by donshan » Sun 27 Nov 2005, 15:35:59
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', 'A')t FinancialSense.com:
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/2005/1123.htmlThis is docudrama that actually has already happened in the 1990s. Read the history of Long Term Capital Management. LTCM was a hedge fund set up using the risk management methods based on the Nobel prize in Economics work of Black and Scholes. Scholes participated in a leveraged hedge fund parleying a few million dollars into several billion of investor money ( having a Nobel prize meant you were right, didn't it?) and leveraged that into $1.2 Trillion in assets. at about 300 to 1 loans to actual cash put up.
When the fund failed it almost brought down the banking system,
Read the history at:
http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/ltcm.htmhttp://www.stock-market-crash.net/book/genius.htm$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')oger Lowenstein explains how Long-Term became arrogant due to its success and eventually leveraged $4 billion into $100 billion in assets. This $100 billion became collateral for $1.2 trillion in derivatives exposure! With this kind of financial leverage even the most minute market move against you can wipe you out several times over. Talk about financial weapons of mass destruction! This risk did not deter Long-Term, though.
Finally in 1998, Russia defaulted on its bonds- many of which Long-Term owned. This default stirred up the world’s financial markets in a way that caused many additional losing trades for Long-Term.
By the spring of 1998, LTCM was losing several hundred million dollars per day. What did LTCM’s brilliant financial models say about all of this? The models recommended waiting out the storm.
By August 1998, LTCM had burned through almost all of its $4 billion in capital. At this point LTCM tried to exit its trades, but found it impossible, as traders all over the world were trying to exit as well.
With $1.2 trillion dollars at risk, the economy could have been devastated if LTCM’s losses continued to run its course. After much discussion, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street’s largest investment banks decided to rescue Long-Term. The banks ended up losing several hundred million dollars each.
What became of Long-Terms founders? Were they jailed or banned from the financial world? No. They went on to start another hedge fund
The moral has not been lost on others. If you can borrow enough money from the banks, it is "heads you win, tails, the Fed and the banks bail you out to save the banking system and themselves, and you go on to yet another scheme.
So today everyone is doing it. NOW are you scared?
BTW, most of the $1.2 trillion lost was depositor's money from the lending banks. Under the old gold standard, these banks would have probably collapsed, and tens of thousands of people and businesses that thought they had savings, would wake up to be wiped out too. Because of this risk, under the gold standard, bankers would never have permitted such risky lending.
Under today's monetary system the FED backed up the lending banks, and was prepared to print money if required to make good the depositor's money. Over time the loss was absorbed mostly by the banks which made the bad loans out of their earnings. Thus, advocates of the present monetary system can cite LTCM as a case where everything worked and the system is sound.
Today, people buying houses with very little down, and interest only mortgages are playing the same game. If only one person defaults the mortgage lenders step in to make good. If too many default all at once , the banking system is at risk yet again.