What author Frank Portnoy is about to describe is necessarily speculative, but it is rooted in the experience of the previous crash and in what we know about current bank holdings. The purpose of laying out this worst-case scenario isn’t to say that it will necessarily come to pass. The purpose is to show that it could. That alone should scare us all—and inform the way we think about the next year and beyond.
This article appears in the July/August 2020 print edition with the headline “The Worst Worst Case.”
"After months of living with the coronavirus pandemic, American citizens are well aware of the toll it has taken on the economy: broken supply chains, record unemployment, failing small businesses. All of these factors are serious and could mire the United States in a deep, prolonged recession. But there’s another threat to the economy, too. It lurks on the balance sheets of the big banks, and it could be cataclysmic. Imagine if, in addition to all the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, you woke up one morning to find that the financial sector had collapsed. . .
>>> Thus far, I’ve focused on CLOs because they are the most troubling assets held by the banks. But they are also emblematic of other complex and artificial products that banks have stashed on—and off—their balance sheets. Later this year, banks may very well report quarterly losses that are much worse than anticipated. The details will include a dizzying array of transactions that will recall not only the housing crisis, but the Enron scandal of the early 2000s. Remember all those subsidiaries Enron created (many of them infamously named after Star Wars characters) to keep risky bets off the energy firm’s financial statements? The big banks use similar structures, called “variable interest entities”—companies established largely to hold off-the-books positions. Wells Fargo has more than $1 trillion of VIE assets, about which we currently know very little, because reporting requirements are opaque. But one popular investment held in VIEs is securities backed by commercial mortgages, such as loans to shopping malls and office parks—two categories of borrowers experiencing severe strain as a result of the pandemic.
The early losses from CLOs will not on their own erase the capital reserves required by Dodd-Frank. And some of the most irresponsible gambles from the last crisis—the speculative derivatives and credit-default swaps you may remember reading about in 2008—are less common today, experts told me. But the losses from CLOs, combined with losses from other troubled assets like those commercial-mortgage-backed securities, will lead to serious deficiencies in capital. Meanwhile, the same economic forces buffeting CLOs will hit other parts of the banks’ balance sheets hard; as the recession drags on, their traditional sources of revenue will also dry up. For some, theMeanwhile, loan defaults are already happening. There were more in April than ever before. Several experts told me they expect more record-breaking months this summer. It will only get worse from there. erosion of capital could approach the levels Lehman Brothers and Citigroup suffered in 2008. Banks with insufficient cash reserves will be forced to sell assets into a dour market, and the proceeds will be dismal. The prices of leveraged loans, and by extension CLOs, will spiral downward. . .
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Image source: Based on data from Fitch Ratings. The fourth CLO depicts an aggregate leveraged-loan default rate of 78 percent.
You can perhaps guess much of the rest: At some point, rumors will circulate that one major bank is near collapse. Overnight lending, which keeps the American economy running, will seize up. The Federal Reserve will try to arrange a bank bailout. All of that happened last time, too.
The Looming Bank Collapse
The U.S. financial system could be on the cusp of calamity. This time, we might not be able to save it.
As droves of Valley students start the 2020-21 school year this fall among the global pandemic of 2020, Arizona school districts move forward independently with no two plans alike.
“Successfully suing a school would be very difficult as you would somehow have to prove that this was the only place the child could have caught the virus and that the school acted negligently by failing to follow CDC and state safety guidelines,” Rose Law Group Founder Jordan Rose said, to a hypothetical situation where the virus spread quickly through one particular school. . .“One thing seems clear --- all schools are trying to implement measures to reduce the risk of the spread of the virus. Most Arizona schools are allowing parents to chose having their child attend online if they feel uncomfortable with sending them to school. . . Pandemic Is Fraying Even Furthe
Gorging The Media Machine For Distraction: Make a PanicWith the economy in a catastrophic contraction 100 days before the November election, a desperate Donald Trump is doing anything (and every thing) to distort the everyday news cycle and feeding-frenzy away from a national collapse. At the same time four Tech Titans were remotely testifying before a Congressional anti-trust committee hearing, Trump decided to go after a Chinese-owned tech giant for doing the same things they do - collecting and harvesting private data. __________________________________________________________ UPDATE: From Reuters President Donald Trump only agreed to allow Microsoft to negotiate the acquisition of popular short-video app TikTok if it could secure a deal in 45 days, sources told Reuters
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•Aug 3, 2020
Trump gives Microsoft 45 days for TikTok deal
_________________________________________________________ A story was planted and built up around the idea that TikTok was some sort of national security threat, despite very little evidence to support this. A separate narrative was simply that Trump was annoyed that TikTok kids made Trump look bad in his Tulsa rally when they booked tickets to attend and didn't show up.
Here's most of those stories of-the-day in-a-Nutshell taken from https://www.techdirt.com - that probably won't be gone any time soon: From the Say What Now Dept. Overhype Update: The TikTok ClusterFuck: Trump To Order A Block, Microsoft Wants To Buy, and The Competition is Still There Mike Masnick - 07.31.2020 @ 1:41 PM
Are you better off now than 4 years ago? Are you enjoying the so-called "affordable city" that Hizzoner Mayor John Giles brags about all the time? The AZ National Guard has been deployed to help feed the hungry. No fear. . . District 1 Mesa City Council member Mark Freeman said months ago he was shocked to see hundreds of cars waiting in lines for hours to get emergency food-boxes at the Mesa Convention Center - if you see something, say something! OK. There's an urgent emergency from the COVID-19 Pandemic now that only worsens more than 40 years of distress and neglect. It's not "a pretty picture" and far from the image of the City of fast-growing Mesa that risky speculator-politicians want you to believe in. There may now be another "Crane-in-the-Sky" soaring above City Hall but on the ground those less fortunate are forced to need help and wait in long lines for a basic need - food.
In The News:
Guard steps in to assist Mesa food bank | News ...
Mar 31, 2020 - Arizona National Guard members were at United Food Bank in Mesa Thursday helping to prepare food boxes for needy people. Mike Phillips/ ...
Valley food banks creating unique systems to meet record ...
www.abc15.com › rebound › coronavirus-money-help
www.abc15.com › rebound › coronavirus-money-help
Apr 28, 2020 - United Food Bank has been working with Mesa police and the Arizona National Guard to run the operation. "We are loading things without ever ...
