100pc control of any bank where its equity had fallen below zero. Shareholders were left with nothing. It was very controversial," he said.

Stefan Ingves, governor of Sweden's Riksbank, said his country passed an act so it could seize banks where the capital adequacy ratio had fallen below 2pc. Efforts were also made to protect against "blackmail" by shareholders.

Mr Ingves said there were parallels with the US crisis, citing the use of off-balance sheet vehicles to speculate on property. All the Nordic banks were nursed back to health and refloated or merged.

The tough policies contrast with the Fed's bail-out of Bear Stearns, where shareholders forced JP Morgan to increase its Fed-led rescue offer from $2 to $10 a share. Christopher Wood, chief strategist at brokers CLSA, says the Fed's piecemeal approach has led to "appalling moral hazard".

"Shareholders have been able to lobby for a higher share price only because the Fed took over the credit risk on $30bn of the investment bank's dubious paper. The whole affair also amounts to a colossal subsidy for JP Morgan," he said.

Comments

[njdoc]

The current administration has neither the integrity nor the resolve to confront the oligarchs of Wall Street. The government is too inundated with former financiers and the finance sector is too inundated with politicians. This incestuous relationship will make this type of solution a low probability event.

[Dave Wyant]

Contest entry:
The lack of oversight and regulation in the otc derivative and hedge fund arenas allowed financial firms to play loose not only creating money but manipulating the very circumstances that would cause the whole scheme to grow and prosper. Then the tide turned and the unwinding of all that was created has begun.