While Hank Paulson attempts to try to prop up the mortgage market, the stress that’s spread into other credit markets continues to wreak havoc. Strategists at various fixed-income broker/dealers sweated it out today,
dealing with multiple failures of what are known as “auction rate securities,” which are short-term securities used often as funding vehicles for issuers.Essentially, these are long-term municipal bonds that are issued with a structure that stipulates that the rates constantly adjust, but in “quality and backing, it’s just like any other municipal bond,” says one strategist at a broker/dealer in these securities, who asked not to be named.
Instead of having the same interest rate for 30 years, these rates constantly reset, after seven or 28 days or some other interval — to help the issuer (such as, say, New York City) manage their debt structure and interest-rate exposure.
With all that’s going on regarding the municipal bond insurers,
potential buyers are backing away from these auction-rate security auctions, and when there are more sellers than buyers, the auction has “failed,” and those who had these securities, instead of having cash to invest somewhere else, now have assets that they can’t sell, and reduced liquidity. Previously, these securities had been “held as a money-market alternative,” the strategist says, (where have we heard that before) but analysts at Janney Montgomery warned this week that “we believe that auction rate securities should not be considered a substitute for money market funds, but rather as a long-term floating rate investment with limited credit risk and significant liquidity risk.” And how.
Bennet Sedacca, head of Atlantic Advisors, is aware of several dozen such auctions failing today. “This is people’s cash,” he says. “The problem is, suddenly your 30-day bond becomes a 30-year bond and that scares the heck out of them, so they try to sell something else and that fails, and that gets them more scared…it’s one long daisy chain.”
Perhaps Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson should be given some credit for his honesty, something sorely lacking in government in these times,In response to a question today regarding Project Mayhem, er, Project Lifeline, Paulson said that “in terms of subprime and the recess, the worst isn’t over; the worst is just beginning.” Ouch. He added that “we all know that,” and perhaps that’s the most discomfiting aspect of the subprime- and credit-market meltdown, that it isn’t over. The contagion has spread through the leveraged loan market, municipal bonds, and other various esoteric credit markets that remain nonetheless important to the steady workings of the U.S. financial system, and does not show signs of abating. Regardless of how thrilled the stock market is about Warren Buffett graciously offering to backstop one of the few areas credit investors aren’t bugged out about, there’s severe risk in the markets right now. With homeowners dealing with negative equity as housing prices continue to lose value, some don’t see this project as much of a lifeline to anyone but the banks. “Here’s the deal. Banks are so capital impaired they cannot afford to have you walk away,” writes Mike Shedlock of Sitka Capital, on his blog. “And the more desperate they are to keep you in your debt trap (the more underwater you are), the more you should be inclined to walk.”
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