Streetwise Professor

Halloween is fast approaching, and Gazprom is getting into the spirit (no pun intended) of the holiday by trying to scare the children in Europe.  (No trip to the costume shop required.  Gazprom is a monster in real life.)

Specifically, Gazprom is telling lurid horror stories about what would happen if, heaven forfend, the EU limits Gazprom’s ownership and control over a pipeline from the Yamal Peninsula through Poland to Europe, and Europe moves away from long term contracts to spot contracting:

Medvedev said the EU initiatives forced Gazprom to change its operational routine to adjust to new rules under which customers have the right to change their nominations once, on the day before supply instead of several times a day. Gazprom now maintains backup transmission capacities to meet the quickly changing demand but under the new rules this is unfair competition, he said.

“It will be very difficult to provide the envisaged reliability and flexibility of supplies without such backup capacities… Taking into account seasonality and an extremely uneven demand throughout the day – reliability and flexibility are of paramount importance for the gas industry,” Medvedev said.

Medvedev also criticized EU plans to switch to a spot market mechanism of gas supplies from long-term contracts favored by Gazprom saying the new mechanism would lead to higher prices.

“Without long-term price contracts the volume of gas coming to the market starts depending on the price appeal. The gas will be available when the price is high. If the price is low, volumes may outflow to more attractive markets or stored until better times. Hence, the reliability of European gas supply will be determined by the competition with other global gas markets, primarily, with Asian ones,” Medvedev said.

He said there were also risks for the development of gas transmission and storage capacities which required heavy investment with a long payback period unattractive to anyone but gas companies.

I’m sitting in the airport waiting out a delay, so I have a lot of time–which is a good thing because The Other Medvedev’s (“TOM”) economic epistle is so chock-full of silliness it will take a while to deconstruct it.

My favorite part is the paragraph beginning: “Without long-term price contracts the volume of gas coming to the market starts depending on the price appeal.”  Uhm, isn’t that the whole idea?  Aren’t prices supposed to guide the allocation of resources to their highest value use?  Is TOM saying that gas currently doesn’t flow to the highest value users?  Isn’t it the point that high prices signal high demand and that volumes should respond accordingly?  And that the reverse is true?

A very telling example of Gazprom’s market-phobia.

Note the use of the scare word: “reliability.”  This suggests that gas will be turned off in a spot market regime.  Hardly.  If gas is scarce, the price will be high, but you can get it if you want to pay for it.

Furthermore, TOM could use a little schooling on the Coase theorem.  A long term contract with the Europeans gives them the right to receive the gas.  But if there is a higher value use for the gas–consuming it later, selling it to another market–those holding that right have an incentive to forego consumption and enter into transactions that ensure that the gas flows to that higher value use.  Basically what a long term contract would do is let the fixed price buyer capture the value of the gas when that value is high (and above the contract price), whereas Gazprom could capture it in a high price regime; the flip side is that the fixed price buyer overpays when the value is low (below the contract price).  So, to a first approximation, the form of contracting won’t affect where and when the gas flows, but will affect the allocation of surplus among the parties.

This analysis, of course, assumes that the parties adhere to the terms of a long term contract.  But Gazprom has an incentive to–and has in the past–acted in an opportunistic fashion.  When the value of gas exceeds the contract price, Gazprom has an incentive to renege opportunistically in order to capture the surplus that would otherwise go to the buyers under the contract.  If the shoe is on the other foot, of course, Gazprom will insist on rigorous adherence to the contract.  Opportunism is costly, as are the governance mechanisms to control it.

Insofar as price certainty is concerned, the development of a robust spot market for gas will facilitate the parallel development of a robust derivatives market for allocating price risk.  A spot market plus derivatives market facilitates efficient allocation of physical gas and gas price risk, while economizing on the contracting hazards inherent in the kinds of long term deals that Gazprom favors.

Note how Gazprom rattles the Asian market skeleton to scare the kiddies–another nice Halloween touch.  Sorry.  That’s getting a little old.  And especially when you’re talking about gas from Yamal, which is way out of position relative to China and other Asian markets.

Insofar as operational efficiency and flexibility are concerned, TOM acts as if he’s never heard of the vibrant North American market for natural gas that has been operating on open access principles for going on 25 years now.  Common carrier pipelines with markets for capacity, gas, storage services, and no integration of producers, transporters, and buyers work incredibly efficiently in North America.  Believe it or not, weather in North America can shift dramatically, leading to equally abrupt changes in the demand for gas.  Moreover, there can be supply disruptions (e.g., hurricanes, pipeline blowups).  Nonetheless, the price mechanism and the array of markets for the myriad, complementary services required to get gas from where it is to where it’s needed deal quite effectively with this fundamental volatility, and on a continental scale.  Gas flows from the frozen Canadian plains and the semi-tropical waters of the Gulf to every point in between on the continent, and can respond fluidly to the twists and turns of the weather, production, and industrial demand.  In short, the post-1986 experience in the US demonstrates that it is possible to achieve the “reliability and flexibility [that are] of paramount importance to the gas industry” without monopoly and vertical integration.

As to “risks for the development of gas transmission and storage capacities which required heavy investment with a long payback period unattractive to anyone but gas companies,” is TOM saying that Gazprom is willing to accept rates of return that do not compensate adequately for risk and the time value of money?  If so, that sounds like another reason to support a market-oriented approach that will employ capital more effectively.

And again, the US experience demonstrates that investors responding to market price signals are perfectly capable of making appropriate investments in transmission and storage.  Indeed, financial players have found investment in storage or acquisition of rights to use storage facilities quite profitable, and have used their knowledge of optionality to maximize the returns to such investments.  (There are a lot of real options in a storage facility, most notably over choosing the timing of inflows and outflows.)  And in the bargain, this rigorous approach to understanding and exploiting the optionality of storage has served to enhance market efficiency, flexibility, and reliability.

In brief, TOM is either a blinkered ignoramus with no knowledge of economics or of the gas market outside his cozy little (well, not little) monopoly, or he is shoveling it fast and furious. Sounds like a pick ’em to me.

This means that nobody should be scared of Medvedev’s Tales from the Crypt.  Indeed, the very developments that Gazprom fears would be a boon for its consumers.

The headline of the Ria Novosti article is “Gazprom says EU gas reform a threat to the company,” which makes it clear that Gazprom is the one running scared.  That threat may well may be a very real one.  And that would be more like Christmas than Halloween, at least to those currently dependent on Gazprom for a good share of their gas.  So this is a RN headline that I hope comes true.

CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton never struck me as the Claude Rains type, but he recently did a good Capitaine Reynaud imitation:

“The number of people that have come in requesting to be exempt from the law, or to have the law delayed has literally shocked me,” said Bart Chilton, 50, a Democrat who has served as one the agency’s five commissioners since 2007. “A lot of folks are having problems coming to grips with the fact that they do have a new law, and will have to change their business models.”

. . . .

“The volume and intensity of the lobbying is unprecedented in my experience at the agency,” Chilton said. “They all have an ask. The types of loopholes that people are suggesting exist are either non-existent or very farfetched.”

Neither Chilton nor anybody else should be even mildly surprised, let alone shocked.  The requirements of Frank-n-Dodd are so extensive, and so intrusive, that they will impose substantial costs on derivatives market participants.  Said participants have every incentive to try to influence the rules.  And the time is now.  What’s more, they have every incentive to try any argument that might work.  What’s to lose?

The pace and intensity of the lobbying will no doubt ease after the rule making process winds up next summer.  But no matter how carefully-crafted the rules (hah!), they will not anticipate all contingencies, and will have ambiguities and contradictions.  Moreover, market participants will take unanticipated actions that will raise issues about interpretation of the rules.  Hence, for years to come market participants will continue to try to affect the agency, ask for interpretations or no comment letters, or do things that lead to an agency reaction and market participant counter-reaction.  The CFTC will also find it necessary to issue policy statements to clarify the inevitable confusions.  There will be litigation arising from the legislation and regulations that will result in decisions and findings that lead to yet more changes.

In no time, there will be a thicket of decisions and interpretations that will in turn raise new issues.  And the market will continue to adapt and innovate and evolve, both in response to the regulations and technology and market shocks.  These adaptations and evolutions will present further challenges to the regulations and the regulators.

All this will generate more lobbying and lawyering.

When this happens nobody–nob0dy–should express the slightest shock.  Unless, that is, they relish the role of laughingstock.

One of the first things I wrote on Russia was “Just Say No–to Gazprom,” published in Energy World Magazine in July, 2006.* Apparently the Poles didn’t have a subscription, as they seem bent on saying yes to Gazprom’s terms for a verrrrryyyy long term gas contract–with deliveries running out to 2037(!).  Vladimir Socor lays out some of the terms of the agreement:

1) Packaging the new agreement with the 1993 inter-governmental agreement on transit of Russian gas via Poland and deliveries to Poland, which runs to 2022; and setting the duration of deliveries by contract until 2037. All this would help Gazprom to continue monopolizing the Polish market for that duration, preventing diversification of Poland’s natural gas imports and discouraging investment in the LNG project.

2) Exclusive right for Gazprom to use the Yamal-Europe pipeline in Poland until 2045. This would consolidate Gazprom’s position in Poland and Germany for another generation.

3) Europolgas to retain ownership as well as commercial and other operating rights on this pipeline. Thus, Gazprom would be able to lock out any competitors, also precluding reverse-use of this line.

4) Poland’s national transmission operator, Gaz-System, to become technical operator of Yamal-Europe in Poland, limited to a service provider’s role. This would fall far short of the operator’s independence from the supplier.

5) Deeply discounted transit fees to remain in force on this pipeline. The discount is intended not only for Gazprom’s profit, but also to deprive Poland of plough-back funds for modernizing this pipeline independently of Gazprom.

6) A ban on Polish re-export of Russian gas to third countries, with a right for Gazprom in that case to reduce its gas supplies to Poland by a corresponding amount. This is in line with Gazprom’s traditional third-country clause, irreconcilable with the EU’s gas market legislation.

All of these terms serve to tie Poland’s hands, and perpetuate both its and Europe’s dependence on Gazprom–and its vulnerability to opportunistic behavior in the future.

This very long term arrangement would be very short-sighted, just from a narrow Polish perspective.  There is tremendous uncertainty about the gas market right now.  Shale has already revolutionized the market in the US, and the effects are so large that it is having spillover effects around the world.  There are very real prospects for shale to have similarly dramatic impacts in Asia and Europe.  LNG potential is also great, and the interaction between shale and LNG technologies could further transform gas markets.  Traditional relationships in the Caspian are changing, and quite volatile; gas that once moved only through Russia and by Russian sufferance, now could move in myriad directions to myriad markets.  Ditto the Middle East, with the Kurds in Iraq representing a real wild card, and in the longer term, the possibility for Iran to become a viable supplier.  The European gas market is liberalizing, and there is a real prospect for a spot market developing in the near- to medium-term.  All of these factors have the potential to enhance dramatically flexibility in obtaining supplies, and undermining the need for any consumer to rely on a particular producer and pipeline system.

The trends are against Gazprom, and even discounting the trends, the incredible amount of uncertainty about future supply prospects and transport technologies dramatically enhances the real option value of waiting before locking into legacy supply relationships for more than a quarter century.

This is exactly why Gazprom is so hot to do this deal now, and why it is attempting to impose all these restrictions that would sharply constrain Poland’s ability to respond to favorable supply shocks in the future.  That’s perfectly understandable: what’s more mysterious is Poland’s haste in doing a deal on terms that do not reflect Gazprom’s strategic weakness over the coming decades.

And it’s not as if Poland will benefit greatly if these developments do not pan out, and legacy production and supply systems remain dominant.  If that happens, Gazprom will act opportunistically and attempt to exploit its greater power (unconstrained by these new supply sources that proved chimerical) in the future.  In other words, this is pretty asymmetric from Poland’s perspective: they give up the opportunity to benefit from favorable supply developments, but will be at Gazprom’s mercy if those favorable developments don’t occur.

Thus, this doesn’t make sense from a purely Polish perspective.  But there’s also an externality involved: Poland dealing with Russia means that it will succumb to the typical disaggregation/divide-and-conquer strategy so beloved of Russia and Gazprom.  This will redound to the disadvantage of Europe.  Europe, therefore, is attempting to pressure the Poles not to sign this deal.  The European Commission claims that the deal contravenes EU law.

Poland, as so often in the past, is caught between Western Europe and Russia.  But the choice should be an easy one.  EU and Polish interests are aligned: Polish and Russian interests are not.  If this lot of Polish pols does the deal now, Poles and pretty much everybody to the west will be paying the price for a long time to come.

* That’s a gated link.  I’ll try to get a PDF put online.

CFTC Commissioner Jill Sommers gave a speech at a conference titled “Clearinghouses as Mitigators of Systemic Risk” that makes interesting reading.

As the title of the conference might suggest, Sommers was quite conversant in the clearing catechism:

Generally, a comprehensively regulated clearinghouse should help reduce systemic risks by facilitating the netting of transactions and by mutualizing credit risks. When a contract between a buyer and seller is submitted to a clearinghouse for clearing, the contract is “novated” to the clearinghouse. As such, the clearinghouse is substituted as the counterparty to the contract and then stands between the buyer and the seller. Clearinghouses then guarantee the performance of each trade that is submitted for clearing. Clearinghouses use a variety of risk management practices to assure the fulfillment of this guarantee function and to avoid losses at the clearinghouse. Moreover, the CFTC has closely monitored these risk management practices at the clearinghouse level and at the futures commission merchant level to ensure risk is properly being managed. The Commission has always recognized that the clearinghouse must protect itself from unnecessary risk, and if it failed to do so, large segments of the markets and market participants could be put at unnecessary risk as well.

Clearinghouses mitigate risk through the daily discipline of marking to the market price, at least once each business day, each position cleared through the use of prices that are independently determined by the clearinghouse. All gains and losses that arise as a result of the mark-to-market process are settled (i.e., paid and received) each day. Clearinghouses also require the daily posting of margin to cover the daily changes in the value of all positions as extra protection against potential market changes that are not covered by the daily mark-to-market. The methodology used by clearinghouses to calculate such margin requirements are subject to regulatory review and approval.

. . . .

With the mandated use of a regulated clearinghouse coupled with effective risk management practices, the failure of a single large trader, like AIG, would be much less likely to jeopardize all of the counterparties to its trades. I must stress, however, all risk is not eliminated, but it is substantially reduced. One of the lessons that emerged from the recent financial crisis was that institutions were not just “too big to fail,” but also too interconnected through non-transparent swaps that the institutions did not effectively manage. By mandating the use of central clearinghouses, institutions would become much less interconnected, mitigating risk and increasing transparency. Throughout this entire financial crisis, trades that were carried out through regulated exchanges and clearinghouses continued to be cleared and settled.

Needless to say, I’m a heretic.  Mandated clearing doesn’t necessarily increase netting opportunities, and even if it does, since it effectively reorders creditor priority it does not necessarily reduce systemic risk.  And if netting reduces costs so much, why didn’t firms adopt clearing voluntarily?  The “daily discipline of marking to the market price” is problematic if “the market price” is difficult to determine, due to illiquidity/lack of trading.  What’s more, regular posting of variation margin is not unique to CCPs, and is quite common in OTC deals.  Furthermore, the variation margin mechanism can be exactly what touches off or exacerbate market panics.  AIG is a terribly misleading example.  CCPs do not reduce interconnectivity; they just change the topology of the interconnections.  Furthermore, CCPs are tightly embedded in the financial marketplace, most notably in the credit system.  To pretend otherwise is foolish.

Sommers’s other remarks are more intriguing.  She recounts of the CFTC’s previous policies towards OTC derivatives and clearing in particular:

In July 1989, the Commission published its 1989 Swaps Policy Statement. This statement reflected the Commission’s view that most swap transactions, although possessing elements of futures or option contracts, were not appropriately regulated as such under the Act and Commission regulations. This was important because the Commodity Exchange Act required all futures contracts to be traded on exchange. The policy statement allowed these transactions to continue trading off-exchange by creating a “non-exclusive safe harbor” for transactions satisfying certain requirements. The safe harbor requirements included five elements: (1) individually-tailored terms; (2) absence of exchange-style offset; (3) absence of clearing organization or margin system; (4) the transaction is undertaken in conjunction with a line of business; and (5) a prohibition against marketing to the public.

In other words, prior to the CFMA of 2000, any attempt to introduce netting (item (2)) or clearing and margining (item (3)) into the OTC market would have run afoul of the Commodity Exchange Act’s requirement that all futures contracts must be traded on exchanges (designated contract markets); netted and/or cleared swaps would have been considered futures.

This should be remembered, but is typically not.  I’ve often wondered whether CFTC policy, and the CEA more generally, discouraged the evolution of OTC clearing, and channeled the industry along the path that Dodd-Frank has now declared an anathema.  We’ll never know for sure, but it must be recognized that during the formative years of the OTC market, the law and regulation effectively foreclosed–precluded–the development of institutions that Congress and the CFTC now deem essential for financial stability.  The irony.

Sommers adds some refreshing honesty about the monster that is Frank-n-Dodd.  Most notably, she discusses the swaps execution facility mandate:

An area that I am very interested in, as are many other market participants, is what the requirements of trading swaps on a SEF will be. The CFTC and SEC heard a great deal of concern about this issue from market participants at a joint roundtable on September 15th. CFTC staff has recently estimated that 30-40 entities will register as SEFs or designated contract markets. The designated contract market model is easy for the Commission and market participants to deal with. We know how they work, and market participants know how they work. SEFs are new, and the relevant statutory language is not very clear. When you read the new statutory language in conjunction with existing statutory language, it raises some questions.

Section 1(a)(34) of the CEA defines “trading facility.” It is a definition that the CFTC and market participants have been working with for years. In essence, a trading facility is a physical or electronic facility or system wherein multiple participants can execute or trade agreements by interacting and accepting bids or offers of multiple other participants. A many-to-many type model.

In defining what a SEF is in Section 721 of Dodd-Frank, Congress did not require that a SEF be a trading facility. Instead, Congress defined a SEF as a “a trading system or platform” in which multiple participants have the ability to execute or trade swaps by accepting bids and offers made by multiple participants in the facility or system, through any means of interstate commerce, including any trading facility, that (A) facilitates the execution of swaps between persons; and (B) is not a designated contract market.” (emphasis added).

So clearly, by this definition Congress intended that a trading facility could be a SEF, but that a SEF did not have to be a trading facility because Congress used the words “trading system or platform” to define SEFs. In my view, by introducing the term “trading system or platform” when we already have “trading facility” as a defined term means that Congress must have intended a SEF to be different from a trading facility.

Her confusion is palpable.  And understandable.  If the status quo ways of executing swaps were OK, Dodd-Frank would not have added  an SEF requirement.  If Dodd-Frank intended an SEF to be the same as a trading facility, it would have said so.  Thus, Frank-n-Dodd says what SEFs aren’t–the status quo or trading facilities–but doesn’t say what they are.  It is particularly confusing because some of the requirements that SEFs must meet–interaction between bids and offers submitted by multiple participants–characterize trading facilities.  So Congress essentially handed the CFTC an enigma and walked away.  One can feel for Sommers, her fellow Commissioners, the staff–and the industry.

She also mentions the confusion over the definition of swap dealer:

One of the areas that has caused a great deal of concern among many market participants is whether they will be classified as a swap dealer or major swap participant. Such a classification brings with it the imposition of capital, margin, recordkeeping and retention and business conduct rules, and rules for segregating customer funds. Currently six rule writing teams are working on this area. One is working on a series of definitions, including swap dealer and major swap participant, one is working on registration requirements, and others are working on business conduct standards, capital, margin, and segregation issues.

The CFTC’s Chairman has stated that initial estimates are that there could be in excess of 200 entities that will be swept up into the definition of swap dealer based upon current ISDA primary member status. Registering and regulating that many swap dealers will be a huge task for the CFTC and will have very important implications for those entities and their businesses. Comparatively, we now have about 127 FCMs that are registered with the Commission. In my view it is critical that we ensure that this new regulatory regime intersects seamlessly with our existing regime to ensure that registrants and their customers suffer no disruption in their business and hedging strategies. I have asked staff to estimate the number of entities that may be swept into the definition of major swap participant. Unfortunately, they have not yet been able to do so. This uncertainty raises concerns about ensuring a disruption-free transition, an issue that the Commission and staff will be closely monitoring.

Note, and beware.  If Gensler’s 200 number is even ballpark, CFTC will have responsibility over more than twice as many entities as is currently the case.  Moreover, these new entities are often larger, more complex, and certainly more diverse than the population of FCMs currently under its ambit.  Big hedge funds, supermajor oil companies, big money managers, and universal banks are all likely to be considered swap dealers, or major swap market participants.  These are very different animals, and far more complicated ones, than the FCMs.  Moreover, they are all different from one another in crucial ways, but they have to be shoehorned into one of two standardized categories.  This is unlikely to end well.

Sommers also notes that CFTC is tasked with establishing position limits, but doesn’t have the data necessary to do the job properly:

Complicating all of that are the provisions of Dodd-Frank. The CFTC and SEC have 360 days to issue regulations establishing swap data repositories to which swap data will be reported. The Commission has 180 days for energy and 270 days for agriculture to propose aggregate position limits across futures markets and equivalent OTC markets. The problem is, Dodd-Frank requires us to propose position limits months before a mechanism is in place for obtaining the necessary data from the OTC swap markets. In order to propose appropriate limits, we must know the size of these markets. Without the necessary data for OTC markets, we will not really have all the information we need to propose appropriate limits. But, the law is the law so we will propose limits and hope they are at such a level that they do not cause damage to these markets.

Sommers also indulges in hope over experience:

CFTC and the SEC. Historically, the SEC and CFTC have not been very successful proposing joint rules, even when directed by Congress to do so. This time, however, may actually be different.

Seeing will be believing.  And even if everybody has been playing well together so far, the tough decisions have yet to be confronted, and the affected interests have yet to play one agency against another, as will occur inevitably.  Add to that normal inter-agency rivalry, compounded by a profound change in relative authority, and it is pretty plain that serious disputes are inevitable.

Sommers’s speech is a good overview of the issues and challenges facing the CFTC.  Reading her speech and Frank-n-Dodd gives me the same feeling that I had on some Christmas mornings when tasked with assembling some rather complicated toy, and having to rely on directions originally written in Chinese, then translated into Korean, before being translated into English.  The main difference being that if I threw up my hands in frustration, there would be just one disappointed little girl.

I wish Sommers and the CFTC luck.  They’re going to need it.  And so will we.

The Hunt brothers are the poster children for the old joke: “Want to make a small fortune trading commodities?  Start with a large one!”  [Ba Dum Ching!]

Their not-so-excellent silver adventure is also an interesting object lesson in other ways.  In particular, it shows that clearing, initial margin, rigorous daily mark-to-market variation margin, and exchange trading are do not immunize the broader financial markets from contagion originating in the derivatives markets.

It is no doubt true that initial and variation margin reduce the credit exposure in a specific derivatives trade.  But that doesn’t mean that requiring collateralization of derivatives trades in a way that dramatically reduces credit exposure in a particular trade reduces the amount of leverage in the system; or reduces the likelihood of default against that borrowed money as the result of an adverse price move in the derivatives market.

This is because the creditworthy will get credit, until they aren’t.  If you deny them one channel to obtain credit (e.g., by charging hefty margins on futures trades) they can get credit through other channels.  They can use that credit to support their speculations in derivatives markets.  And if those speculations go the wrong way, it can cause the formerly creditworthy to default.  If they’ve borrowed enough, the whole system can have trouble.

That’s exactly what happened in the Hunt case.  The Hunts borrowed, from various sources, approximately $1.3 billion to support their silver market activities. That’s the equivalent of about $3.5 billion today.  They used the borrowings to pay margins and to buy physical silver.  When the price of silver fell, they couldn’t pay back their loans.  This almost led to the failure of several major brokers and banks, and could have sparked a full-scale banking crisis.  In a process not too different from that involved with the rescue of LTCM in 1998, banks restructured the Hunts debt in order to avoid a crisis: the Fed’s (and Paul Volcker’s) role in this was and is very murky, but (a) it was decidedly contrary to stated Fed policy at the time, (b) Volcker could have killed it if he had wanted, but (c) it happened.  So draw your own conclusions.

Here are the details.  After skyrocketing in late-1979, the price of silver started to drift down in 1980.  The Hunts needed cash to meet margin calls, and they borrowed money–about $233 million–from their main broker, Bache.  The loan was collateralized by silver.  Bache, in turn, rehypothecated the capital and used it to back borrowing of the money from First National Bank of Chicago.  In addition, the Hunts borrowed large sums from Swiss Bank, as did their pilot fish in this endeavor, a group of Saudi investors who were trading through the firm IMIC.  In addition, IMIC borrowed money from Merrill Lynch and commodity broker ACLI.

Most of these borrowings were used to meet margin calls.  Most of these borrowings were collateralized with physical silver.

Prices continued their downward drift, and on 17 March, 1980 the Hunts missed a margin call.  Bache covered it.  IMIC also missed margin calls on 3/25.  Broker Conti covered it.

The price decline the accelerated, and threatened to turn into a rout, when the Hunts announced an ad hoc, not to say harebrained, scheme to sell silver bonds.  This signaled to anybody paying attention that the heretofore supremely confident silver bulls were having serious cash flow issues.  The prospect of their silver hoard (and that of their IMIC shadow) being dumped on the market put prices under serious pressure.

On the 26th, the Hunts told Bache they could not meet any additional margin calls.  Bache panicked, and tried to get the CFTC and COMEX to close the silver market, and force settlement of all outstanding contracts at a price that would allow the Hunts to pay them back.  COMEX and CFTC refused.

The market therefore opened on the 27th–“Silver Thursday.”  Bache liquidated Hunt positions, and sold silver held as collateral.  It made the sales in London through a UK subsidiary, incurring losses–but Bache NY promised to cover the losses.

There were serious concerns that day that Bache would go under.  The CFTC deemed other brokers to be vulnerable, notably ACLI, Conti, Merrill, and Paine Webber .  A default by any one of these would have put the COMEX clearinghouse in jeopardy: a default by more than one, almost certainly would have.  The Fed’s (now) venerable Gerald Corrigan, openly worried about the viability of the COMEX clearinghouse.  Given the realized and potential losses, a COMEX clearing failure was a real possibility.  Again: clearing is not a panacea.

To raise cash to meet its obligations to the clearinghouse, Bache dumped stocks as well as silver.  They were not alone.  Stocks declined rapidly, the Dow losing about 5 percent, before recovering to close almost unchanged.  (Another interesting sidelight of this episode: a “Flash Crash” years before anybody even dreamed of HFT.*)

But Bache was able to scrape together enough money to meet its obligations to the clearinghouse and pay off its loans.  The owners of ACLI and Conti injected capital. Things seemed to be under control.  Disaster seemed to have been averted.

Not so fast.  When prices were sky high, silver giant Engelhard was having a difficult time meeting margin calls on its short COMEX silver futures positions.  So it had entered into exchange-for-physical (EFP) deals with the Hunts, whereby the Hunts agreed to take the Engelhard short positions (which were offset against some Hunt longs), and agreed to buy physical silver from Engelhard for delivery at the end of March, 1980.  Again–more credit, this time, extended by Engelhard to the Hunts.

When the delivery date came, based on the sales price in the EFP contracts and the prevailing price of silver, the Hunts were underwater by $335 million.  Engelhard insisted on cash.  The Hunts said sorry, ain’t got no cash.

Engelhard could have forced the Hunts into default and bankruptcy.  If that had happened, the entire Hunt debt pyramid, all $1 billion plus, would have been in default.  Several banks would have been at risk of failure–First Chicago, the nation’s 9th largest bank, most notable among them.

But Engelhard blinked–or did the country a favor, depending on how you look at it.  It accepted some Hunt oil properties in the Beaufort Sea instead of cash.

Another bullet dodged.  But the banks still realized that the Hunts were in hock to them for huge sums, and a good chunk of the brother’s wealth was still in silver that was worth a fraction of what they had paid for it.  There was still a serious risk of default, and the Hunts had a lot of bargaining leverage.  The prospect of a protracted war in bankruptcy court was hardly appetizing to the banks.

So they bit the bullet (sorry–free association at work), and renegotiated the loans with the Hunts.  The loans to the brothers were paid off by a new loan to the Hunt family oil firm, Placid Oil.  Finally, the problem was taken care of.

The role of the Fed and Chairman Volcker in this loan is shrouded in mystery. Congress pressed Volcker for answers, and he, in classical central banker fashion, obfuscated and stiffed them.  But it should be noted that the loan was starkly at odds with the Fed’s new policy of restricting credit, most especially credit for commodity speculation.  Volcker had insisted that the loan include the condition that the Hunts cease speculating in all commodities, not just silver.  Moreover, given the Fed policy and its power, if Volcker had wanted to stop the loan, there is no doubt he could have.  Thus, there is evidence of both active and tacit Fed approval of the ultimate solution.

This arrangement foreshadows the solution, 18 years later, to the LTCM problem.  Then, as in 1980, the Fed shepherded a group of private banks to finance the resolution of the victim of a derivatives blowup.

To sum up.  Here we have a market that was (a) exchange traded, (b) cleared, (c) subject to initial margins, and (d) subject to rigorous daily variation margins.  All of the things that our latter day financial reformers assert will purge derivatives-related financial contagion from the system.  Yet a derivatives-related financial contagion occurred nonetheless.

Why is that?  The reasons are pretty clear.  The real source of potential derivatives related contagion exists when (a) a large entity takes on a substantial price risk through the derivatives market (or the underlying market, e.g., silver, or both), and (b) that entity is highly leveraged.  The clearing, margining, etc., is intended to reduce the leverage extended to the entity via the derivatives transactions.  But even if it doesn’t get credit via the derivatives trade, a creditworthy entity can use its debt capacity to get credit elsewhere.  If it does so, and its speculative bet goes wrong, it may default.  If it borrow enough, the default may lead to a financial crisis.

The default may impact the clearinghouse.  Clearing members may be among the defaulter’s creditors.   The default may lead to missed margin payments.

But even if the clearinghouse survives, a crisis may occur nonetheless.  It’s the total amount leverage that matters most, far more than the form of that leverage.  If a given position is collateralized, thereby reducing the credit exposure inherent to it, but that collateral is effectively borrowed, the risk to the system isn’t any different than if the position isn’t collateralized but the entity doesn’t do any other borrowing.  All that really changes is who ends up carrying the can in the event of a default.

This is a Modigliani-Miller-like result.  It means that regulating the credit in one part of a position doesn’t really matter if the entity can obtain credit elsewhere.  If that entity has a given debt capacity, or target debt level, they’ll get the credit somewhere.  This means that you can’t really affect the systemic risk posed by big speculators by limiting their access to one channel of credit.

Which further means that requiring the clearing and collateralization of speculative positions will not substantially reduce the systemic risk posed by speculative trading.  Nor will exchange trading.  You can take risk on an exchange or off.  You can get credit through a derivatives trade, or elsewhere.  Either way, a big speculator can put together the same price risk + leverage position.  It is that risk+leverage exposure that matters, not how you get there.  Clearing and exchange trading mandates just affect the route, not the final destination.

The Hunt episode should thus serve as a cautionary tale.  Like the story of the Gold Panic of 1869, it shows that cleared, exchange traded markets pose systemic risks too.  Married with some rather straightforward economic logic, these episodes show that you should not expect that mandating how things are traded and how they are collateralized will materially affect systemic risks.  Those who assert the contrary are missing the forest for the trees, and instilling a false sense of security.

PS.  That shouldn’t cause you too much extra work, Allan:)

* Speaking of the Flash Crash, I’ve read the CFTC-SEC joint report. I will post on it tomorrow.  Teaser: the report leaves the most interesting and important questions unanswered.

Weather in Ghana has been good to the cocoa crop this year, which is putting downward pressure on prices:

After four years of shortages that sent the price of cocoa to its highest level in three decades, traders almost unanimously believe that the cocoa market is set to move into a surplus in the 2010-11 marketing year, which starts on Friday.

The looming oversupply has sent cocoa prices down by a third in the past two-and-a-half months.

The surge in production in west Africa, which accounts for nearly 70 per cent of the world’s supplies of the commodity used in chocolate, is a setback for investors such as hedge funds Armajaro and Clive Capital, which bet on rising prices earlier this year.

The cost of cocoa in London – the benchmark – has fallen to about £1,900 a tonne, down from a 33-year high of £2,732 a tonne set in July.

So Tony Ward must be hurting, right?  After all, he told the world–the world–that due to his super-sophisticated weather forecasting system, a proprietary network of weather stations, and the best weather data in the world, he knew a crop shortage was coming. So he must have been way long, and the price fall must have crushed him.

Well no, actually:

Investors say that Anthony Ward, the founder of Armajaro’s flagship CC+ fund, has suffered less than expected, however, as bearish hedges cushioned the fund from the price drop.

Oh, really?  Hedges, huh?

This means that the story he was flogging in July and August was complete bilge.  He wasn’t bullish on the new crop. It would be more accurate to say that he was bullsh*t on the new crop.

Which also means that his cover story for taking delivery in July was also complete bilge/bullsh*t.

Not that I am the least bit surprised.  The story made no sense anyways: it’s nuts to take delivery of the old crop at a big backwardation just because you think the new crop price is going to shoot up.  If you think that, buy the new crop, not the old crop. Duh.

Here’s a far more credible explanation of what happened.  Armajaro cornered the cocoa market.  Being clever, Ward knew the most difficult part of cornering is burying the corpse, so he did that by obtaining a burial plot in advance: the “bearish hedges” mentioned in the article.  All of the new crop shortage stories were just so much eyewash to fool the gullible.

Of whom, as this article and others indicate, FT reporters–most notably Javier Blas–are the foremost.  If they won’t get a room, could they at least get a clue?

No, this is not a letter/email from a poor–and megalomaniacal–college student.  It is a (slightly) snarky characterization of recent statements coming from the CFTC.

First, the money.  From Reuters (here’s a link to a related story: can’t find this story which was emailed to me):

The U.S. futures regulator could be forced to rein in tough new plans to tighten oversight of the $615 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market if it does not get promised new funding, two of the agency’s commissioners said on Tuesday.

If the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is denied the extra funding requested for fiscal 2011 it will have a hard time hiring staff needed to implement Wall Street reforms, said Jill Sommers  and Bart Chilton, commissioners with the CFTC.

“If we do not have the resources, we shouldn’t have ambitions that go beyond those resources,” Sommers, a Republican commissioner, told Reuters.

In a separate interview, Chilton, a Democratic commissioner, said the agency would be “in real trouble” if it went six months without a boost, and said he worries the CFTC could be in a lurch for the whole year.

“We would … have to pick and choose parts of the bill to implement — and that would mean things would not get done on time, as Congress as suggested,” Chilton said.

There is no doubt that CFTC needs a substantial boost in money and people in order to meet the Frank-n-Dodd requirements.  But given the daunting tasks, some devastating problems are inevitable.  CFTC cannot rely on existing self-regulatory organizations to to much of its heavy lifting in the markets it is now responsible for.  Moreover, dramatically scaling up the size of an organization inevitably creates problems as inexperienced people are brought in and experienced people are pushed beyond their capabilities and competence.  There will be problems.  Even train wrecks.  Plural.

The CFTC reminds me of the dog that finally caught the car, and asks: “Now what do I do with it?”

Second, the power.  Two pieces to this, just today.  The first is Gary Gensler’s floating the suggestion that the CFTC should have authority to set position limits just for energy, ags, or metals, but CDS as well:

Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said it’s “important” to have limits on trading positions in credit-default swaps as well as for commodities derivatives.

Regulators should have the authority to set position limits both on credit-default swaps and physical commodities derivatives, Gensler told a conference on financial rules in Brussels today. Limits “allow us to better protect against abusive practices.”

“We’ve been setting position limits in agricultural commodities and energy commodities for decades so we can learn from that,” Gensler said in an interview. Details of limits for credit-default swaps “are yet to come.”

Position limits are a bad idea to start with.  And apropos the money part of the post: Yeah.  More things on its plate in markets which it has no experience in regulating.  Just what the CFTC needs.

But this isn’t the only contemplated exercise of power in today’s news.  The CFTC is also considering mandating limitations on financial institution ownership of CCPs, along the lines of the Lynch Amendment that was one of the body parts left out when Frank-n-Dodd was stitched together:

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is considering limiting banks and investors to owning no more than 20 percent of swaps clearinghouses, exchanges and trading systems, three people familiar with the matter said.

The CFTC, which will present its first proposed rules Oct. 1 for the $615 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market, may not grant exemptions for existing holdings, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks haven’t been made public. Groups made up of bank holding companies, non-bank financial firms, major swaps users or dealers may not own more than 40 percent of clearinghouses, the people said.

Companies that may have to change their ownership structure include London’s LCH.Clearnet Ltd., the world’s largest interest-rate swap clearinghouse; Tradeweb Markets LLC, a derivatives trading platform; and NYSE Euronext, whose U.S. futures exchange is partly owned by banks.

Kevin McPartland is justifiably flabbergasted:

“What is an LCH.Clearnet going to do, that’s almost completely dealer-owned?” said Kevin McPartland, a senior analyst with Tabb Group in New York. “I can’t see how they’d expect that kind of massive divestiture of these clearinghouses that control trillions of notional” in swaps trades, he said.

Ah, but Kevin, you just haven’t fully grasped Gensler’s grandiosity (see above CDS position limit power grab).  The sorcerer’s apprentices are run amok, my friend.

The “theory” underlying this limitation is that it is necessary to combat conflicts of interest, whereby bank owners of CCPs might decide to eschew clearing of certain products that they profitably trade OTC.  Note that this problem could be avoided by ensuring that collateral and capital on cleared and non-cleared deals is chosen properly.  (Not that I am convinced that regulators can do that, but they think they can, and if they can, micromanaging the governance of CCPs is unnecessary.  And if they can’t: why the hell were they given this responsibility?)

In my view, this is a secondary or tertiary or whatever comes after tertiary consideration.  The key issue is aligning the incentives of those who govern CCPs and those who bear the risks.  Failure to do so will lead to a series of serious problems. The most important is that the CCP will have difficult attracting the capital necessary for it to provide its guarantee function because those that can most efficiently supply the capital will not do so if they are not given control rights commensurate to the risks that they are expected to take on.  If the idea behind mandating CCPs is to ensure the existence of sufficient capital to absorb big default losses, this is extremely counterproductive, to say the least.  And just think of the governance and management headaches that are inevitable when there is such a misalignment of incentives.

Historically CCPs have been dominated by financial institutions–banks, often–that are the residual risk bearers.  The ubiquity and survival of this model suggests strongly that it offers some substantial economic benefits.  Restrictions on CCP ownership and control will undermine this model, and likely make it impractical.  So what will take its place?  And if the substitute is so great, why didn’t market participants adopt it already?

It is hard to know what is more astounding about this idea: its presumptuousness, or the superficiality and incompleteness of the “analysis” supporting it.

Money.  Power.  Methinks there will be many more installments of this melodrama in the months to come.

In today’s FT:

LCH.Clearnet, Europe’s largest independent clearing house, and the London Stock Exchange have been rebuffed by one of their biggest rivals, Deutsche Börse group, in an attempt to break into trading and clearing of off-exchange equity derivatives.

The moves are a sign that the commercial interests of some exchanges and clearing houses could undermine efforts by global regulators to enact sweeping reforms of the vast over-the-counter derivatives markets.

. . . .

One US-based clearing industry expert said: “It is an interesting conflict where you have regulators saying you have to clear and you have to have competition in clearing but there are monopoly providers out there thwarting that. This is going to create a problem for that vision.”

This is from a piece that just came out (link to follow when available) in the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance (written in July):

First, the extensive scale and scope economies associated with clearing make it likely that the clearing industry will be highly oligopolistic, and that strategic considerations will influence decisively the way that the industry develops. Moreover, scope economies across trade execution and clearing (Pirrong, 2010b) will also affect the strategic and efficiency forces that will shape industry structure.  Strategic considerations will almost certainly drive a wedge between what is optimal for the individual decision makers, and what is optimal for the economy. [Emphasis added.]

From my Cato piece (written in May):

Moreover, the evolution of market structure in response to a mandate is difficult to predict. Given the scale and scope economies, it is unlikely that the market for CCPs will be competitive. In the presence of such indivisibilities and network effects, competitive processes do not necessarily result in the evolution of an efficient market structure. Furthermore, the distributional effects of the formation of CCPs, private information about these effects, and the ability of market participants to influence the regulatory process in order to achieve distributive gains makes it likely that the process of coordination and cooperation needed to create and structure CCPs will be plagued with inefficiencies.

So color me surprised.  Not.  There will be many more articles like that in today’s FT.  Bet on it.

Gensler doesn’t want Summers’s job: he wants Geithner’s.  It is likely that Geithner is on very thin ice–the next to go, probably after the Fall elections.  Gensler may have a good shot at achieving his dream.

Damn.