Read the second paragraph.
I wasn’t as clear as I would have liked to have been.
Keeping the BS debacle from damaging the rest of the economy was appropriate, as it protects the country.
Not taking it out on the hides of the ones who caused the problem in the first place? Bad.
Letting them walk off with bazillions in golden parachute money? Very, very bad.
Not only will ‘Those who are caused the problems certainly do it again’, their ability to get away with it will inspire others to try.
Market Observations
April 2008
As we told you then using GM as an example, the credit default vehicles written against real world outstanding company bonds is probably near three times the volume of actual bonds outstanding. Like many derivatives vehicles, these derivatives products have become an end in and of themselves as opposed to the purity of use of these vehicles to simply insure or hedge against adverse outcomes protecting larger financial asset positions actually held. Simple translation? The credit default swaps world has taken on a life of its own.Alright, fine, so how does the credit default swap market relate to equity market sector volatility of the moment? It is absolutely clear that the "acquisition" of Bear avoided triggering Bear Stearns related credit default swaps and swaps against CDO, SIV, etc. positions they may have held (assuming a potential Bear BK would have forced a mark to market event), which would indeed have happened had Bear formally entered bankruptcy and their bonds/debt became potentially very meaningfully impaired. There is simply no question whatsoever in our minds that this was the key reason a theoretical acquisition of Bear HAD to happen. Remember the details. JPM took out Bear for a couple of hundred million at the headline $2 per share initial offer level, but concurrently announced it was going to need to charge off about $6 billion as a result of the so-called acquisition. Even at the ultimate $10 level (which is basically shut up money offered to help prevent litigation, which might also have led to asset price discovery) JPM was "telling" us Bear was worth far less than zero by the charge-off number alone. Of course the truth simply had to be that if Bear had filed bankruptcy and the credit default swaps written against their bonds/debt/asset positions had been triggered, the credit default swap liabilities in the market would have been well north of a $6 billion hit to whomever had written those Bear specific CDS contracts. Well north. And that simply could not have been allowed to happen. By the way, just as an item of curiosity, JP Morgan has exposure to over 55% of the total banking system credit default swaps outstanding. Are we connecting the dots clearly enough for you?