Financial Rot

Robert Samuelson offers us an interesting op-ed piece in the Washington Post about the current financial crisis.

Highlights for your consideration...

What distinguishes this crisis -- which brought down Bear Sterns over the weekend -- is that it involves the entire financial system, not just depository institutions, and it's more mystifying than any of its predecessors.

Recent estimates of subprime losses range from $285 billion to $400 billion. They might go higher. Ignorance breeds caution and fear.

The stunning fall of Bear Stearns reflects these realities. It was not a traditional commercial bank that took deposits from the public but America's fifth-largest investment bank, which funded most of its operations with borrowed money ("leverage"). On average, the ratio of borrowed money to underlying capital for investment banks and hedge funds is about 32 to 1, according to a recent study. Many of these loans -- commercial paper, "repurchase agreements," bank credits -- are backed by the securities owned by the borrowing financial institutions.

What this means is that if lenders became worried about the worth of these securities, they might ask for more collateral or pull their loans. In effect, that's what happened to Bear Stearns. Deprived of its credit lifeblood, Bear Stearns either had to collapse or be purchased by someone with credit. J.P. Morgan Chase bought Bear for almost nothing: $236 million for a firm valued at $20 billion in January 2007.

Financial institutions (banks, investment banks, hedge funds and others) are interconnected through networks of buying, selling, borrowing and lending. These require confidence that commitments made will be commitments honored. If confidence collapses, the processes of extending credit for the economy and of trading -- for stocks, bonds, foreign exchange -- may also collapse.

But in trying to calm financial markets, the Fed has spewed out enormous amounts of money and credit that have depressed the dollar's exchange rate and could aggravate inflation. The effort to fix one problem may lead to others.