The implosion of the US financial system gets worse by the day. Treasury bills printed negative yields whilst the Fed prints “enter your own number here” dollars. Now comes the largest financial scandal so far (discounting the banks which are a scandal all of their own).

A $50bln ponzi scheme. It’s so daft i can’t bring myself to write about it. As usual others cover this story better than I could. But it seems the US financial markets are receiving the greatest hosing out since Hercules cleaned up the Augean stables. There is no doubt more to come as rogue players just fess up and come clean. This may take some time as the initial reaction is to close ranks and pretend everything is fine.

The unveiling of dubious credit structures over the last 18 months is way overdue and may at least provide an opportunity for another look at how our money system works. Bubbles come and go, part of human nature, but never has a bubble so exposed the inner workings of the banking system.

The giant hubris of “tamed inflation”, “end of history” and “the end of boom and bust” has been exposed for the posturing it always was.

Time for a major serving of humble pie all round. But will those in power get down and start eating it?

Thanks to Jim for this post (his post in bold)

The BBC has provided a platform for Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, one of Britain’s most noted financiers, to express his views on the global financial situation:

All of us - countries, corporations and consumers - have neglected basic principles.

Ethics - we have lost sight of an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.

Careful management - we have indulged our wants without the taxes or the prices or the cash to pay for them.

Oversight - public relations and spin have replaced disclosure and transparency; casual yet complex accounting and accommodating rating agencies left us blissfully unaware of the problems, and we revelled in our ignorance.

Hubris has replaced community responsibility as a requirement for executive positions.

American automobile executives and British bankers have been unable to form their lips into an apology.

Yet their institutions lie in ruins and the rest of us are left feeling embarrassed for them.

Their customers worry that their savings or their working capital will just vanish, their mortgage will be transferred to a new institution they have never heard of.

Their employees wonder which of their colleagues - or they themselves - will be unemployed in the coming week, with bleak prospects for working again anytime soon.

Where is the shame of those who only months earlier boasted of ever increasing profits, of ever more clever products, of ever easier loans?

Remaining credit

The US automakers may be the worst of the lot, so far.

Years of incompetence and now manoeuvring in the halls of Congress for a massive bailout.

Management prefers to hold onto private corporate jets rather than push for fuel efficiency standards to make their products more competitive.

Union members would rather hold onto their gold-plated pensions for life than to save their companies.

Why should taxpayers help those who have so frequently refused to accept responsibility themselves?

If the US government uses up its remaining credit to help the auto industry carry on as usual, who will lend the country the money to repair its bridges, build its power stations, clean its water, fuel its navy?

Slow revival

Thirty years ago, New York City found itself in a position similar to GM, Ford and Chrysler today.

They asked Washington for help. The government refused.

The Daily News summed it up in its front page headline - Ford to City: Drop Dead [ed. the president]

Instead New York balanced its budget, taxed itself, reduced hiring, negotiated better labour contracts and gradually worked itself back to fiscal health.

It took more than 10 years.

Take responsibility

This era of struggle may last as long.

Until we can be generous in accepting fault for our predicament, we will have difficulty dropping our suspicions about others so that we can get on with repairing the damage.

Unless action is taken soon, we can only see a long time of difficult and very onerous problems continuing.

Could be one or two years.

It is therefore essential that management must take a firm look at its problems and accept its faults and redeem them.

A lot of talk and a lot of words have been written.

But in the end action has to be taken and action must be taken very soon if we are not going to see this stretched out over many years.

What we have to remember is that the crisis we are in the midst of is a financial one. A crisis of the syntheticism of money.

Like a cancer this is slowly being removed from the system. What is left of the corpse remains to be seen. But the end of the derivatives trade, especially the highly structured piece, cannot come too soon.

The role of interest (unearned income) in our economy needs to be reviewed. We need to refocus on the productive economy and the ability to invest in it i.e. by purchasing shares in companies are receiving dividends or, in the case of new innovative companies, an opportunity for capital gain commensurate with risk.

My own investment philosophy is simple. Buy low and sell high.

When interest rates (here in NZ) were low in 2003 i bought commercial property which was then yielding 9% (against an interest rate of 6.5%). In 2007 when interest looked like they were going higher (over 9%) I sold the properties which were then yielding 7.25-7.5%).

The market kept going for another 9 -12 months and has now fallen heavily.

I didn’t buy shares as dividend yields were lower than interest rates and p/e ratios were too high.

I put the cash in the bank.

Now I have started buying shares. Why? Because dividend yields are sky high (although earnings will continue to fall), p/e ratios are in single digits and interest rates are falling. Shares could keep falling for sure.

But the point I’m making is investment is pretty simple. Ignore the hype and focus on the numbers.

The hardest skill to learn as an investor (and we are all investors to some extent) is knowing when to sell. When the market is flying high its so hard to sell because you worry you’ll miss out on more. When its falling you secretly hope it will somehow bounce back.

As Evelyn reinforces, its all about basics whether values, ethics or simple strategy.

We’ve been living in a fool’s paradise for a while now and its time to get back to reality.

Not wanting to bve left out of the party, China announced a huge stimulus package over the weekend. $600bln or thereabouts is not be to sneezed at. The Chinese are taking no chances with collapsing global trade and economic activity. They have an large domestic economy and plenty of headroom to generate homegrown action.

They also have the money to do it.

As Yves notes the sums involved are getting to the point where a trillion doesn’t raise eyebrows. The Fed’s balance sheet is expanding quicker than a fast food muncher’s waistline. $2trln or will it be 3? Who knows? Who cares anymore? It’s like the end of a Monopoly game where the deals come thick and fast and the rent for landing on Mayfair (or Park Avenue) breaks your bank.

At the same time one continues to hear, in the background, that ecosystem stress is alive and well. As I noted last week there are some major concerns about the level of ecological debt. In a report by the WWF, called The Living Planet, they estimate some $4-5trln worth of ecological damage is occuring on an annual basis.

Deflation, stagflation, hyperinflation, ecological breakdown and over population.

Your cash losing its value every day as the printing presses run wild.

Time for a pause and a lie down.

The recent rush for the $ has exposed a global currency crisis that seems to be gathering momentum.

So far we have seen Iceland bankrupted, South Korea facing a huge run on the Won, Argentina seizing private pensions, Hungary and Denmark raising rates and general deleveraging in emerging markets.

At the same time even the majors have taken a pounding. In the last 3 months against the $ the Euro has fallen 22%, the Pound 22%, the Aussie 38%, the Kiwi 29% and the Canadian 28%. The latter 3 suffering more because of their links to commodity markets which have also collapsed.Against the Yen just add another 10%.

Those falls are enormous.

The major factors here are:

- Credit issues.

- Current Account position.

- Commodities.

- Interest Rates.

If you have a large current account deficit and huge overseas borrowing (like Australia and New Zealand) then you will struggle given the problems with credit availability. At the same time lower currencies provide an opportunity to reduce those deficits. No more cheap imports for the Antipodeans.

This poses real problems for the US. Although the Yen is taking some of the slack with a major appreciation, a strong $ is hardly what the US are looking for at the moment given their huge current account problems. However we are entering into a situation where there are bigger issues at play.

A full scale unwind of the global currency net position would see surplus countries holding the upper hand. China with its vast $ reserves has plenty of options on the table. There is an interesting analysis on Naked Capitalism with some good links.

The most interesting proposal from Brad Setser at the CFR is for China (and other large $ holders) to diversify their $ holdings and buy assets from other deficit countries. Although its hard to see China doing this it makes sense as part of the eventual rebalancing of currencies and capital that must happen if we are not to see a huge race to the bottom in currency land.

This would help out the US in taking the heat over a resurgent $ and it would take the heat out of the impending meltdown of cross border capital flows. It may even help avert a potential meltdown in the Euro which grows closer by the day.

The era of running big deficits thanks to leveraged debt finance and derivative products is over. The November 15th War Council will certainly push to reform and regulate markets though that bolted years ago and the stable has burnt down.

Other suggestions proposed are:

- A return to a gold backed global currency. This is just fiat in a different form. It has some merit as a stable, hard store of value in which supply is reasonably easy to manage but it has already failed several times in recent memory.

- A commodity/energy back currency. The EBCU proposal by Richard Douthwaite still is a favourite of mine because it links natural resources, climate change and money together. It’s real unlike gold as it connects energy to money and energy is what we are concerned with, in terms of transforming it and using it in our daily lives.

Hopefully all of these approaches will be on the table when our financial “wizards” meet shortly.

In the meantime it will be a case of holding one’s breath and hoping for the best with possible intervention ahead.

At worst expect markets to close and capital controls to be applied.

Forget about government bailouts, now its investors that are bailing out. It’s a case of salvaging whatever is left of portfolios now. Hedge funds are unloading anything with liquidity and currencies are taking the strain,

The horrendous spike in LIBOR rates has seen a reverse run on the $. From global pariah to this week’s must have the $ has risen at a rate of knots in the last month against all currencies except the yen, which has been used to fund most of the speculative investment activity. The Aus$/Yen cross rate is down over 40% in 3 months. The Eur/$ rates has fallen 20%. Eur/yen around 25%. These are not emerging markets, these are the main conduits for global trade and when added to stock market moves of between 25-50% one is faced with the realisation that the whole global financial system is at risk.

I wrote recently that at some point global markets will need to be frozen. That may well happen as not just stocks but currencies go into complete meltdown making any form of economic activity almost pointless.

The recent wholesale and blanket guarantees of bank deposits and lending in many countries have just added to the general lack of confidence in the global financial system.

Added to this commodities have collapsed in price also as that speculative bubble is popped. Even gold, something one would consider in the current situation, has fallen, over 20% in the last few weeks.

Nothing makes much sense at the moment except that the unwinding of years of excess is both savage and yet unpredictable.

One can only hope that somehow the markets can stabilise but the lower it goes the worse it gets as the spiral of margin calls increases and investors seek to recoup whatever they can. It’s probably not the time to sell but at the moment cash is king.

And surprisingly the king of cash is the $…….for now.