So what happens when they can't pay it back? They lose the collateral, and what does the CB do with the collateral? Sell it? Where's all this surplus cash coming from anyway?
Printable View
Cant the CBs just buy or sell govt securities to alter the money supply? In this case, the Fed buying treasuries gives liquidity to the banks ?
Banks can take short term loans to meet capital requirements and the banks lend money at floating rates among themselves for the same purpose. Fund rates approached 6% yesterday so "liquidity" was injected into the funds structure to keep overnite rates near the 3.5% Discount Rate target.
Lots of info here http://www.frbdiscountwindow.org/cfa...drID=21&dtlID=
Not all collateral is equal and the Fed demands a haircut (over collateralisation) depending on the quality. If you cant repay then you have defaulted on the Central Bank. That's one way to go out in huge style. Should that happen, the Fed then has your pledged/repoed assets and would at some stage sell them I assume.
In the case of AIG, it looks like the Fed will take AIG warrants (options) which in the case of AIG's inability to pay back the $85bn, the Fed can exercise those warrants and gets shares in AIG with payment being the cash already extended in the short term bridging loan. In short, AIG warrants are not really collateral at all. The Fed has basically said "here's a huge short term loan. If you can’t repay, we own 85% of you". AIG gets out of jail free.
Remember that non-bank Broker/Dealers Like LEH, ML, GS, MS etc don't have access to the Fed discount lending window. They can’t pledge collateral against a short term depo. So for the Fed to then bail out AIG, which certainly cant access the facility, is a very serious event. AIG is NY State regulated, not even Federally.
You should be concerned that AIG’s regulator has extraordinarily allowed the financial products entity within AIG to access valuable and usually legally ringfenced collateral within AIG’s insurance subsidiaries. That collateral is there to back up claims on your insurance policies, not to use as emergency collateral to obtain desperate funding due to very bad CDO trades (for which the average senior trader is probably paid about $500,000 per year plus the same or more in bonus. The good ones get much, much more.)
The surplus cash (at an individual commercial bank) comes from... borrowing more money than you have commercial assets: not usually intentional. Having long term debt against short term assets will bring it about. It's a great, but traditionally money-losing position to be in. If you do have this surplus cash, each and every day you are looking for the best place to put this surplus in the interbank money market. However, within the entire system, there is almost no surplus: all commercial banks should in theory be left with a very small balance at the central bank account at the close of each day (beyond any regulatory minimum balance). This presupposes that they lend to each other – which in non-crisis times is what happens.
I like the fact that senior fed officials have stated that this deal is not a nationalization of AIG. Said with a straight face. Commons pretty much wiped out
dow below 8k bump
dow back over 8K bump
Classic Bear market action the last week. Slow grinding down with the occasional bounce. The only positive I have seen is stock futures trading with premium at times lately. No premium=No rally.
...rally
Did someone say 7,000!
Holy shit balls....end of day 11/20/08 = 7,552.29!!!!
Hot damn, our AG Edwards account is grasping for air but my savings and money market accounts are just killing it....well are positive at least..;)
Dow 5yr ----------
http://tetongravity.com/forums/attac...5&d=1227218754
Anybody think we'll see the market drop below 7000 before spring?
Below 6000 before end of 2009?
Above 20K by 2012? :rolleyes:
dow to levels not seen since 1997 - that would be the year i graduated high school. everybody get long on gold and short treasuries. that would help me out a lot. thanks.
I thought this thread was about the "Stoke Market" instead 18 pages later I am just really depressed.
+1
Just a dumb feeling. I say 6000 by April/early May. It's all in this book:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ff/dow6000.jpg
LOL, CUBUCK, you care to eat that crow?!
Props to BD4All... hope you had the gumption to bet against the housing market.
I am ready for some irrational exuberance....
I don't feel like going back through all of it, but were there any predictions on a 19-0 Patriots season? :D
John Elway molests collies
One more day and the dow will be down 50% over the year.
What happened to Yossarian? He started this thread.