Bear Stearns Bankruptcy?

Bear Stearns announced today that it would receive temporary (28 days) secured financing on an as needed basis for JP Morgan Chase and (indirectly) from the Federal Reserve.

The plan was announced as a response to a major liquidity crisis that has been ongoing since two hedge funds imploded in August. Bear remarked that

Bear Stearns has been the subject of a multitude of market rumors regarding our liquidity. We have tried to confront and dispel these rumors and parse fact from fiction. Nevertheless, amidst this market chatter, our liquidity position in the last 24 hours had significantly deteriorated.

Furthermore, they announced that they are in talks with JPM regarding "permanent financing or other alternatives."

This unusual financing structure will see that:

Through its Discount Window, the Fed will provide non-recourse, back-to-back financing to JPMorgan Chase

Read both statements here.

This essentially turns JP Morgan into conduit. The collateral for the loans will come from Bear Stearns. Should Bear default and the collateral fail to satisfy the outstanding loan to JP Morgan the Fed will take the loss. The loan is "non-recourse" which means that the Fed cannot pursue assets of JP Morgan to satisfy the debt.

This unusual step has been taken because, as an investment bank Bear Stearns is not eligible to borrow from the Fed, whereas JP Morgan, a commercial bank, is a member of the Federal Reserve System and does have that right.

The problem is transforming from one of liquidity to one of solvency. Investment banks tend to have extremely high leverage, much higher than that of commercial banks, because I-Banks rarely hold investment assets for long periods. They underwrite and need keep assets on the books only until they have sold them to clients or other syndicate members. Commercial and retail banks, by comparison, tend to hold loan portfolios as investments and so use more "modest" 9:1 leverage (I-Banks are often 25:1).

Obviously, with such high leverage rates even small declines in asset prices can wipe out equity on thinly capitalized balance sheets. Merging Bear out of existence would reduce the leverage of the portfolio, by combining it with the much healthier balance sheet of JPM.

Temporary revolving credit such as the Fed is extending can solve liquidity problems, but it cannot solve a solvency crisis. Nor can it resolve the bigger problem for stand alone I-Banks that they need to be able to sell their paper to someone, at a premium, not simply trade it for cash.

Sub-Prime Humor

Well, it's not exactly true - many of these mortgages were made to less dodgy buyers than they suggest in this clip, but the basic response of the markets is the same.

The bailout is coming because there are simply too many people who are going to suffer large losses. The sad thing is, the people who didn't get caught up in the frenzy will wind up paying the taxes to those who did.

And that is no joke.