Warren Buffett once referred to derivatives as
“financial weapons of mass destruction“,
and it was inevitable that they would begin to wreak havoc on our financial
system at some point. As you will see below, something happened in mid-September that
required an unprecedented $405 billion surge of Treasury collateral into the
repo market. Some very large institutions have started to get into
a significant amount of trouble because of all the reckless betting that they
have been doing. this is what is going to cause the meltdown of our
financial system.
derivatives trading is gambling, and perhaps it
would be more accurate to describe most derivatives as a form of
insurance. The big financial institutions assure us that they have passed
off most of the risk on these contracts to others and so there is no reason to
worry according to them.
derivatives trading is gambling. This is
a point that Jeff Nielson made very eloquently in a piece that he recently
published…
Derivatives are bets. Period. That’s all they
ever were. That’s all they ever can be.
One very large financial institution that
appears to be in serious trouble with these financial weapons of mass
destruction is Glencore.
At one time Glencore was considered to be the 10th largest company on the
entire planet, but now it appears to be coming apart at the seams, and a great
deal of their trouble seems to be tied to derivatives. The following
comes from Zero Hedge…
Of particular concern, they said, was
Glencore’s use of financial instruments such as derivatives to hedge its
trading of physical goods against price swings. The company had $9.8 billion in
gross derivatives in June 2015, down
from $19 billion in such positions at the end of 2014, causing investors to
query the company about the swing.
Glencore told investors the number went down so
drastically because of changes in market volatility this year, according to
people briefed by Glencore. When prices vary significantly, it can increase the
value of hedging positions.
Last year, there were extreme price moves,
particularly in the crude-oil market, which slid from about $114 a barrel in
June to less than $60 a barrel by the end of December.
That response
wasn’t satisfying, said Michael Leithead, a bond fund portfolio manager at EFG
Asset Management, which managed $12 billion as of the end of March and has
invested in Glencore’s debt.
According to Bank of America, the global financial
system has about 100 billion dollars of exposure overall to Glencore. So if
Glencore goes bankrupt that is going to be a major event. At this point, Glencore is
probably the most likely candidate to be “the next Lehman Brothers”.
And it isn’t just Glencore that is in
trouble. Other financial giants such as Trafigura are in deep distress as
well. the global
financial system has approximately half a trillion dollars of exposure to these firms…
Worse, since it is not just Glencore that the
banks are exposed to but the
rest of the commodity trading space, their gross exposure blows up to a
simply stunning number:
For the banks, of course, Glencore may not be
their only exposure in the commodity trading space. Other vehicles such as Trafigura, Vitol and Gunvor may feature on
bank balance sheets as well ($100 bn x 4?)
Commodities
is an asset class that has been crushed in the past year.
Something occurred in the banking system in
September that required a massive reverse repo operation in order to force the
largest ever Treasury collateral injection into the repo market and force the "Plunge Protection Team" into immediate action. Ordinarily the Fed might engage in routine reverse repos as a means of managing
the Fed funds rate. However, as you can see from the graph below, there
have been sudden spikes up in the amount of reverse repos that tend to
correspond the some kind of crisis – the obvious one being the de facto
collapse of the financial system in 2008:
What in the world could possibly cause a spike
of that magnitude?
Well, it is linked to the troubles at Glencore
with this unprecedented intervention…
The
spike-up in reverse repos occurred at the same time – September 16 – that the
stock market embarked on an 8-day cliff dive, with the S&P 500 falling 6%
in that time period. You’ll note that this is around the same time that a
crash in Glencore stock and bonds began. It has been
suggested by analysts that a default on Glencore credit derivatives either by
Glencore or by financial entities using derivatives to bet against that event
would be analogous to the “Lehman moment” that triggered the 2008 collapse.
The blame on the general stock market plunge
was cast on the Fed’s inability to raise interest rates. However that
seems to be nothing more than a clever cover story for something much more
catastrophic which began to develop out sight in the general liquidity
functions of the global banking system.
Back in 2008, Lehman Brothers was not
“perfectly fine” one day and then suddenly collapsed the next. There were
problems brewing under the surface well in advance.
Well, the same thing is happening now at banking giants such as Deutsche Bank, (DB) and at commodity trading
firms such as Glencore, Trafigura and The Noble Group. As General Motors
bankruptcy was linked to Lehman Bros. DB is linked to Volkswagon (VW). DB is laying off 23,000 employees or 25% of
its work force. 10,000 to 20,000 more layoffs will follow. DB stock sits at around
$26.00 a share its Jan. 09 low. VW had a $6 billion 3rd quarter loss. VW’s
market cap was $50 billion, it is now $18 billion. VW has lost over half its
stock market value.
On
September 11, Spruce Alpha, a small hedge fund which is part of
a bigger investment group, sent a short report to investors. The
letter said that the $80 million fund had lost 48% in a month, according
the performance report seen by Business Insider.
There was no commentary included in the
note. No explanation. Just cold hard numbers.
Wow – how do you possibly lose 48 percent in a
single month?
It would be hard to do that even if you were
actually trying to lose money on purpose.
Sadly, this kind of scenario is going to be
repeated over and over as we get even deeper into this crisis.
Meanwhile, our “leaders” continue to tell us
that there is nothing to worry about. For example, just consider what
former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke saidhe didn’t
see any bubbles forming in global
markets right right now.
Speaking at a Wall Street Journal event recently,
Bernanke said, “I don’t see any obvious major mispricings. Nothing that looks
like the housing bubble before the crisis, for example. But
you shouldn’t trust me.”
I certainly agree with that last sentence.
Bernanke was the one telling us that there was not going to be a recession back
in 2008 even after one had already started. He was clueless back then and
he is clueless today.
Most of our “leaders” either don’t understand
what is happening or they are lying.
So that means that we have to try to figure
things out for ourselves the best that we can. And right now there are
signs all around us that another 2008-style crisis has begun.
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