The Credit Crunch explained

Why did the ECB and Fed flood the money with liquidity last week?

Inter-bank lending was seizing up. Overnight interest rates shot up above the level the central banks were targeting. They spiked to 4.6% in Europe versus an official rate of 4% and 6% in the US, versus an official rate of 5.25%.

Why was inter-bank lending seizing up?

Fear. Banks didn’t know who was credit-worthy. They didn’t want to end up losing money by popping it into an unsound institution.

What triggered this panic?

It has been building for weeks. But the final straw was the fear that the banks may be on the hook for tens of billions of dollars of emergency back-up loans needed to bail out the commercial paper (CP) market. Most of these loans were put in place on the assumption they would never be called upon. The problem is that investors in the CP market seem to have gone on a buyers’ strike. Suddenly, the banks faced demands to pony up those loans.

Why did CP buyers go on strike?

A lot of the CP was used to finance asset-backed securities. Some of these were for subprime mortgages in the US. “Subprime” is a euphemism. It really means high-risk. Many mortgages awarded last year were particularly junky: they were given to people with no income, no jobs, no assets (so-called Ninja mortgages). CP is only as safe as the houses it was secured against – and in many cases this turned out to be not very safe at all.

Why would anybody make a Ninja mortgage?

Banks thought they were protected for two reasons. First, US house prices were rising (they aren’t now). So, if worst came to worst, the lenders could just grab the house, sell it and recoup their loan. Second, the banks didn’t hang onto the loans. They just packaged the loans up and sold them off to somebody else, taking a cut. The risk was cleverly sliced and diced – like a Sushi master carving up a tuna – allowing many of the securities to be dressed up as triple-A credits.

But haven’t we known about subprime problems for months?

Yes. They have been exposed by falling house prices. One consequence: if you grabbed a delinquent’s home, the collateral might not be good enough to pay back the loan.

So why was there a credit crunch right now?

Because of the game of pass the parcel, it has not been clear who is holding the toxic paper. In the past month, though, we’ve had blow-ups in different parts of the world that have rammed home how widespread the problem is. Three, in particular, have spooked the markets: Bear Stearns in the US, IKB in Germany and BNP Paribas in France. What’s more, another important market – lending to leveraged buyouts (LBOs) – has frozen.

When is triple-A not triple-A?

What happened with Bear Stearns?

The US investment bank sponsored two hedge funds partly invested in sub-prime paper. Most of the cash came from outside investors. They were then leveraged up by borrowing from other banks. When the sub-prime crisis hit, investors tried to take out their cash, but Bear closed the funds. The lenders also demanded more collateral – a so-called margin call – and asked Bear to pump in cash itself. Initially, it refused. But the investment bank was eventually prevailed upon to provide a $1.6bn credit line to the least risky fund. The creditors seized the assets of the other fund.

Why did this unnerve the market?

It suggested Bear had liquidity problems. It also rammed home how triple-A ratings couldn’t be relied on and undermined confidence in the whole “mark-to-model” method for valuing asset-backed securities.

Explain again how junk mortgages get triple-A ratings

The likely-to-go-bad loans are popped into pools with lots of other mortgages. Then the risks and returns on these pools are divided into tranches. The riskiest slices are called “equity”. Whenever a mortgage in the pool runs into difficulties, the equity tranche takes the first hit. It’s only if all the equity gets wiped out that the next tranche steps up to the plate and has to take a hit. It’s a bit like lines of soldiers in an old-fashioned battle. Those at the back don’t tend to get killed unless those in front are massacred first. The last ones in the line of fire are the triple-A tranche.

And mark to model?

Well, for an asset that is frequently traded, financial institutions (like banks, hedge funds and the like) value it by looking at the market price. That’s called mark-to-market. But some of these mortgage-security tranches are not traded – or only infrequently. So they are valued by reference to mathematical models that estimate how many mortgages are going to go sour. It’s a bit like calculating how many soldiers in the back row are going to get killed by analysing old battles in the Napoleonic Wars.

What’s wrong with this?

It ignores liquidity. It’s all very well to have an asset that is theoretically worth, say, 95% of what you originally paid for it. But if you have to sell it in a hurry, because you are subject to a margin call, it’s only worth as much as somebody is prepared to pay.

When the game of pass the parcel stopped

What has the LBO bubble got to do with this?

Although it is a different market, it was buoyed by the same loose attitude to lending that led to dodgy mortgages – and the financing techniques were similar. What’s more, the market for supplying credit to LBOs got gummed up just after Bear’s funds ran into difficulties. Since some of the same players were involved, there was a double hit to confidence.

How does LBO financing work?

Initially, the debt is supplied by banks. But the banks don’t plan to hang onto the loans. They syndicate them onto others in the market, taking a fee in the process. It’s another game of pass the parcel.

How did the LBO market blow-up?

The banks got stuck with a number of loans that they wanted to syndicate. The game of pass-the-parcel didn’t play out how they intended with two big deals, in particular: Chrysler and Alliance Boots. With an estimated $50bn or so of LBO loans now stuck on their balance sheets and another $200bn-plus in the pipeline, banks are reluctant to make any more. There is also a knock-on effect on the equity market as LBOs have been one of the factors boosting share prices.

Uncommercial paper

How does IKB fit into this?

The German bank set up an off-balance sheet “conduit” called Rhineland Funding which invested in asset-backed securities, including some that owned bits of sub-prime mortgages. It funded itself with CP – a huge $19bn worth. The problem was that banks that had provided CP back-up credit lines were worried that the CP market would seize up as soon as investors realised how exposed Rhineland was to dodgy assets. The banks would then be called on to step into the breach. One of the banks, Deutsche Bank, blew the whistle and alerted the German regulators. The result was the CP market did indeed freeze up, causing problems for other entities funding themselves in the market.

Why was this any different from Bear?

There were two new worries. First, the virus was not contained in the US: it had crossed the Atlantic. Second, Rhineland’s troubles focused attention on risks in the CP market, which had previously been considered a virtually risk-free investment.

How can lending to a conduit like Rhineland be considered risk-free?

Well, it wouldn’t be if it weren’t for two other factors: back-up loans and credit enhancement packages. Back-up loans mean banks will provide liquidity if the CP market fails. What’s more, to get a triple-A rating, the sponsors (like IKB) put in “credit enhancement” contracts which mean they take the first hit if there are any losses.

But doesn’t this mean the risk just rebounds on the banks?

That’s what’s dawning on the market. And that’s why a problem that started with dodgy mortgages in the US risks infecting the heart of the banking system.

And what went wrong with BNP Paribas?

It had three money market funds with assets of E1.5bn. Around 35% was invested in instruments with exposure to the sub-prime market. When it found it couldn’t get a value for these assets, it suspended redemptions.

Isn’t that the same story again?