Où l'on reparle de titrisation

Floyd Norris a un article dans le NYT sur la titrisation. Il y cite largement le Comptroller of the Currency qui vient de s'adresser à l'American Securitization Forum. Il n'y a choqué personne en se déclarant pour un "vibrant securitization market". Car les banques voyez-vous ne sont pas en mesure de distribuer assez de crédits pour faire "repartir l'économie". Que l'économie américaine ne soit qu'un énorme Walmart où on ne fait que dépenser sans jamais rien créer ne choque plus personne aujourd'hui. Il faut donc faire repartir le système qui a échoué: une économie axée sur la consommation et financée par le crédit.

Pour les politiques, la titrisation (securitization) n'est pas autre chose que cette nitroglycérine qui permet au moteur d'aller plus vite. Cette croyance, entretenue par tous les gens qui en vivent, a même réussi à pénétrer jusqu'aux hautes sphères de l'Etat français qui n'en a cependant pas croqué (Sarkozy aurait défendu la titrisation comme facteur de croissance l'année dernière dans la réunion avec des journalistes où il a également dit que Zapatero était souvent pris pour un imbécile).

Tout semble s'orienter vers une reprise de ce marché sans aucun changement. On a dit qu'on pourrait améliorer le process en obligeant les banques à garder sur leurs books un pourcentage de chaque deal mais même cela, qui paraît un absolu minimum, semble déjà difficile à mettre en oeuvre à ce pauvre John C. Dugan (encore un régulateur inflexible!). On peut donc s'attendre à un produit exactement identique. Et puisque la FED va continuer à abreuver le marché de liquidités, il va bien arriver un moment où même ces obligations vont finir par se vendre. Et hop! Back to square one.

Peter Schiff il y a un an

La bourse était au plus bas et lui au sommet de sa gloire (pour l'instant). Il fait beaucoup rire l'assistance. Evidemment, il promettait de l'hyperinflation "peut-être" pour 2010 et nous n'en sommes toujours pas là (comme le blogo)... Il faut dire qu'il protestait contre la bulle de l'immobilier dès 2002-2003 donc on peut dire de lui qu'il est un habitué des prévisions lentes à se réaliser.

Je pense que Peter Schiff a raison sur l'essentiel (même s'il a des réflexes de républicains: il blâme l'Etat pour avoir échoué dans son rôle de régulateur des banques mais c'est les banques qui ont contrôlé tout du long cette fonction de régulation! C'est vraiment l'oeuf et la poule. Dire que l'oligarchie bancaire n'est pas un produit du capitalisme mais d'un capitalisme "dévoyé" sonne vraiment comme des discours d'idéologues attachés à la terminologie. Peut-on avoir des discussions pragmatiques et adultes qui n'essayent pas d'attribuer à des termes "sacrés" comme "capitalisme" ou "free enterprise" uniquement des défauts ou uniquement des qualités? It's so 20th century.) mais qu'il sous-estime à quel point le monde a soif de leadership américain quel que soit son inefficacité, sa corruption et le discrédit dont il est l'objet. "Better the devil you know."

Economiquement, le Ponzi Scheme américain est une aberration mais comme on l'a vu souvent, cela ne veut pas dire qu'il ne peut pas durer encore plusieurs années. Il n'est pas non plus impossible que le monde traverse cette crise et que les privilèges économiques américains demeurent (relativement au reste du monde) à peu près intacts. Les mandarins et les "chiens de garde" du système sont d'ailleurs ressortis de leurs niches et ne craignent plus désormais de réengager le débat avec Peter Schiff sur les mêmes bases qu'en 2005-2007 (en gros, ils se moquent de lui). On sait comment ça s'est terminé la dernière fois...

Voici donc ce flash back du Peter schiff flamboyant et très drôle d'il y a un an, avant que l'Empire ne contre-attaque:



Et les 7 autres parties ici. (1H20 à peu près)

Exception

Je n'ai fait ça qu'exceptionnellement sur le blogo et je ne suis pas sûr que cela soit très conforme à la "nétiquette" (si ce concept est formalisé quelque part) mais je reproduis ce post de Glenn Greenwald dans son intégralité car... IL FAUT LE LIRE. "Trop bien!", comme disent les enfants.

(Pour les non-anglophones qui veulent savoir de quoi il s'agit en (très) gros, voir la note à la fin.)

Monday, Feb 8, 2010 06:09 EST

Wall Street owners angry with their purchase

By Glenn Greenwald

iStockphoto

Political science professors could require students to read this article from today's New York Times and little else would be needed to convey the essence of the American political system. The article describes how Wall Street -- which poured massive amounts of money into the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party over the last several years, ensuring unparalleled access and influence -- is now threatening to support the Republicans if Obama keeps saying mean things about them. Wall Street executives are angry that, after duly purchasing the Democrats (they have receipts and everything), the Obama White House is now rousing the dirty rabble with their anti-banker rhetoric:

Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s "buyer’s remorse" with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street "fat cats," they may fight back by withholding their cash.

"If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support," said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T. Mr. King is a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for the biggest banks, and last month he helped represent the industry at a private dinner at the Treasury Department.

"I understand the public outcry," he continued. "We have a 17 percent real unemployment rate, people are hurting, and they want to see punishment. But the political rhetoric just incites more animosity and gets people riled up" . . . "If the president wanted to turn every Democrat on Wall Street into a Republican," one industry lobbyist said, "he is doing everything right."

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There are numerous points to note about all of this. First, there simply is no more odious faction inside the U.S. than Wall Street bankers -- and that's saying quite a bit. Just over a year ago, they almost caused a complete global economic collapse -- and did cause extreme economic suffering around the world which continues to this day -- with their sleazy, piggish and lawless behavior. Yet barely a year later, they now turn around and threaten their purchased politicians with punishment if their behavior is meaningfully restricted or even if they're publicly criticized. In light of what they did -- and are still doing -- they should consider themselves lucky that the public hasn't stormed their homes and offices in mass rage. Far less pernicious behavior has triggered such uprisings in the past, and if the American public hadn't been as ingrained with the passivity and learned helplessness they've been trained to accept, one would certainly have seen some of that. In a rational, democratically engaged society, multi-million dollar taxpayer-enabled banker bonuses, combined with mass unemployment and home foreclosures (combined with establishment threats to reduce Social Security and Medicare), is not the ideal means for maintaining social order.

Second, stories like this ought to put to rest forever the notion that the Republican Party is some sort of haven for populist anger. As subservient as the Democrats have been to Wall Street -- note that, more than a year later, Wall Street can only complain about "rhetoric," not any actual legislation that has been passed -- the Republicans are out there promising Wall Street to be even more loyal servants if they're given the dog treats that have recently been going to the Democrats:

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s "buyers’ remorse." "I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you," Mr. Cornyn said.

So the GOP is out there successfully pretending in front of the angry tea partiers that they, too, are furious about Wall Street's gorging and domination of Washington, all while simultaneously crawling to Wall Street and pledging to be good little boys and girls -- and to keep the agitated masses at bay -- if Wall Street once again purchases them rather than the Democrats. The only thing more absurd than the Democrats' pretending to be the Populist Party of the People is the Republican Party's doing so.

Third, that Wall Street is dissatisfied with the Democrats and the Obama administration reveals how extreme are their expectations of control of the Government. The second-highest-ranking Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin, recently conceded of the Democratic-controlled Congress: "frankly, bankers own the place." It's impossible to find a more loyal and attentive servant to bankers than Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. As the NYT article this morning details, Wall Street executives and their lobbyists have virtually unfettered access to the administration and to the President himself. You would think they'd be satisfied with the state of affairs in Washington. Yet so extreme are their perceived entitlements of control that even mere symbolic and rhetorical disobedience from the politicians they own -- he said some mean things about us -- creates a sense of righteous grievance: our government employees do not behave this way toward us and will be punished if it continues.

Finally, marvel at the cowardice, as well as the journalistic shoddiness, evident in these anonymity-based passages:

The expectation in Washington is that "We can kick you around, and you are still going to give us money," said a top official at a major Wall Street firm, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the White House. "We are not going to play that game anymore." . . .

"If the president wanted to turn every Democrat on Wall Street into a Republican," one industry lobbyist said, "he is doing everything right."

In essence, Wall Street executives said to David Kirkpatrick, the NYT reporter who wrote this story: "I want to threaten and criticize the President, but I'm too much of a coward to do so with my name attached, so will you let me do it in your paper anonymously"? And Kirkpatrick replied: "Oh, absolutely; that's what anonymity is for: to let the country's most powerful people spew venom and issue threats while being shielded and protected by journalists from accountability." Perhaps one of those nameless executives might have inquired of Kirkpatrick: "but didn't your newspaper publish very stringent guidelines limiting the use of anonymity in the wake of the Iraq debacle?", to which Kirkpatrick could easily and truthfully have replied: "oh, those? Please. Nobody worries about that, least of all us. That's just there to placate the same angry rabble whom you're now ordering your political property to more efficiently pacify."

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Note: En très bref pour les non-anglophones: Greenwald se sert de l'irritation exprimée par Wall Street envers la rhétorique (car il ne s'agit que de rhétorique bien évidemment) anti-banques des démocrates pour décrypter le rapport de force dans le système politique américain. Le rapport de force n'est pas en faveur des démocrates ni en faveur des républicains. Il est en faveur des banques ce qui ne surprendra aucun des lecteurs du blogo.