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January 23, 2009
Long term rates rose this week, mortgages up to 5.25% even with a 1% origination fee. Refinance demand, fear of massive sales of Treasury bonds ahead, and a new banking freeze combined to do the damage.
Refinance demand is big, but not comparable to 2003. Yes, the industry is 75% smaller, but this time only the very best applicants have access to good rates. Treasury cash-raising may be a problem, but spreads to mortgages are still very wide, near the 2008 record 3.00%, and the Fed will begin buy Treasurys shortly.
I think the central cause of the mortgage rate rise is the new deterioration among banks. Rates rose simultaneous with news late last week that Citi and BofA are toast. By late fall, banks looked as frozen as frozen can be, but never underestimate the ability of frightened bankers to find new ways not to lend money.
Sometime between now and Valentine’s Day, in a Treasury conference room Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Sheila Bair (FDIC), Christina Romer (Council of Economic Advisors), Peter Orslag (OMB), Perfesser Bernanke, and Paul Volcker will decide how -- not if -- to “go nuclear.”
For the youth set, in the Cold War going nuclear (Prior Occupant: “newkewler”) was your last resort if you lost the conventional-weapon preliminaries. We had lost the conventional part of this financial combat even before Lehman’s collapse in September.
Tim Geithner to Congress this week: “In a crisis of this magnitude, the most prudent course is the most forceful course.” He made clear his frustration with the incremental and ad hoc measures taken last year. The need for magnitude is a given, but this group will be most uncomfortable with the choice of means.
Nothing like this crisis has happened before. Japan’s economy is otherworldly, and Scandinavian mini-economy banking rescues are doll-house models. The Great Depression was pre-electron. The go-nuclear choice of weapons will have only academic and theoretical basis. Nearly everyone in the group will have a different preference, yet all will have to agree, then take the deal to Mr. Obama who will probe and test the preparation, and then take the deal to a TARP-burned Congress.
No one will ever know if it was the best or even right choice -- nothing will matter except that it works.
The economy is in free-fall, headed for one-million-per-week layoffs. Bank stocks have lost half their remaining value since January 2. Real estate has entered a new level of weakness, commercial and residential: home construction is on the lowest track ever measured; two months of 5.00% mortgages failed to increase purchase demand; and even non-hysterical measures of home prices show steepening decline (OFHEO, down 1.8% in November).
Events have overtaken the time for extraction of bad assets. Old bad ones? The ones we just found? Assets okay now but certain to go bad by the 4th of July? Or by Christmas? I think we’re going to nationalize (might not use the word) some to several banks, and the test of nuclear success will be to get credit flowing immediately.
Several years ago, a lion of Virginia banking retired. At the convocation of bankers to honor him, pocket watch and all, he was asked what he thought was the greatest innovation in banking in his 50 years. Long pause. Furrowed brow. Then it came to him: he said, “Air conditioning.”
Here’s a better one. FHFA this week announced that by the end of this year, every home loan will be permanently tagged with the identity of the individual originating banker and employing company, and the name of the field and supervisory appraisers, together with the licensing status of all players. Individual histories will be tracked.
Fantastic! Borrowers and investors can look forward to vastly better performance. Nothing like sunshine to drive out the bad guys, and sharpen even the best.
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