Daily Economics 24/04/09: Euro area forecast and Irish Travel Data

Irish Travel Stats are now available on CSO website through Q4 2008. Charts below illustrate the main trends:

First, domestic travel trends. All categories of domestic travel are in expenditure intensity (Euro spent per night) except for the holidays trips. This represents a departure from the generally upward trend prior to 2008.
However, in line with a small increase in the numbers of trips taken domestically, the overall spending remains relatively well underpinned.
International travel by the residents of Ireland has held up relatively flat or increased for all broader destinations. Length of stay also held up well.
Length of stay abroad has declined (in line with recent trends) for holidaymakers, and has risen - against the previous trend - for those visiting friends/relatives and other categories. There has been a significant increase in the length of stay for business travellers.

The decline in the overall overseas spending by Irish residents travelling abroad has been significant and driven largely by the decline in the expenditure of Irish holidaymakers abroad. Business travellers visiting abroad have reduced their spending only marginally, while other categories of Irish residents travelling overseas have seen a small (insignificant) increase in overall expenditure.
Lastly, considering Irish travellers spending by their destination country, EU15 countries clearly stand out as the dominant spending destination for Irish visitors within the broader EU25 or indeed EU27. Despite or strong connections with Poland and a host of other ECE countries, there is virtually no evidence of Irish residents spending much of their cash in those countries. North America follows EU15 as the most favourite destination for our Euros, with Asia& Middle East managing to outperform Australia & New Zealand in competing for our cash.

Eurocoin results are in for April so the chart below updates my forecast for Euroarea leading indicators and for GDP growth for the Euro area for May:
As you can see, Eurocoin improvements, predicted in March, have indeed taken place, which in my view signals that May is likely to see this leading indicator for growth in the Eurozone climbing higher. However, my longer view is that leading indicators are going to suffer a seasonally adjusted fall-off at the end of Q2, retesting the lows of -0.6. Thus, my forecast for Q2 2009 growth stands at -1.1%.

What's wrong with NAMA

For those of you who missed the latest article on NAMA from myself and Brian Lucey in the current issue of Business&Finance magazine, here is the unedited version.

To date, the prevailing discussion internationally on how to rescue failed banks focused on repairing their balance sheets. This ignores the underlying cause of the problem – the deterioration of their asset base. In fact, in the case of NAMA-type ‘bad’ banks arrangements, the cure compounds the asset base problems.

Two major questions arise in the context of NAMA.

First, we do not know how the assets can be priced in order to align the NAMA objective of repairing banks balance sheets (with an incentive to pay high price for transferred assets) and its duty to safeguard taxpayers interest (requiring the price to be set below the expected risk-adjusted value of the loans total).

Second, we do not know how the impaired assets will be treated under NAMA. One option is to keep them alive as zombie development projects awaiting realization decades from today. Another is to shut them down. Which option will be pursued will, in the end, seal the fate of large scale development land banks and half-baked development schemes across the country. It will also underpin political legitimacy of NAMA. And this is before we consider the fallout from a virtually inevitable future creep of NAMA remit to cover defaulting mortgages on principal residencies, credit cards debts and bad car loans.

Extent of the NAMA-bility

With respect to the first question, the US Treasury Department identifies the bad assets before they are actually fully impaired using financial models that estimate future loan values under different economic scenarios.

Ireland is yet to make even this first step, but currently neither the CBFSAI nor the Department of Finance and least of all the infant NAMA have the capacity to develop and administer such model-based testing procedures. Even after years of operations, CBFSAI have virtually no real expertise in risk management and pricing, while DofF has no real economics, finance and analytical capabilities to oversee a minor credit union, let alone to control NAMA. Thus, ex ante pricing transparency is the only guard the taxpayers have to limit NAMA’s monopoly powers.

So let us consider the loans that are non-performing, stressed or rolled over with little chance of repayments any time soon. Banks provisions for future impairment charges are currently running at ca 4-5%. Independent and even in-house analysts are forecasting that some 12-15% of the entire asset pool of the Irish banks can be under stress by 2010.

In our view, this is a lower bound of the true state as:

• loans under threat to date will almost certainly remain under threat through 2010;
• the first quarter of 2008 saw a relatively benign trading environment, so 2009 is going to see even greater rates of impairment; and
  
• the economic troubles underlying the rapid asset quality deterioration are set to deepen in 2009.
  

We know nothing about the recovery rate on these risky assets. But globally, AAA rated CDOs carry the recovery rate of only 32% on face value, while for mezzanine vehicles the recovery rate is only 5%. The default rates on the US corporate junk bonds (which are less risky than Irish development-linked loans due to their higher diversification, liquidity and transparency) is estimated to reach a whooping 53%, with a recovery rate of zero. Given the perilous state of Irish economy, and the extent of the property-related exposure for Irish banks we see as reasonable (or potentially even generous) a 45-50% average recovery rate on the stressed loans. This implies that the expected final losses on the entire 6-banks pool of €165bn in property exposure (ex-Poland) will be closer to 25-30%, or €50bn. For anyone who thinks that this figure is unrealistic, a recent McKinsey study showed, that out of $2 trillion of impaired assets the eventual writedowns may total $1.5 trillion or 67%.

The above loss rate implies that NAMA will be purchasing the impaired assets at less than 28% discount to their face value, should the Government set the price to keep the 6-banks capital ratios at 8% minimum required levels. Such a discount will imply an issuance of €36bn in fresh bonds to the banks, underwriting only €25bn in risk-adjusted assets on NAMA-held €50bn book of loans. The implied expected loss to the taxpayers from such an operation is €11bn in capital cost, plus ca €11.5bn in interest costs for a 5-year bond to be covered out of tax revenue and higher cost of banking.

It is worth noting that these costs of over €22bn for NAMA operations assume that Irish banks keep capital ratios at the required legal minimum after deleveraging their balance sheets. In other words, these losses do not fully insure the banking system against future capital demands.

But 8% capital requirement is now considered to be insufficient for operating a private bank. Instead, markets are demanding a minimum 10% capital ratio, with 12-14% being a golden target. If NAMA were to keep Irish banks private, the recapitalization demand for the 6-banks system due to the NAMA assets transfers will add another €4-8bn in costs to the Exchequer bill.

Note: should NAMA buy into €80bn in loans, as discussed in recent reports, the associated required maximum discount rate will be 23% and the total losses to the taxpayers will be €43-51bn.

How can toxic assets be priced?
Generally, assets on bank balance sheets are valued either at hold-to-maturity value or at fair value. Both frameworks fail in the current environment.

An alternative solution is that the Government can set up a two-stage process of buying stressed assets into NAMA. The first stage will involve a quasi-voluntary scheme that would establish a functional resale market for the stressed loans to be used in the second stage of purchasing.

To do so, the Government should set a basic level of discount on the assets based on the publicly verifiable valuation model. The discount should be fixed on the date of the scheme announcement to prevent future manipulation of the fair value by the banks. It should apply to all systemically important banks regardless of who holds the specific loan or what project it is written against. This will avoid political interference in the pricing of stressed assets.

Loans with interest and principal non-payment of less than 3 months can be sold at a fixed discount of, say 15% (reflective of the current expected default rates), loans with non-payment of 3-6 months can be sold at a fixed discount of 25% (a rate that is more consistent with the US experience and the ECB discount lending criteria). Non-performing loans in excess of 6 months and repeated roll-up loans can be traded at a 50% discount equal to their estimated default risk. This first-stage transfer will remove the most toxic paper off the balance sheets of the banks.

After the first stage establishes quasi-market pricing of the assets transferred to NAMA, the Government can retain the face value discount on other stressed assets, while allowing for some recapitalization support to be given to the banks that need it. The second stage involves using the same discounts on loans as in the first stage with the Government using additional bonds to swap for banks shares to cover some fixed proportion of the discount. In other words, the banks will still sell most impaired assets at 50% discount, but they will have an option to receive a roll-back of say 10-15% of the discounted value in the form of the NAMA taking new shares in the banks. For example, a loan package of €10bn with average non-payment of more than 6 months will be sold to NAMA for €5bn, but the bank involved will have an option to sell €500-7500mln worth of new equity to NAMA at the same discount on the share price as on assets sold to NAMA.

The advantage of this scheme is that the clean up of banks balance sheets will be systematic and non-distortionary.

The disadvantage is that it still saddles the taxpayer with the task of recapitalizing the banks after they take a hit on their capital base under the NAMA. This, however, is inevitable under all possible scenarios for toxic assets removal. In our view, the only real option to avoid the need for endless rounds of recapitalizations is to nationalize systemically important banks outright. Nationalization option will allow the Government to keep capital base of the banks at 8% limit, outside the markets demand for higher capital reserves. In addition, under nationalization NAMA can choose and pick specific assets off banks balance sheets to create a blended portfolio of loans with lower expected default rates.

Avoiding zombie land banks
The second problem with the Government proposal is that we do not have any idea as to how the impaired assets will be treated under NAMA. Upon purchasing the loan, the Government will have an incentive to keep the underlying assets alive as a zombie development projects. This is so because as long as the development-zoned land remains ‘active’ as an investment project it will retain some notional value on NAMA balancesheet, creating an illusion of value to the taxpayer. Of course, much of the existent recent vintage land banks that NAMA will end up holding will cover speculatively purchased agricultural and industrial land with virtually no hopes of being developed in the next 15-20 years.

Another option is to shut these projects down, de-zone the land and either release it into the market as agricultural land or retain it as public-use land. This option implies NAMA writing down the asset value of such land.

In our view, the Government will be wise to opt for the second option, converting improperly zoned development land into a mixture of leasable publicly-owned land (useable for sustainable developments) and commons (for public amenities, such as parklands). Incidentally, our pricing scheme described above incentivises such conversion as most of speculative land banks will fall under the heaviest discounted price category, minimizing the value of the write down and maximizing land rents to be collected on leasable lands.

This process will only be further enhanced by imposing a direct land-value tax on development sites, mentioned in this column in the previous issue.

Box Out: 8 reasons to mistrust ba-NAMA-rama

1. The potential for politicisation of the property and land valuations, combined with further politicisation of planning and development.
2. The lack of adequate oversight capacity in the Oireachtas even with the enhanced committee structure.
3. The lack of transparency in the pricing and valuation process.
4. The monopoly which it is to be granted on development and land related activity which is backed by lending from Irish institutions. There is a prima facia case here for very careful consideration of domestic and EU competition issues.
5. NAMA is to be granted portfolios of assets, regardless of whether these are performing or otherwise. Will performing borrowers whose loans are transferred to NAMA injunct such transfers on the grounds of reputational damage?
6. The skillsets required to manage a fundamentally distressed asset portfolio (NAMA) are lacking not only at NAMA, but across the entire public sector and most of the private sector.
7. The portfolio approach, where all loans in a portfolio regardless of quality are transferred, leaves NAMA open to mission creep with for example the potential for credit card, or auto loan portfolios being transferred in the future.
8. Finally, and most important there is the issue of the price to be paid for the assets of the banks.

Daily Economics 23/04/09: That place called Dublin

Irish Wholesale Price Index, March 2009
Available (here) from CSO: "Monthly factory gate prices decreased by 1.0% in March 2009. This compares to a decrease of 1.6% recorded for March 2008. As a result, the annual percentage
change showed an increase of 4.5% in March 2009, compared with an increase of 3.9% in February 2009. In the year there was an increase in the price index for export sales of 5.5% and an increase of 0.9% in respect of the price index for home sales." So we are not gaining any competitive edge on FX devaluations in exports trade, then. And there is no factory-gate deflation at home either.

In the month Office machinery and computers prices fell 2.1%, and Basic chemicals were down -1.1%. Some multinationals are taking a hit. There were increases in Pharmaceuticals and other
chemical products (+13.1%), Other food products (+11.8%), and Basic chemicals (+8.9%). SO some other MNCs are doing ok, although short-run price hikes can come back and bite these manufacturers. Building and Construction All material prices decreased by 2.4% in the
year since March 2008 and by 0.6% in March 2009. Not enough, if you ask me, and this leads to a question concerning the Government plans to achieve expenditure 'savings' on the back of cheaper capital construction costs... Year on year, the price of Capital Goods decreased by 0.6%, while there was a monthly price decrease of 0.3%.

Of course, our heroic boys of CER/ESB/EirGrid-controlled energy sector are turning out more and more price gauging as "Energy products increased by 3.2% in the year since March 2008, while Petroleum fuels decreased by 23.7%. In March 2009, there was a monthly decrease in Energy products of 0.9%, while Petroleum fuels decreased by 3.8%." Well, table below does show this in indisputable terms...
Is it time to fire CER? In my view, long overdue!


UK Budget
Some in Ireland are making 'happy faces' at the UK Budgetary numbers released yesterday. The UK forecasted that the General Government Deficit will reach 12.6% in 2009 - some 1.85% points above the 10.75% GGD built into Irish mini-Budget of April 7. A catch here is that I personally do not believe the Irish figure, having predicted (here) that our GGD will reach 12.5-13.0% this year - right about where the UK is placing its own expectations.

Going on with the misguided cheerleaders, today's Davy note says: "Moreover, gross debt to GDP is set to remain much higher in the UK than in Ireland." Hmmm... that is true only when it comes to direct public debt, excluding such 'trivialities' as financial sector commitments and guarantees (which total $641bn or 280% of our GDP in Ireland and only $375bn or 13.4% of the UK GDP: see here). Oh, yes, of course, some of the moneys on both sides of the Irish Sea is going to count as 'investment' on public balance sheet, but to you, me and the rest of the productive economy there is no difference - we will be paying the price in our taxes, investment or not. And the cheerleaders are forgetting another small point - Ireland's total debt (public and private) is actually much larger than that of the UK (see here, and the chart below - from here).
Now, I know I won't be welcomed by Davy in years to come for pointing this out, but Reality Bites!

Just to be fair, though, Davy also say that "Gross debt is a different matter: recapitalisation funds that need to be borrowed affect this metric. So the projected gross debt ratios will be quite fluid". Yeah, so fluid that we'll need buckets, not shovels to get that NAMA mess under control. UK liability under banks recaps is likely to be ca 10% of their overall guarantees commitments - taking into account the already substantial paydown of funds and the maturity of the downturn over there. So take it to be $37.5bn. Ireland's commitments are going to be around the same percentage share, or $64.1bn, of which only $9.8bn has been paid down so far. In the mean time, Ireland's benchmark yields on Gov bonds are in 420bps territory, UK's - 237bps. Shhhh... don't say it out loud, but it does look like Ireland's advantageous debt position, relative to the UK, is a quagmire. And no, this stuff is not simply 'academic'. Financing our 'low debt' position will cost us €1.83bn in interest expenditures pa. Financing the UK's 'perilous borrowings' will cost them €635mln per annum. Doughhhhh, as Homer would say it, all is grand in the Davy-world of voodoo economics...


Regional subsidies
Yesterday, ESRI published an interesting article: Who is paying for regional balance in Ireland? (available here). It is a worthy quick read if only for one reason - after hearing continuously the whingeing that passes for regional economic policy in this country and the anti-Dublin biases out in the country-side, the article puts few facts straight.

"...real resource transfers per head of population (i.e., the per capita excess of expenditure over revenue), have increased over time. In other words, redistribution across regions has increased over time. These transfers tend to flow from richer to poorer areas – a large negative correlation between the implied transfer of resources and real per capita gross value added. ...Expenditure is positively correlated with real per capita output (Gross Value Added), but tax revenue is even more strongly correlated with real per capita output, implying that the fiscal system operates to transfer resources from richer to poor regions."

Put in real (as opposed to ESRI's) terms, this means that few productive parts of the country are subsidising numerous less productive ones. Is this a good thing? Well, no.

• First, such subsidies distort returns to personal capital (physical and human) of those who receive them. In other words, people living in the parts of the country that are the 'gateways to excellence' are ripping off their productive compatriots while being deluded into believing their work actually adds value. It does not, at least not in a competitive way.
  
• Second, the transfers diminish the productive capacity of those who live where real jobs are located.
  
• Third, the subsidies continue to perpetuate the already extensive destruction of the country-side as extensive means of production are being subsidised over intensive economy.

"Overall, Dublin and the South-West region are substantial net contributors. For example, in 2004 both Dublin and the South-West contributed just over €2,000 per person while in the same year the Midlands region received a transfer of just over €3,000 per person." This is nice. As a person living in Dublin, I am apparently sending some €6,000 of my family income to the Midlands. This means that my 1,100sq ft Dublin city household is paying for some folks living in average 2,000 sq ft houses in the middle of nowhere. But should I choose to avail of the landscape and natural amenities that my money is paying for out there, I just might get a shovel-pat on my back from the subsidies-receiving locals. Hmmm...

"In 2004 just over €3 billion were transferred from the ‘net surplus regions’ Dublin, South-West and Mid-West to the other regions. Overall the tax burden (including social contributions) averages at €11,000 per person in 2004 with a high for Dublin of almost €14,000 per person and a low of €8,500 per person in the Midlands." Yes, this does account for those Midlands inhabitants working in Dublin too, so no arguments about 'We work in Dublin, so we are productive too' apply.

"In per capita terms ...Dublin is not favoured when it comes to capital expenditure. Indeed no clear pattern of ‘excess’ per capita capital expenditure can be detected in the data." In other words, we are building capital infrastructure stuff in the middle of nowhere.

But ESRI would not be itself if there was no voodoo of socialist economic dogma in the article somewhere. This comes at the end: "The finding that the system provides a significant degree of regional equity is largely the result of the centralised nature of revenue collection in
conjunction with the aim to provide similar levels of service across the full range of government activities in all regions. In order to achieve a similar level of equity with a less centralised system would require a more sophisticated system of fiscal equalisation payments across regions. Thus, while many have argued that the Irish system is too centralised this centrality turns out to be an asset in terms of achieving regional equity."

Run this by me again, please! 'Equity' apparently happens when younger and more productive workers of Dublin and South-West are paying older and less productive workers in the rest of the country? 'Equity' also means that we must achieve 'fiscal equalisation payments across regions'. This is the same economic illiteracy that argues that Sub-Saharan Africa can achieve growth by taxing the developed world.

One thing that was lacking in this paper, and indeed is lacking in overall research on regional transfers is how much more dependent on subsidies are specific areas. One that comes to mind is the area covered by the patchwork of various Gaelic ethnic enclaves sponsored by the Government. Another one - the patchwork of useless 'gateways' we have created across the country.

Yes, folks, ther eason we are forced to accept gang crime in Limerick and parts of Dublin, roads gridlock in the capital, lack of proper public transport, poor broadband services, horrific quality of landline phone services, overstretched schools and universities infrastructure in Dublin and the rest of the mess we call urban living in the Capital City is because we want 'equity' and 'equality' between those parts of the country that work and those that collect subsidies. Regional policy indeed...

Daily Economics 22/04/09: IMF's GFSR

IMF's Global Financial Stability Report (available here) is a lengthy read worthy of attention, both for its finance world-view and a diplomatically correct version of the 'Office' comedy. Subtle language turns tell more of a story of IMF's desperation from looking at APIIGS' incompetent macroeconomic management than the direct phrases. That said, there is little in the report, aside from two tests of financial contagion, that is either new or forward-looking.

"The United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland face some of the largest potential costs of financial stabilization given the scale of mortgage defaults."

Emphasis on the word 'mortgage' is mine, of course, added precisely because the IMF concern has not been, to date, echoed by many Irish economists or banks. In fact, all Irish banks currently assume that mortgage defaults will not happen. Instead, policymakers (via NAMA and debt issuance), bankers (via impairment charges and recapitalization funding) and economists (via RTE / Irish Times opinion pages) have been preoccupied with 'toxic' assets (development loans). Poor households have largely been left out of the 'They deserve help too' circle. The Government actually is so confident that mortgage defaults will not be a problem, that it is taxing households into the recession. As I have noted before, this presents a problem - should inflationary pressures rise, interest rates will regain upward momentum and Ireland will be plunged into a mortgages implosion.

How costly are Lenihan's commitments?
Moving on, two illustrations from the IMF report are worth putting together: First, the sheer size of the so-called 'costless' (Brian Lenihan's grasp of economics), guarantees written by Ireland Inc on our banks:Second, the real-world cost of these guarantees...I've identified this link between the throwaway promises Irish Government has been issuing since September and the cost of our debt before. It is nice to see IMF finally saying the same: "Figure 1.37 highlights that the spread on the issues guaranteed by sovereigns perceived as less capable of backing their guarantee is wider than for those that are deemed well able to stand behind their promises, such as the United States and France."
But here is another proof of the link between Brian Lenihan's guarantees and the cost of these to you and me:
Note the coincident timing: September 2008, and spreads on Government debt shooting through the roof to reach banks bonds spreads and trending from there on side-by-side to Anglo's Nationalization (another spike), then to recapitalization (a slight decline)...

Go long, not short...
The IMF advises the Governments to switch debt issuance to longer term maturities. Exactly the opposite is the strategy adopted by the Irish Government that has launched increasing quantities of new 3-9mo bonds into the markets. "...Authorities should take the opportunity of the currently low level of real long-term yields to lengthen the maturity of issuance where possible to reduce their refinancing risk," says the IMF, implying in simple terms that you shouldn't really pile on short term debt at the time of a prolonged crisis.

For all its faults, even the IMF knows that you can't run the country on the back of credit card debt. But Brian, Brian & Mary wouldn't have a clue, would they? All their experience relates to managing a cash cow for the public sector unions that is our public purse.

Shock scenarios
More interesting stuff is in the IMF's modeling of financial shocks: Scenario 1 (pure credit shock with no fire sale of assets - more like a situation in the US in recent months) v Scenario 2(credit shock with fire sale of assets - a more relevant case scenario for the likes of AIB). Here are the results of the latter test:
In scenario 2, Australia shows 7 double-digit responses to shocks to other countries' financial systems, Austria, Italy, Portugal, Sweden & UK 6; Canada, Japan, Spain & US 5; France 8; Belgium, Germany & Ireland 9; The Netherlands 12; Switzerland 13. This hardly supports an assertion that we are driven by external markets crises in our own financial sector to any exceptional degree. Yes, we are less exposed than Switzerland and the Netherlands, but we are way more exposed than the many other countries.

The table below (it is the same table that was reported by me in December 2008) shows that we have the second highest (after Luxembourg) ratio of Bonds, Equities and Banks Assets to GDP in the world - a whooping 900%!

Furthermore, Table 23 provides some amazing evidence: Banks Capital to Assets in Ireland stood at only 4.1% in 2008, down from the high of 5.2% in 2003. Only Belgium and The Netherlands have managed to get lower ratio in 2008. Irish Central Bank actually provided these figures to the IMF and yet the CB has managed to do precious nothing to correct the steadily deteriorating capital ratios throughout 2003-2008 period. This, presumably is why we pay our CB Governor a higher salary than the one awarded to his boss, the ECB Chief.

So the 'comedy' part now being played in Dublin has a simple scenario that IMF, with its diplomatic mission, will not reveal to us, but that is visible to a naked eye though the prism of the IMF report:

1. Incompetent state regulators (CBFSAI and more) get golden parachutes for damaging the financial services sector and the economy;
2. Incompetent and greedy politicos are shielding their unions', banks' and developers' cronies from risk and pain caused by (1);
3. The ordinary people and businesses of Ireland are paying for (1) and (2).

And the markets still show willingness to powder this charade with 110% bids cover on Irish Government bonds? For how long?

NTMA - a problem foretold

For months now I have been saying that soon, very soon, there will come a moment when the markets are not going to take any more of the Irish Government IOUs. At least not at the yields consistent with AAA, AA+, AA or even AA- ratings. The Government, its eager-to-please economic advisers and its boffins in the CBFSAI and DofF were not listening and continued to pile on debt commitments as if they were running a San Fran Fed, not an economy with 4.5mln people in it.

Today's NTMA results show that I was (and am) on the right track. I can't stress the fact that, in my view, NTMA are doing a good job in the current conditions, so whatever is to yet to come - it will be the fault of their masters in DofF and the Government.

In a quick summary, NTMA issued €1bn worth of bonds today in 5 and 9-year paper, with the markets willing to bid only €1.24bn on the offer - a 124% coverage overall. This compares with x3 times cover (300%+) for the previous auction. And, this time around, there was plenty of cash in the sovereign debt markets (not the case with the previous auction) with estimated €19bn worth of funds available for 'fishing'.

So what's at play? The 'bait' was off and the fish were too smart to line up for the Irish cast.

Last point first: Ireland to date has raised €12bn in its annual borrowing requirement (per DofF rosy estimate) of €25bn. This is just the stuff to finance the current deficit with. Again, per my projections we would need another €2-4bn in additional borrowings this year. How this can be achieved is unclear, as markets are getting thinner by the day and at €1bn per month, we are not getting there at any rate. But investors are bound to start getting even less welcoming when they realise that with NAMA, Ireland will have to open the flood gates for bonds issues - even at a hefty 40% discount, €90bn-strong NAMA will require €54bn in bond financing. That is the amount needed before we consider re-issuance of maturing paper...

Now to the wrong bait issue - the pricing of the bonds was very ambitious in my view - at 4% for €300mln worth 5-year paper (cover of 160%) and at 4.5% for a 9-year issue (cover at 110%). In March 24 auction, cover ratios achieved were 380% and 270%.

The next to watch is Thursday auction of short-term paper: 1-mo (€400-500mln), 3-mo (€500-600mln) and 6-mo (€400-500mln) T-Bills. If successful in finding a solid market, these might push Irish Government to switch into more aggressive financing through short-term debt - effectively creating a credit card system of financing for Irish deficits.

But even if the Government keeps short-term paper issuance at the going rate, it does appear to me that a part of the Government strategy is to use short-term bonds to finance spending in a hope that either:
(A) the economy improves dramatically (good luck to you chaps), or
(B) Brian Lenihan will raid the taxpayers in an even more massive robbery, comes Budget, or
(C) The ECB will take the balance off Brian's hands (in effect, we are borrowing recklessly short-term in a hope that a rich uncle rides into town with a wallet full of cash).
Otherwise, issuing 1-9mo debt when your problem is a structural deficit of ca €15bn (roughly 45% of your revenue) per annum is as close to playing a Russian Roulette as one can come.

But either way - (A) implies we can't deal with our mess ourselves (an embarrassing line of policy to take), (B) implies that the Government has no moral right to rule, while (C) implies that the Government is willing to go hat-in-hand to the world only to avoid threatening the Trade Unions. Take your pick.

Daily Economics 21/04/09: AIB and getting reality right

AIB is getting reality, courtesy of the Government...

You'd think it was a joke (here), but the Government that can't balance its own books and that prices risk as my two-and-a-half year old prices candies is now pushing an unwilling, reluctant, downright denial-bound AIB into re-considering its capital adequacy. What a fitting beginning of an end to the sorry saga of Irish banking.

CBFSAI or rather the more competent PWC hired to assist them, carried out a stress testing exercise on AIB and then the bank 'concluded' that €1.5bn more capital will be needed to keep the bank capitalized. And not just any capital - Tier 1 stuff, the caviar of the capital world.

The key word here is 'concluded' for it shows that, most likely, some back and forth bargaining between the bank and the Minister for Finance have taken place before arriving at the final figure. Which, of course, leaves me wonder - was the original stress test capital shortfall even bigger than that? We won't know unless PWC report is leaked.

AIB had core equity of €7.7bn (5.8%) and core Tier 1 of €9.9bn (7.4%) in January 2009 before getting €3.5bn in your and my money. Then, government preference shares hiked capital T1 to €13.4bn (10%) while equity remained intact at 5.8%.

Another transfer of wealth from us... to them
To plug the existent hole, AIB is hoping to sell its stakes in the US-based M&T and BZWBK (Poland). The book-value of these assets is questionable, with estimates of €2.2bn being on the higher end (Credit Suisse estimate) with €1.9bn estimated by AIB. But it is largely irrelevant, as sale of M&T will require a goodwill write-back yielding about €480mln in net T1 addition. Sale of BZWBK will require an RWA reduction, implying a net gain of €320mln. From €2.2bn of assets sold, AIB will get 75bps on Tier 1 - €800mln. Should the sale reduce the value of both assets by a modest 20%, you get €640mln boost to tier 1 (+60bps). In other words, someone (you and me) will have to cough up the remaining €700-860bn-odd cash injection for the bank.

There are reports of other accounting acrobatics - e.g repurchasing of various termed debts (tier 2) into perpetual paper (tier 1), but at the very least, the Government will end up putting enough cash into AIB coffers to own 30-50% of the bank outright. Another transfer of wealth will be in the works. From you and me to... ultimately - the public sector. Why? Because even if the Exchequer gets 10cents on a Euro, the Government will never rebate the money back to us. The Government will waste this cash on paying off the unionized public sector workers for 'industrial peace' achieved.

In the long run, the sale of both or either of the assets is going to be also a problem for the bank shareholders. Why? Because apart from having exposure to the US market (first to recover and to benefit from stronger trend growth in years ahead) and Poland (likely to show much stronger rebound than Ireland in years to come), AIB has no strategy as to how it will be making money into the future.

So to summarize: the recapitalization-Redux will be a raw deal for the taxpayers and shareholders, a sweetheart deal for the bank management and a modest payoff to the public sector unions and employees in the longer term.

Exposing NAMA scam
And it is back to NAMA. Recall the €80-90bn in loans that Lenihan is keen on shifting off the banks and into our taxpayer-financed vehicle? Remember the haircut to the loans value that the Davy etc were calling for? 15% that is, or a hit on the taxpayer of €68-76.5bn. Well, this is now getting bigger. If AIB needs €1.5bn in capital, before NAMAzation of its book, the two main banks will be going into NAMA with €22.4bn estimated core equity base and will inevitably lead to the Government as the majority shareholder in both banks even under a minor discount.

Now, consider the signals indicating the state of the loan books that the AIB stress-test conclusions suggest.

We do not have an exact split on LTVs for loans held by the banks. Bank of Ireland in November 2008 was reporting low-50% range for probably the most toxic of all loans - development land, but high-70% range for its overall property investment book. AIB reported in summer 2008 residential development book at 77% LTV (65% allocated to undeveloped land), total development book was evaluated at LTV in excess 70%.

So it is safe to assume that LTV on entire 2-banks loans book is averaging around 72-75%, while for development land - at ca 50%. The total development book to be bought up by NAMA will likely reflect a similar split to 35-65% in AIB, which out of €90bn can be ca €60bn (Davy, for example, have a similar number under their assumption). Since last reports, LTVs have gone up, as values dropped faster than loans write-downs reduced the 'L' part of the ratio, so these assumptions are relatively conservative.

For land, 55% LTV is likely to rise even further, as land markets all but ceased to function. How dangerous is this stuff?

Well, take BofI: land loans of €5.4bn, non-land development loans of €7.9bn. If LTV was 55% in November for land, the bank holds loans on the land with initial value of €5.4bn/0.55=€9.82bn. By many accounts, land is now largely valued at agricultural prices, plus a mark-up of say 50% for better locations. This would imply a 'Value' part fall-off of ca 70% for land. Let's be generous and allow for a 65% fall-off, reducing the BofI's land bank valuation to €9.82bn*0.35=€3.44bn. Under this scenario, assuming BofI takes an impressively honest impairment charge on land of 10%, the LTV has risen from 55% to €5.4*0.9/€3.44bn=141%. BofI will have to cover €1.96bn in lost value before NAMA discounts.

AIB's land bank valuation is €7bn*0.35/0.55=€4.45bn on currently-held €7bn in loans, with effective current LTV up from 55% to €7bn*0.9/€4.45bn=142%. AIB will have to cover €2.55bn in lost value before NAMA discounts. Assuming that this loss is taken at 40% knock-back on RWA, with 10% Tier 1 provision against RWA, we have a capital base hit of an odd €425mln due to land banks out of €1.5bn stress-test implied capital requirement.

But wait, this was just land.

Outside land, there is some roughly €48bn in other development stuff to be picked up by NAMA, with current LTVs at over 70% and values falling by over 40% by the time this recession will be over, implying book value adjusted for risk of €25.6bn - a shortfall of €22bn, approximately, which with 30% RWA impact and Tier 1 ratio of 10% assumptions will require €2.8bn in fresh capitalization.

So combined land and ordinary development stuff on the AIB book is roughly adding up to 1/2 of €2.8bn (non-land), plus ca €425mln (land) = €1.8bn in capital... Pretty close to the €1.5bn figure we got from the PWC's stress-testing after AIB 'agreed' with Mr Lenihan...

And the conclusions are:
Now get into the entire development books that NAMA is aiming to buy: at, say, 70% LTV, the €60bn in loans that NAMA will buy originally underwrote €86bn in 'value'. This will be down ca 45-50% by the end of the crisis (a relatively conservative assumption on housing and commercial development values declines), and assuming write-downs on loans at 5%, we have an implied bottom-of-crisis LTV ratios of €60*0.95/(€86*0.55)=121%.

Applying 15% cut on these loans, as Davy suggests, the taxpayers will be paying €51bn on risk-adjusted assets valued at €47bn, financing the purchase at, optimistically, 5.1-5.5% pa. That is equivalent to taking 121% mortgage on a house that has a closing cost of ca 8.5% upfront and is financed at an interest rate that is more than 2.5 times the rate of my current ordinary mortgage. This Government will turn us all into subprime borrowers.

So now we suspect two things:

1. Just on land alone, the pre-NAMA liability for two banks is ca €4.5bn - this the cash they will need to find before we level the NAMAzing discount of 15% (Davy), 25% (Merrrion) and so on.
2. The latest PWC/CBFSAI stress-test was most likely not stressful enough, as it barely covers the expected land & development loans-related capital losses alone.

And we know one thing: NAMA simply cannot work for the taxpayers!