Streetwise Professor

How dumb does Jon Corzine think we are?

The WSJ has this hanky puller on his struggles to move on from the wreckage of MF Global:

And the 65-year-old Mr. Corzine is struggling to figure out what comes next for himself, according to friends and former coworkers.

I can hardly type through the sobs.

Stand at LaSalle and Jackson or 10-30 S. Wacker and see how much sympathy you get, Jon.  I’d bring bodyguards.

But here’s where Corzine insults our collective intelligence:

Allegations from shareholders and bondholders that he hid problems or committed fraud at the brokerage firm make “no sense” because he had “no motive,” Mr. Corzine’s lawyers said in a court filing, citing his ownership of 441,960 shares in MF Global. The stake includes 50,000 shares bought shortly before the bankruptcy filing.

Uhm, equityholders in firms teetering on insolvency, or which are insolvent, have a huge incentive to hide problems or commit fraud or take huge risks.  It’s called gambling for resurrection.  Fraud or concealment permit the firm to survive-and maybe it will get lucky.  If things get worse-that hurts only the bondholders, who lose more when the firm loses even more value.  The stock was already worthless.  Ditto with taking on risk: if the insolvent firm’s bet turns bad, that just deepens the bondholders’ losses without hurting the equity holder, but if the bet turns out well the equity profits disproportionately.

Most frauds and concealment of losses are carried out by shareholders.  These are ways of stealing from bondholders.

The only thing that makes no sense is Corzine saying he had no motive.  And he expects us to believe that.

Corzine’s other defense is that MF Global’s failure was due in large part to its completely deficient accounting and control systems.  But that throws him into the Sarbanes-Oxley fire, for he signed off on the soundness of those systems.

Corzine is obviously ginning up the PR machine to try to build sympathy and lay the groundwork for a comeback.   Don’t do the world any favors, Jon.  You’ve done quite enough already.

In an effort to defend Obama’s debate #2 defense of his energy policy, Ed Markey, Dim-I mean Dem-MA is scandalized that 20 million acres of leases in the Gulf of Mexico are not being drilled.  (H/T Jim O.)  This part is priceless:

Markey’s study added that about half of the leases have been idle for at least five years and that 80 percent of the idle leases were purchased for less than $300 an acre.

So Ed is mystified that the really cheap leases are disproportionately idle.  I guess he would also be Shocked! Shocked! that deep out-of-the-money stock options are not exercised: why would someone buy a call on Apple struck at $2000 and not exercise it?

But that’s exactly what’s going on here.  The cheap leases are the marginal properties.  The way out-of-the-money development options.  Buyers are willing to pay a little for such properties, on the outside chance that either market developments (e.g., a huge rise in oil prices), or a technological shock (a new drilling method that makes previously inaccessible properties economic to develop), or a new piece of information about the property itself will make it economical to drill on it.

Voyaging into Ed’s head-a rather frightening journey, but anything for you loyal readers!-I imagine he thinks that the companies who leased these properties got a steal.  Hey-they’re cheap! Only $300!  Why don’t they drill?

Memo to Ed: cheap is cheap.   Note that 131 companies compete to lease in the GOM.  Given that competition, the price paid for leases is about the best estimate of value you can get.  That price reflects the option value, and the deep out-of-the-money drilling options will command a low price-and will be developed with very low probability.

But Ed knows better.  And O does too.

Yup.  The clueless presume  rule us, and do so with an infuriating amalgam of ignorance and arrogance.

On Friday’s anniversary of the ’87 Crash, the WSJ put some of the articles from the days after on its website.  This one in particular makes fascinating reading, and is quite enlightening for those who pine for the good old days, when markets were slow and the livin’  (and tradin’) was easy.

For even back in those lost and lamented days when trading took place face-to-face on the floors, during times of market stress things seemed to move fast.  Very, very fast:

And the stock-index markets were leading the way down — fast. In a nightmarish fulfillment of some traders’ and academicians’ worst fears, the five-year-old index futures for the first time plunged into a panicky, unlimited free fall, fostering a sense of crisis throughout U.S. capital markets.

. . . .

Within seconds of the open, S&P 500-stock index futures prices sank 18 points — surpassing the nerve-racking record declines scored in an entire day on Friday. Salomon Brothers Inc. began unloading contracts at an unheard-of rate of 1,000 at a time, dumping more than $600 million in stock-index futures in the first hour of trading alone, one pit trader estimated. Salomon officials couldn’t be reached for comment on the estimate.

[Emphasis added.]

Note too that the big orders are not a modern phenomenon that arose only when HFT algos came on the scene.

And liquidity suppliers fleeing the market is not the monopoly of modern computerized trading where HFT is prevalent:

Then, as buyers fled the market in alarm, trading nearly dried up, temporarily preventing the markets from functioning as a hedging mechanism — their principal reason for existence.

. . . .

Yesterday, as institutions and investors scrambled to lay off at least some of their risk in futures, trading in the index markets virtually dried up at several points, threatening a liquidity crisis on the Merc’s trading floor. At mid-morning, the S&P prices were moving up two points, then back down, in less than a minute, as sellers scrambled to fill orders at any price they could get.

One difference between human and computerized market makers.  Computers don’t cry:

Up the street at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, a market maker wept softly in the men’s room.

One other thing from the article caught my eye:

With trading delayed in many major New York Stock Exchange issues because of order imbalances, Chicago’s controversial “shadow markets” — the highly leveraged, liquid futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index — were, for just a few minutes, the leading indicator for the Western world’s equity markets.

Shadow markets. Really?  The only market that was open for a while, the only one that was discovering prices-that’s the shadow market?  An interesting comment on the WSJ’s-and Wall Street’s-attitude towards futures markets at the time. Note that now, futures markets are considered worth emulation, and the demonization has been focused on the new “shadow market”: OTC derivatives trading.

As I’ve written numerous times: things aren’t all that different now.  The economics of markets and market making are pretty much the same in computerized and open outcry environments.  When it hits the fan, things move very rapidly in both.  There is no Golden Age of leisurely markets.

I doubt that he’s making the trip in a sealed train, but an important and shadowy Russian figure is leaving Geneva, Switzerland to return to Russia.  That would be Gennady Timchenko, co-owner of the trading firm Gunvor.  You know, the one that is frequently linked with the guy Timchenko claims to know only slightly, Vladimir Putin.

Now, this isn’t comparable to Lenin returning to Russia to foment a revolution, but why would anyone in their right mind want to leave Geneva for Moscow?  And no, starting a construction holding company is not a good reason.  At least he didn’t say he wants to spend more time with his family.

A major risk that commodity trading firms face is legal risk-particularly if they deal with unsavory regimes.  Gunvor’s activities in the Congo are one example that has apparently drawn the scrutiny of Swiss investigators. Gunvor was also the subject of an article in the Economist about oil price manipulation, specifically, manipulating the market for Urals crude.  That has apparently attracted scrutiny of the Justice Department here in the states.  Although some have said that this is likely to be a civil investigation, that’s not my read: CFTC handles civil manipulation cases under the CEA, but Justice handles criminal. (Ask BP.)

And I wonder if there is any connection between the questions about Gunvor’s manipulation of the Urals market and its recent failure to win any tenders in that market, which it once dominated:

Trading house Gunvor – dubbed by dealers the king of Kremlin oil – has been left with no Russian crude to sell. That was the surprise outcome of the latest big Russian crude oil sales tender, for long routinely won by Gunvor.

The result has sparked an intense debate in the industry about whether Gunvor’s co-owner Gennady Timchenko is out of favour with the Kremlin – or whether the firm is merely fine-tuning its strategy before embarking on yet another phase of spectacular growth.

Could be a coincidence, but an interesting one, no?

Given the legal heat, perhaps there’s good reason for Gennady to decamp to a far chillier, but more legally congenial, climate.  A place where he almost certainly has protection from the chief protector, and one that doesn’t extradite.

Very much worth watching.

Today is the 25th anniversary of Black Monday, the 1987 Crash.  This event had a profound effect on my professional trajectory.  I worked at an FCM at the CME-GNP Commodities-during the Crash.  The firm was owned and run by Brian Monieson, a former chairman of the Merc, and a board member at the time.  I walked into his office on the morning of the 20th, and he told me about how the CME clearinghouse had almost failed.  I had only a dim appreciation for clearing prior to that, but that sparked my interest in the subject.

Little known fact: I Granger Caused the Crash.  Throughout the late summer and fall of  ’87 I had been having issues with my direct boss, and soon after I defended my thesis in August I had received a good offer from one of my advisors, Dennis Carlton, to work at Lexecon.  I tried to work things out at GNP, but by mid-October it appeared hopeless.  I told Brian, and we had several phone calls on the 17th and 18th where he tried to convince me to stay.  I thought it over, and on the evening of the 18th decided that it wasn’t going to work.  So I walked into my boss’s office at 7AM on the 19th and slapped down my resignation letter on his desk.  Apparently the news leaked, and the rest is history 😛

The anniversary has spurred retrospectives from many quarters.  Many of these focus on the role of computers in the Crash, and how this was a harbinger of the supposed horrors the machines are inflicting on the markets today.  One good-well, representative-example of this is “Rage Against the Machine” in the FT:

It has been 25 years since Black Monday, when stock markets crashed around the globe and Wall Street woke up to the risks of computerised trading.

Yeah.  The computers were blamed then.  Suspect number one was “program trading”, a good deal of which was garden variety index arbitrage.  This is not a destabilizing strategy, and numerous postmortems absolved program trading as a cause or aggravator of the Crash.

Indeed, if technology was a problem, it wasn’t that computers were trading too fast: it was that printers were printing to slow.  Seriously.

At GNP we did a little index arb trading.  In the morning, it appeared that the arb was extremely profitable.  The price of the cash index (we were doing MMI) was way, way above where the futures were trading.  It looked like a great opportunity.  My colleague Matt who was in charge of this called down to the CBT floor before doing a trade, to see where the floor was trading.  Our floor clerk said (I don’t remember the numbers exactly): “Somebody is offering X over here.  Somebody else is offering X+20 over there.  Somebody else is offering X-20 over there.  I have no fucking idea what the price is.”  Matt didn’t make the trade.

Which was good, because the apparent opportunity was a mirage.  That’s where the slow printers come into play. Specialist posts on the NYSE had old fashioned daisy wheel printers.  Very, very slow.  They were overwhelmed by the order flow.  At 10AM the printers were spitting out orders that had been entered at 8 or earlier.  So the orders being executed on the NYSE were actually very stale, and the prices didn’t reflect current market conditions.  The futures didn’t have that problem.  So at 10 or 11 NYSE prices were reflecting orders submitted hours before, and the futures were reflecting current conditions.  Hence the futures were way below the cash, making it appear that there was a huge arbitrage opportunity.

The problem was that this induced more people to submit sell orders to the NYSE before they caught onto the fact that NYSE prices were not reflective of current conditions.  This exacerbated the backlog on the printers.

So it wasn’t fast technology that caused problems on 19 October ’87.  It was slow technology.

Program trading wasn’t an issue, really, but portfolio insurance was.  This is sometimes called “computerized trading” but it’s not, really.  Yeah, computers were used to calculate deltas, and these deltas were used to determine trading strategies.  You could have used an HP-12C (complete with Reverse Polish Notation!-and no, that’s not an ethnic joke) and the normal cdf table from Handbook of Tables For Mathematics (pp. 922-929 of the Fourth Edition) to do the same thing.

The problem with portfolio insurance was that, unlike index arbitrage and most market making strategies employed today in HFT, it was a positive feedback strategy, rather than a negative feedback strategy.  As prices fell, portfolio insurers had to sell more, which drove down prices further, which led them to sell more . . . until they pulled the plug on the strategies.  That is, unlike market making strategies which are buy low-sell high trades, portfolio insurance was buy low, sell lower.

The FT article uses the ’87 Crash as a springboard to make the usual litany of complaints about current market structure and computerized trading.

Some of the criticisms are defensible.  The current fragmentation of equity structure in the US is indeed the product of SEC RegNMS, which I characterized at the time of its introduction as implementing an “information and linkages” approach to market structure, in lieu of mandating a CLOB.  This socialization of order flow has some problems, particularly during times of market stress.  Links are vulnerable during times of stress.  Moreover, the proliferation of order types that has complicated trading dramatically is directly the result of this approach: many of the new order types are related to order routing, which is a much more complex task with many execution venues as opposed to one (as in futures markets where order flows are not socialized).

Other criticisms are less defensible.  The authors of the FT piece are apparently scared of the dark, as they warn of the dangers of dark pools.  These things are not new.   They just used to be called “third markets” or “block markets”.

The FT piece also warns that in the computerized world, liquidity can evaporate quickly.  They acknowledge that liquidity evaporated quickly in the old days-as it did on Black Monday-but suggest that can happen more quickly today.  Not really.  At all.  Locals could shut up or keep their hands in their pockets very quickly back on the floor if it looked like order flow was getting toxic.  And they were pretty quick at picking up on that.  Moreover, during the Crash clearing firms pulled their locals from the pits.  You would have thought that the pits would have been in a state of pandemonium on the 19th, but after the initial frenzy, they were actually spookily empty, as most locals and many brokers had been yanked from the floor by their clearing firms.

In brief, the functions of markets haven’t changed.  The technology for performing these functions has.  But the fundamental economics of performing the functions hasn’t.  Face-to-face and machine-to-machine markets have the exact same basic vulnerabilities.  Those who focus on the technology miss the economics.

The FT article, and others like this one in Bloomberg,  blame computerization and HFT, and the consequent alleged “loss of confidence” among investors, for the decline in equity volumes recently.  Color me skeptical.  Futures volumes have dropped too, despite a very different market structure, and a different composition in market users.

Historically, trading volume has ebbed and flowed.  It ebbed and flowed in the pre-computer era. It shouldn’t be any surprise that it ebbs and flows now.

If you are looking for the big lesson from the  1987 Crash that we should heed today, ignore all the BS about technology.  Look at clearing.  Look at the Brady Report and other post-Crash studies of what happened in clearing.  That’s what almost brought the markets down.  The operation of variation margining-which is usually a source of stability-threatened to bring the markets to a halt, with even more devastating consequences.

Then think of what will happen during the next big market move, given that the scope of clearing has been expanded substantially due to Frankendodd, and parallel efforts around the world.  Don’t worry about the technology of execution: worry about what happens after the trade, during clearing and settlement.  That’s where the truly systemic vulnerability lies.

There’s an old adage in the military: amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.  In the markets, the parallel is that most commentary focuses on execution, when much of the real important action happens out of sight, in clearing and settlement-the logistics of the financial markets.  That happened in post-Crash commentary, and it is being repeated today.  That’s a big mistake.  When looking for object lessons from Black Monday, don’t look at the computers and the execution of trades.  Look at what almost happened with disastrous consequences in clearing.  And worry deeply about how the system is vulnerable to a repeat in the future.  Arguably more vulnerable, given the dramatic growth in the size of the markets and the mandated reliance on clearing, and margining of non-cleared derivatives.

That’s the lesson I first began to grasp in Brian’s office early on 20 October.  And that experience has decisively shaped my criticism of efforts, like Frankendodd, intended to fix the markets.

France’s President Hollande says that an EU banking union is the most important issue to discuss at the next Euro summit.

Even though it’s illegal.  Details, details.

Why is he so hot for this?  Two, related reasons.

First, a banking union is a gateway drug to a more complete political integration in Europe.  It is like the coal and steel pact that was the first stage to European integration.  But finance and banking are so pervasive, that it is a far more powerful way to achieve a broader political integration.

Second, it is a way of tying Germany even more tightly to France, and the rest of Europe.  If German financial institutions are tightly enmeshed in a European regulatory structure, it will be much harder for Germany to decide that the Euro isn’t worth the candle and leave.  This is vitally important to France, because it realizes that its financial position is extremely fraught.  This is also why French plans would include every bank in the regulatory net, including local banks like landesbanks, whereas the Germans want the banking union limited to big, systemically important entities.  Every bank that is included in the banking union is like a rope helping to hold down the German Gulliver and putting under the control of the European Lilliputians-acting under French direction, of course.

In other words, a banking union is a lot more about union than banking.  Hollande is being very Machiavellian, and it will be interesting to see how Germany plays this.

This afternoon I attended the Working Group on Financial Markets at the Chicago Fed.  The scintillating topic was segregation models.  Really!  It was scintillating!  For a certain kind of geek, of which I am one.

It was scary, actually.

Segregation of customer money has been a subject of discussion post-Frankendodd, and I have written several posts on the subject.  Segregation has received even more discussion post-MF Global (AKA Corzine-gate, but since he’s a made man I guess he will skate).  The model that has been implemented for cleared swaps, and which (according to clearing maven John McPartland of the Chicago Fed) is likely to be adopted for cleared futures is LSOC-legally segregated, operationally commingled.

Back in the summer of 2011, I wrote that segregation could make the markets more fragile, because it would tend to reduce credit (mainly intraday credit) used to finance variation margin.  This is important, because the markets depend on using credit to fund margin payments.  If this credit freezes up, the markets will freeze up.  Indeed, a cleared system works on such tight deadlines that an interruption of credit can be catastrophic.  If margin calls aren’t met in a timely fashion, absent credit, margin payments don’t flow to those on the winning side of trades.  When this happens, the clearing system breaks down.  And in a Frankendodd world dependent on clearing, a breakdown in clearing means a meltdown in the markets.

Indeed, even delays of hours or even minutes in making margin payouts, or doubts that CCPs will make margin payments in a timely fashion, can be catastrophic.  Almost exactly 25 years ago, on 19 October, 1987, the mere rumor that the CME would not pay out variation margin led to a run on FCMs and the CME clearinghouse that almost brought the market to a crashing halt.

One of the speakers at today’s event, Barclays’ Kevin Murphy, noted that under segregated models FCMs don’t have a lien on  the collateral in customer accounts.  Which means they won’t extend credit to customers because there is no collateral backing the loans.  Murphy said that broker intraday credit is likely to be a thing of the past under greater segregation.

Think of the consequences on a day when markets move a lot.  Those on the winning side are expecting to receive variation margin payments.  Those on the losing side will be scrambling for cash to meet their VM obligations.  Where will they get it?  Not from their FCMs.  From their banks?  Uncertain-even if the customers arrange credit lines, banks can often find reasons to delay providing the credit, or not providing it at all.

This all means that there is a risk that VM owes will not be paid in time.  With no credit being extended, or the amount of credit being sharply constrained, there is a serious risk that VM pays will not be made on time.   If that happens, particularly during a period of market stress, all bets are off.  Almost literally.  People will fear that CCPs are insolvent, and there will be runs on them-people will liquidate positions to recover their margin money.

That would be very ugly indeed.  Again, a cleared system is very tightly coupled, more tightly coupled than OTC markets.  Tightly coupled systems are more prone to going non-linear, and failing catastrophically.  Segregation increases the tightness of the coupling.   Connect the dots.

Of course, markets don’t stand still.  People will recognize the need for contingent liquidity, and make arrangements for it.  But will those arrangements be as robust as the system we have now?  There is serious room for doubt.  If more robust alternatives are available, why weren’t they chosen before?  I know this argument is not dispositive, given the coordination issues involved, but there are strong incentives to adopt better systems.   We should be very leery of changes that implicitly assume that market participants with large amounts of money and risk in the game systematically choose wrong.

The whole move to clearing has been intended to wring credit risk from the derivatives markets.  But every move to reduce credit risk-including moves to greater segregation-almost always involve creating greater liquidity risk.

If given a choice between credit and liquidity risk, I would choose credit risk every time .

In other words, you have to pick your poison: credit risk or liquidity risk.  Yeah, credit risk may be like arsenic.  But liquidity risk is more like cyanide.

I know which one I would choose.

Jerry Dicolo of the WSJ has a piece on allegedly disruptive high frequency trading strategies that have been employed in the natural gas futures markets immediately surrounding the release of the weekly storage report.  Exactly what is going on here is hard to surmise, but what makes most sense to me is that the HFT traders at issue are gunning the stops.  That is, they are entering big orders to blow through the standing limit orders, moving prices, hoping to trigger buy stops (if they are buying) or sell stops if they are selling: the triggering of the stops creates the kind of short term momentum that the HFT traders can profit from by taking the other side of the stops.

Another example, as if one is needed, of the dangers of stops.

And it should be noted that gunning the stops is not the product of this newfangled electronic trading.  It happened on the floor with some frequency.  There are manipulation cases from the 1960s, if memory serves, related to gunning stops.

It’s also worth noting that there is exactly one data point in the story, August 16th.  It would be worthwhile to see if similarly allegedly anomalous price action took place prior to late-2006 when the market migrated to the screens.  I’m betting you could find more than one.

The article suggests that what is attracting HFT to the gas market is not the opportunity to play games for a few minutes once a week.  Instead, entry of HFT is being spurred by wide spreads in the gas market, as compared to equities.  HFT competition has narrowed spreads to virtually nothing in equities, so HFT traders are looking for markets with fatter margins.  Which is why they are moving into commodities:

High-frequency firms—whose activities can range from market-making on behalf of clients to trading for their own accounts—have wrung profits from the stock and other markets for years. But recently, their increased action in commodities, natural gas in particular, is spooking some veteran traders. That could leave the market reliant on computerized trading systems and potentially reduce liquidity when it is most needed.

“We can fight over fractions of a penny in stocks, or full pennies and more in natural gas,” said a programmer at a New York high-frequency trading fund.

Uhm, that’s the way markets are supposed to work.  Entry reduces prices and drives returns to just cover the cost of capital.  Which is exactly why some “veteran traders” are “spooked.”  They can’t compete against HFT.  Their oxen are being gored, just as traditional market makers’ oxen were gored in equities.

The new entrants may play shenanigans like gunning stops-but “veteran traders” did that too-another reason for “veterans” to resent HFT, for elbowing in on their racket.  Such shenanigans should be addressed by more targeted deterrents, rather than Euro-esque attempts to hamstring HFT.

I expect that spreads in natural gas, and commodities generally, will narrow as HFT technology and capital moves into those markets.  As for fears that this liquidity will dry up when it is needed most, again, this is not unique to electronic markets or HFT.  It is a feature of market making general.  Market makers reduce their supply of liquidity when they suspect order flow is toxic, or when risk is rising substantially.  It was so when market makers wore handle bar mustaches and button up shoes and stood in trading pits.  It will be so when market makers are co-located servers.  It’s inherent in the nature of market making, not in the technology.

In response to Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Timothy Lane’s speech about the systemic importance of major global commodity trading firms (GCTFs), the FT’s Javier Blas asks: “Has Glencore become ‘too big to fail’?”

And I answer: hell no.

I will write much more on this subject-much more-when a few things clear.  For now, a few of my reasons:

• GCTFs-even the biggest, like Glencore, Cargill, and Koch-just aren’t that big.  Glencore, the biggest, has about the same amount of assets as Kraft and Fiat and Hitachi and Fubon Financial Group (assuming you’ve heard of it).  Are those TBTF too?  The biggest GCTFs have asset values an order of magnitude smaller than the banks that have been designated SIFIs by the Financial Stability Board.  Again: not that big, in systemic terms.
• GCTFs aren’t highly leveraged.
• GCTFs don’t engage in extensive maturity transformation.  Indeed, current assets and current liabilities are closely matched, and for many firms the maturities of their liabilities exceeds that of their assets.
• Commodity trading firms, e.g., Enron, have failed without significant knock-on effects.  Indeed, an entire commodity trading sector-the merchant energy sector in the US-imploded without disrupting the financial system, or the trade in physical power and gas.
• GCTFs weathered the 2008-2009 financial crisis fairly well.
• Even if a large firm were to fail, disrupting commerce in commodities for which it accounts for a significant fraction of the trade, (a) the quantity of trade in these commodities is very small relative to total international trade or GDP, (b) other firms are likely to be able to fill the gap quickly, in part because the assets used in commodity trade can be redeployed quickly, and (c) disruptions in trade have few knock-on effects on global or even regional GDP.  As an example, the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami severely interrupted trade in electronics and auto parts, but the effects on GDP in Asia were small and transitory, and the effects on GDP outside of Asia negligible.

This is not to say that GCTFs are always on the side of the angels: definitely not.  Nor is it say or that some additional regulation (notably in the nature of disclosure, and better anti-manipulation laws) is not worth consideration.  It is just to say that we don’t need to add them to the list of too big to fail enterprises.  We should be looking to pare that list, not expand it, and GCTFs do not pose the systemic risks that warrant SIFI designation.

Again, more to come in the weeks to come.

I have long been a bear on China.  Prior to 2008 because of the shakiness of its banking system; post-Crisis, because of my deep skepticism about the effects of the huge stimulus program-including its impact on the banking system, or more properly, the shadow banking system.

I am not alone.  The Bank of China is warning about the country’s shadow banks:

A senior Chinese banking executive has warned against the proliferation of off-book wealth management products, comparing some to a Ponzi scheme in a rare official acknowledgement of the risks they pose to the Chinese banking system.

China must “tackle” shadow banking, particularly the short term investment vehicles known as wealth management products, Xiao Gang, the chairman of the board of Bank of China, one of the top four state-owned banks, wrote in an op-ed in the English-language China Daily on Friday.

“Unsurprisingly, although Chinese banks’ non-performing loans are at a low level of 0.9 percent, the potential risks are worse than the official data suggest,” Xiao wrote, adding that a problem could come as indebted borrowers face cash flow problems or enter default, straining the banking system.

“The music may stop when investors lose confidence and reduce their buying or withdraw from WMPs,” he said, referring to wealth management products.

He warned of a mismatch between short-term products and the longer underlying projects they fund, adding that in some cases the products are not tied to any specific project and that in others new products may be issued to pay off maturing products and avoid a liquidity squeeze.

“To some extent, this is fundamentally a Ponzi scheme.”

Xiao’s op-ed is in line with similar warnings issued by outsiders, particularly the Fitch Ratings agency whose China banking analyst Charlene Chu has long warned of a maturity mis-match and the threat to the Chinese banking system of products with various terms and interest rates.

Moreover, there is a widespread belief among investors in these products that banks are offering liquidity puts:

Although the products are technically more risky than deposits, most investors believe they are backed by the banks’ implicit guarantee and they are marketed aggressively in bank branches nationwide. Xiao acknowledged this perception posed a risk for banks’ bottom line.

“The rollover of a large share of WMPs could weigh heavily on formal banks’ reputations, because many investors firmly believe that banks won’t close down and they can always get their money back,” Xiao said.

In June, People’s Bank of China vice governor Liu Shiyu said many banks are not transparent enough about the risks wealth management products carry.

“China’s shadow banking system is complex, with a close yet opaque relationship to the regular banking system and the real economy,” Xiao concluded by saying.

“It must be tackled with care and sufficient flexibility, but it must be tackled nonetheless.”

Recall that the movement of SIVs back onto bank balance sheets was a major channel by which problems in the shadow banking sector were communicated to US banks.

These “wealth management” products grew up as a direct result of the intervention of the supposedly wise direction of the Chinese state.  It wanted to restrict bank lending that had been stoked by the 2009 stimulus, in a step-on-the-gas-whoops-step-on-the-brakes maneuver so common to attempts to “fine tune” economies.  The bank credit was basically redirected to the informal sector.

I’m sure it will work out swell.

For more background on the crazy-quilt Chinese banking sector, and all its fragility, this is a decent source.

Another reason for my bearishness is my innate skepticism-based on long experience-of state efforts to guide resource allocation.  Case in point: China has gone all out to promote investment in renewables, and has been awarded with huge losses:

hina in recent years established global dominance in renewable energy, its solar panel and wind turbine factories forcing many foreign rivals out of business and its policy makers hailed by environmentalists around the world as visionaries.

But now China’s strategy is in disarray. Though worldwide demand for solar panels and wind turbines has grown rapidly over the last five years, China’s manufacturing capacity has soared even faster, creating enormous oversupply and a ferocious price war.

The result is a looming financial disaster, not only for manufacturers but for state-owned banks that financed factories with approximately $18 billion in low-rate loans and for municipal and provincial governments that provided loan guarantees and sold manufacturers valuable land at deeply discounted prices.

China’s biggest solar panel makers are suffering losses of up to $1 for every $3 of sales this year, as panel prices have fallen by three-fourths since 2008. Even though the cost ofsolar power has fallen, it still remains triple the price of coal-generated power in China, requiring substantial subsidies through a tax imposed on industrial users of electricity to cover the higher cost of renewable energy.

The outcome has left even the architects of China’s renewable energy strategy feeling frustrated and eager to see many businesses shut down, so the most efficient companies may be salvageable financially.

Well played.  Remind me again why should we compete by throwing good dollars after bad renmibi?

(As an aside, to illustrate the absurdity of subsidy politics, Solyndra is suing Chinese solar panel makers for predatory pricing.  Predatory pricing suits are almost always meritless.)

A substantial fraction of measured Chinese growth in the recent past has been accounted for by investment.  But the relevant question is whether this investment is going to pay dividends, or whether it has been misdirected into white elephants.  The solar (and wind) experience suggests the latter.  Historical experience with politicized investment suggests the latter.  The influence of corruption and the political influence of the elite on the investment prices also suggests the latter.  I’m going with the latter.

The WSJ has a long piece on a Chinese economist who is similarly skeptical about the ability of the Chinese state to direct investment:

Mr. Zhang’s academic colleagues were all praise for the “China Model,” but in 2009 he was giving speeches entitled “Bury Keynesianism.” Then a top administrator at Peking University, where he now teaches economics, he argued that since the financial crisis was caused by easy money, it couldn’t be solved by the same. “The current economy is like a drug addict, and the prescription from the doctor is morphine, so the final result will be much worse,” he said.

. . . .

Ultimately, Beijing’s stimulus fed a false investment boom that stoked asset bubbles—then the morphine wore off while the government tightened. Officials claim the economy grew at 7.6% year-on-year between April and June this year. Skeptics think the real number is closer to 4%. (One London research house says 1%.) Meanwhile, industries dominated or favored by the state, such as steel or solar power, are idling from overcapacity. Countless sheets of copper are reportedly stacked in warehouses, blocking doorways and exemplifying Hayek’s notion of “malinvestment.”

It’s actually worse than merely Hayekian/Austrian malinvestment, IMO.  That arises from decisions made on the basis of false price signals that result from monetary stimulus.  That is surely present in China in spades.  But there is also a good deal of state-directed investment, or investment channeled to state enterprises, or investment influenced by corrupt and connected members of the elite.

A good analysis of these issues is to be found at Michael Pettis’s blog, including examples like this post.  He aims the following, trenchant questions at China bulls:

1. How much debt is there whose real cost exceeds the economic value created by the debt, which sector of the economy will pay for the excess, and what is the mechanism that will ensure the necessary wealth transfer?
2. What projects can we identify that will allow hundreds of billions of dollars, or even trillions of dollars, of investment whose wealth creation in the short and medium term will exceed the real cost of the debt, and what is the mechanism for ensuring that these investments will get made?
3. What mechanism can be implemented to increase the growth rate of household consumption?

All very good questions.  China’s recent GDP growth has really been driven by what are properly considered costs: the amount of money invested.  The relevant issue is the value produced by those investments.  Given the state domination of the process of making these investments-either directly, or via distortions of the price system through monetary stimulus and financial repression that distorts interest rates-I am dubious, in the extreme, that these investments will pay.