so apparently insurance conglomerate giant AIG is on the verge of bankruptcy, again, despite something of order $200 billion bailout from the US, which now owns 79.9% of the company
the news solution is to request the US government guarantee the outstanding CDS that AIG issued
I propose a solution
So, AIG is "Too Big To Fail" - they have too many pension annuities, hold trust funds for progeny of the political elite, and other critical social functions
AIG also, apparently, has enormous one sided exposure to Credit Default Swaps.
When people started taking out very low premium insurance on highly rated bonds defaulting, AIG jumped in and issues insurance - free money, right?
Not like GM or Lehman Bros will ever fail?
Extra Double Bonuses All Round!
Except AIG initially didn't hedge their bets - no reinsurance or counter-insurance, they just issued some hundreds of billions, or more, of one sided CDSs.
Which are now triggering all over the place as companies fail, are downrated or hit other soft triggers for default.
So, the next solution is to hand the entire bunch of CDS and associated liabilities to the US Government, which will print money to pay them out as needed (it won't be taxes, there aren't enough taxes in the world to cover the outstanding CDSs).
In the meantime AIG hands out few billions here and there each month as the french banks and goldman sachs cash in on their bets...
Problem.
In the meantime, the big banks are also failing - they have all sorts of CDS outstanding, some counterinsured, some not, which may or may not statistically balance, in theory.
In practise it will turn out half the CDS counterinsurance will have been with Madoff's one man accounting firm, and he just left .vacation on for the last three months.
I mean, why not, it is not like GM is going to fail - anyone can take a 0.000001% bet on a $100 billion bond failure by GM and just pocket the $1000 - it is not like it will ever have to be paid out, so no need for reserves.
This is a big part of why the banks may fail - too much of their "assets" are not just bad bonds and layerd blended bonds of bonds, with unknown value - much of their assets, and liabilities are CDSs of unknown value - some may be dead meat, never be paid if triggered; some may be net liabilities; and some may be worth a fortune, when GM really does fail and Madoff's accountant comes up with the $100 billion for your side bet.
So: NATIONALIZE BOTH SIDES.
And, yes, I am shouting.
If we have to assume responsibility for the AIG CDS book, and half of the counterparties are zombie banks, then don't do this piecemeal and wait for the intermediaries to skim their cuts each way on each transaction - nationalize both sides and clean the books.
Give $100 billion to AIG to pay off CDS obligations to bankrupt banks that have been seized by the US Govt which takes the $100 billion back. Thank you.
We can sort out the details as we go along.
That part is clearly being done anyway, and this way we'll at least have a goal.
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And give up the illusion that banks and the FIRE sector are industries in the convetional sense of the word. It's all fiat money, people. The only thing that matters is that it goes around and around, and not accumulate in dead eddies. Banks are created de novo by acts of government. When a free market solution just doesn't work, to hell with 'em.
Give everyone a FREE post-office bank account: no interest, no fees, just a place to park your money. FREE e-commerce and ATM access (any existing banks refusing to blay ball - revoke their charter).
But the real cause of it all is mandatory retirement savings - mandatory investment of a chunk og your income in the private sector. It gives the finance boys an enormous wad of OPM to play with, and the power that comes with having that amount of cash to throw around.
End mandatory retirement savings (superannuation, 401k, whatever you call it) and go back to the government paying out an age pension. Straight away, the hege funds, mutual funds and what have you will not be able to dictate to the rest of the economy.
yeah, pension is a funny way of transferring intergenerational obligations and people have a strange way of thinking about it on a microeconomic level - as if having bits of green paper actually in some ways guarantees strangers will feed you and care for you when you are old.
The curious thing about CDS is the banks that took out tens of trillions of dollars - like we would actually given them all the money if they won the bet?
Seriously: the economy would hand over 4 times US GDP to JP Morgan just because they spent a few million on a piece of paper saying a third party bets them bad things won't happen?
I don't think so.
But with those CDS, everyone was hedging their risk. I bet most of those contracts (except for AIG, who were idiots) were not written to make money, but to balance out some other contract. When Lehman went up, and they cleared the CDS contracts, there was, what, 8 billion net in the 100 billion of CDS contracts? It is all just pieces of paper being pushed around to show the boss that any given transaction is "safe".
No, not quite.
The net on the Lehman CDS, as I understand it, is only for the semi-regulated CDS that went through the ad hoc clearance scheme they set up - at some level no one knows what the net was on other informal CDS contracts set up.
But, a big part of the current problem is the worry the CDS are not netting to near zero - they certainly don't for AIG who apparently early on wrote a lot of CDS on high rated bonds without hedging - someone there thought they had a free bet.
The other issue is counterparty risk - the near certainty that some of the CDS contractees are shell companies with no reserved or assets or counter-hedges. If this did happened, and the temptation must have been there, to write contracts, take the upfront fee and plan to walk away - no regulation after all - then a lot of the hedges zeroing out the CDS are illusionary and some parties are stuck with large liabilities.
WI foreclosures are very bad right now