Weekend edition: The conspiracy to keep you poor and stupid

First- a brief book review:  Nontechnical Guide to Petroleum Geology, Exploration, Drilling and Production – Norman J Hyne.

This is a good but dull book - a handbook of upstream oil process – how a drill works, all the processes involved in guiding drills, essentially a technical manual aimed at scientists and engineers who want to get up to speed (and hence useful) in the management of upstream oil and gas.  If that is what you want I highly recommend this book.

I do not believe in investing in any industry until you understand it – and this will give you a very good understanding of the oil and gas industry.  If your fund manager doesn’t read stuff like this then find a different fund manager.  (This book is about widening your circle of competence.  I am hardly recommending it for general reading – but we found it useful.)  

The real purpose of this post

Norman Hyne is very matter-of-fact.  For instance – without reference to whether such a thing should exist – or without reference to the vast scientific revolution that was required even to say such a thing – Hyne talks about 14 thousand feet of sediment.  Sometimes he talks about 20 thousand feet of sediment.  And it goes without saying that the world must be very old for this sediment to exist.  The author won’t even bother entertaining the idea that the world is 6000 years old (and that the sediment was all laid down in some biblical flood).  That notion is of no use whatsoever to a field petroleum engineer.  

Likewise there is a chapter on analysing drill core samples.  This is done by analysing micro-fossils – weeds and seeds.  The organising principal of the theory is evolutionary biology.  Creation Science is not entertained.  Norman Hyne is a practical guy – and he wouldn’t mention such “theories” because they are no use in drilling for oil.  Indeed you will find no worthwhile petroleum geologists who view creation science as a useful theory in finding oil.  

We have just had a US President whose fortune was built on oil.  We had a VP who was CEO of Haliburton – a major upstream oil contractor and technology provider.  These people know that Creation Science is useless – that it will not help you find oil or make money.

Yet – admittedly with political considerations at heart – they were active or passive supporters of creation science crap.  They knew it would keep the constituents poor or stupid – and yet – for understandable political reasons they backed it.

One of the more famous conservative blogs is called the Conspiracy to Keep you Poor and Stupid – but I have only once found such a conspiracy.  And that was on the conservative side of politics.

I have said on this blog that conservatives sometimes have a better grasp of reality than liberals.  They tend to have a more realistic view of the human condition than many starry-eyed liberals.  However this is another example of conservatives becoming the anti-science reactionaries of American politics.  Lots of real reform (eg greenhouse) will not be done well until conservatives engage properly with the reality.  This is yet another plea for American conservatism to get back its intellectual strength.  It really is time...  

John Hempton

I have been criticised in the email and in the comments for a political sermon - the belief that creationism is a straw man to beat the political drum on.  

I wish it were true.  Over half the US population in some surveys believe this crap.  I have seen high profiles conservatives describe evolution as "the liberal creation myth".

These are the same conservatives who have anti-science belief elsewhere.  Everytime I mention greenhouse the blog goes wild.   The temperatures of over 120 farenheit that my parents in law (rural southern Australia) experienced on the weekend  may not be driven at all by the greenhouse effect - but my feeling is that the burden of proof is now totally on the climate-change-deniers.  A couple of hundred dead (in the resulting fires) tends to focus the mind - and my mother in law - usually a tough old woman - spent most of Sunday crying...

Once Maggie Thatcher argued (indeed demonstrated) that lots could be achieved if you appealed to individualism.  She was right.  She had a decent understanding of the human condition.  I might not agree with all she aimed for - and ultimately I think there are non-market goals.  But the position had strengths and we should keep the good bits of it.

But the Maggie Thatcher view that financial markets could regulate themselves is now a smouldering ruin called the Royal Bank of Scotland.  

How we get a facts-and-circumstances driven politics is something that regularly makes me ponder.  Its is also the central political question of the next ten years - how we keep the good bits of the Thatcher/Reagan revolution (a general belief in markets and the worth of the individual) whilst tossing the bad bits (lack of environmental responsiveness, failed financial market regulation etc).  

If I sound like I am giving a sermon I apologise in advance.  But my guess is that the same people who believe in creation science are the people who believe that climate is the realm of god - not the realm of human ingenuity and destructiveness...

J

Finally - the real issue with greenhouse for this blog is the notion that it is real and it will effect investments.  For instance if heat-waves of the kind experienced in southern Australia are common then fruit trees in the Goulburn Valley are not worth what they used to be.  (You have a hard time growing peaches when the temperature is 120 farenheit.)  

Likewise governemnts will do things and that will change the value of all sorts of assets (coal, nuclear, hybrid cars and lots of things I can't think of).  All of that is worthy of consideration.  

How to guarantee your job in a Spanish bank

The Spanish banks always looked vulnerable to me.  I have criticised Santander several times on this blog.  

But this story deserves more coverage.  Ibex Salad – a blog about the Spanish stock market and olive oil business – is reporting that banks are taking the property they are repossessing from bankrupt property developers and selling it to their own staff at a 35 percent discount and with 100% percent financing.  

This is called loss deferral.  That is what distressed banks do.

But Ibex Salad makes the obvious point.  For employees this has one side benefit – staff who borrow from the bank are more likely to keep their job.  Probably a good deal for the bank staff – even if they are paying slightly over the odds.

John

Those wonderful shops

I been looking at retailers lately – not something I know a lot about.  I know enough to know I can hurt myself if I get these wrong – as my post about being a fuddy-duddy old guy reveals.

However I have come across this retailer in relatively good categories with a very low valuation and acceptable looking – though economically cyclic - run of same store sales increases.  Here are the numbers:

Fiscal year	Same store sales
1992	1%
1993	7%
1994	8%
1995	15%
1996	5%
1997	-8%
1998	-1%
1999	8%
2000	8%
2001	-4%
2002	-10%
2003	4%
2004	-3%
2005	1%
2006	8%
2007	6%
2008	-8%

The same store sales were up 50 percent over the period 1992 to 2007 – not a great 15 years – but not diabolical.  They were down 8% in 2008 – which – given the economy looks bad – but again not pinch yourself bad.  

And this stock looks cheap.  Really cheap.  Breathtakingly cheap.

I am going to leave a few spaces before the rest of this post….

More space…

And more…

So it’s a bait-and-switch – the company is Circuit City – and whilst the same store sales look sort of acceptable they were anything but acceptable when compared to the competitor.  Here are Circuit City’s same store sales compared to Best Buy:

Fiscal year	Circuit City	Best Buy
1992	1%	14%
1993	7%	19%
1994	8%	27%
1995	15%	20%
1996	5%	6%
1997	-8%	-5%
1998	-1%	2%
1999	8%	13%
2000	8%	11%
2001	-4%	5%
2002	-10%	2%
2003	4%	2.4%
2004	-3%	7.1%
2005	1%	4.3%
2006	8%	4.9%
2007	6%	5.0%
2008	-8%	2.9%

And now you can see what happened.  Circuit City just got crushed.  Best Buy had superior sales per-square-foot or sales per unit of cost structure – and that difference got bigger and bigger and bigger.

As it did they could cut price – so whilst Circuit City’s same store sales sort of kept up with the costs their gross margin per unit of costs most certainly did not.

It is impossible to analyse the stock except in the context of its competition.  Circuit City’s problems are not it sales per-se – but its sales relative to its competitors.  Underperform by that much for that long and – despite your glorious past – there is nothing left.  Every investor should have emblazoned on their forehead that “competition is a wealth hazard” and anyone that tries to sell you a stock without analysing the competition should be sacked.  [Simple but blunt.]

I visited Circuit City headquarters once.  In those days it had a billion dollars of unencumbered cash on its balance sheet.  That cash represented past profits.  Past glories of which there were many.  Circuit City was a fantastic company once…

Circuit City it seemed tried many things to get the sales up (and match Best Buy).  The above mentioned cash disappeared when CC had a bad experiment in credit cards.  It should be easy enough to drive sales if you lent to people who had no intention of paying you back.  Given that, it is surprisingly hard to find the credit card boost in CC’s numbers.  

Also about just before I visited them they (finally) got rid of whitegoods – and tried to match the software (music, DVDs etc) offering at Best Buy.  They had to refurb all the shops.  Lots of cost – and only a few years of interesting same store sales growth.  

People seemed to be down on Circuit City sacking its expensive sales staff and rehiring cheap ones a few years before insolvency.  But the expensive sales staff hardly helped the sales keep up with Best Buy and would have been sacked anyway when the company was liquidated.  The problem lay elsewhere and being sacked two years ago was a relative blessing (the new hires will be hunting for work in this labour market).

Consider this an open thread.  What is it that Circuit City did worse than Best Buy?  I have my ideas – and will jot them in the comments where appropriate – but I really want yours.

Also – if anyone has a good memory – can they tell me why both companies had lousy sales in 1997?

John

Smashed up old fuddy-duddy guys

When I was about 22 my dream date and I ended making love on the balcony of a friend’s beach house on a balmy evening with a very high end stereo playing Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks at reasonable volume.

It even happened a few times.

My dream material goods were not fast cars (never been a rev-head) or an iphone (they didn’t exist) or even a mobile phone.  No – it was a high-end stereo – probably a beautiful Scottish turntable like a Linn - and a beautiful pair of Italian speakers (I still own my Sonus Fabers – and they cost a couple of thousand dollars then – probably five thousand in today’s money).  

That was a long time ago.  

Today’s 22 year old wants 5000 songs in his pocket (or 20 thousand), has probably never heard of Astral Weeks, can’t possibly afford a beach shack on the New South Wales coast (they used to be the playthings of the middle class – they now cost millions and are the play things for the super-rich) and wouldn’t give a damn about my Sonus Faber speakers.

Small, portable.  Who would have thought that Bob Dylan (of all people!) would wind up squealing about the declining sound quality of modern music.  He is right: the sound quality that made Astral Weeks so special is gone.  Even the sound of Bob Dylan howling out a pre-Animals version of House of the Rising Sun) is just missing on an iPod.  

Which leads me to how much you can stuff up an investment thesis.  

If you had told me in 1998 that (a) houses would get bigger, (b) the upper middle class would grow like topsy, (c) the middle class would borrow to finance houses and lifestyles like the upper middle class then I would have thought that high-end stereos would just have a great time.

I would have thought the middle class would continue to have such dreams – and that music – especially at high fidelity (and possibly high volume) would remain key to social lives (or even making love on the balcony).  

If I had known how the macroeconomic outcomes were going to look I would purchased Tweeter stock with glee.  Tweeter was a chain of big-box stores that sold at a price/quality point above Best-Buy or Circuit City.  It was a place where I could fantasize about my favourite consumer goods.  Ok – my Sonus Faber speakers might have been a step above Tweeter – but that was sort of the idea.

Well the world that I dreamed about has been smashed up – and I am just another smashed up fuddy-duddy middle aged guy.  (Get used to it John.) 

Tweeter is being liquidated.  John, say goodbye to your once dreams of material goods.

But for the moment I want to leave you with a promo from Tweeter’s liquidation sale.

I guess it tells you what to short.  All of this is so yesterday.  Like your blogger.

John

PS.  The Animals ruined House of the Rising Sun forever.  The first person in the song that Bob Dylan sung was a woman – and it wasn’t her father that was the gambling man – it was her sweetheart.  The pain in the lyrics is far more intense that way.  I gather the Dylan version is quite close to a version sung by Leadbelly – but I have never heard the Leadbelly version.

Anyway - even if you loathe Bob Dylan (and plenty of people do) listen to this gem.  Then buy the CD next time you see it in the discount bin - but only if you too are a fuddy-duddy like me.

PPS.  If you are really interested in the anticedents of the house of the rising sun - here is a Joan Baez version from 1960.  Obviously this pre-dates either Dylan or the Animals.  Baez has a truly stunning voice but Bob Dylan changes the lyrics for the better (much better).  If anyone can fine the version of the lyrics either Woodie Guthrie or Leadbelly sung I would be interested.  

I think the lyrics were refined to sheer elegance by Bob Dylan and stuffed by the animals.

John Paulson accuses his competitors of theft or fraud

I was reading Paulson Funds latest client letter (hat-tip Kedrosky).  It is an enviable list of the things he got right this year.  However one section jumped out at me – a hand grenade thrown at about 100 hedge funds:

Redemption policy

As a firm, we have not imposed any gates or other restrictions on clients withdrawing their assets.  While we recognize the difficulties of the current environment, we think it’s a manager responsibility to raise liquidity to meet the needs of their investors.  There is plenty of liquidity in the markets.  Even in opaque areas of the markets such as in bank debt, mortgage backed securities and other distressed securities, we see hundreds of millions of dollars trading every day.  We are especially surprised that many managers have restricted client withdrawas when: 1) the total redemptions are manageable (15-25% of AUM); 2) the managers have the cash; and 3) one of the stated reasons for restricting withdrawals is so the manager can continue to invest in new opportunities.  Emphasis added.  

I read this as John Paulson saying that there are funds which have easy enough to mark to market assets and where the assets are sufficiently liquid are refusing to give money back.  Theft or fraud.  Or maybe both.  Moreover the liquidity according to Paulson is sufficient that funds almost never should have stop withdrawals – even in opaque areas of the market.

Now I guess it is up to John Paulson to name names – or perhaps some enterprising WSJ reporter can do it for us.  Whatever – this is a big story.

John Hempton

Bad tax policy and bad government process – GM as a test case

The WSJ leads with a story about how GM wants to avoid a tax burden that comes from restructuring its liabilities – converting its debt to equity.

Bad idea – and if the Obama administration rolls over for this tickle I will rapidly lose faith.

Some background – debt forgiveness and taxation

I wrote a while ago on debt forgiveness and double counting of losses.  I wrote in an accounting sense – but it most important in a tax sense.  It works like this:  

If a tax system is poorly designed person A can lend to person B who can lend to person C etc.  If the person at the end of the chain (lets call him person Z) loses the $100 he legitimately gets a tax loss.  However if he fails to repay person Y then Y also legitimately has a tax loss.  The same $100 will if you are not careful produce two tax losses.  Indeed if the same thing happens along the whole chain the same $100 can produce 26 tax losses – and if that happens you rapidly have no tax system.

Every OECD tax system fixes this by assessing the gains from debt forgiveness.  A debt you don’t need to repay is a loss that you haven’t made (the person you have borrowed from has really made the loss).  In the US debt forgiveness is ordinary income.  In Australia it is income according to a special legislative provision.  Both ways the tax system corrects the double counting problem.  

Now GM is proposing a debt restructure – converting debt into equity.  The debt holders are not being repaid and they make a tax loss.  GM no longer has to repay the debt holders so they make a gain.  They will be assessed on that gain.  

Normally nobody would care much – because GM has plenty of tax losses that it has made and the gain will just reduce those losses.  But GM also plans to use those losses to get big refunds on past tax paid or by other means.

Now I am a fairly liberal sort of guy.  If the Obama administration wants to explicitly give $7 billion to GM then go ahead and get Congressional and Senate approval.  I gather they have the numbers.

But giving it in a non-transparent way – and a way that dismembers one of the rationally built parts of the tax system – is hardly a model of good government process.  

One thing the stimulus program (and hence the Obama administration) will need is a depth of process so that the waste and scandals that go with that much largesse can be controlled.

We had Paulson with his three page-no-process-just-trust-me plan.  GM is trying the same sort of crap on.  

Stop it now.

John

PS.  Disclosure: the early part of my career was in tax policy (both in Australia and New Zealand) – eventually becoming chief technical analyst tax policy at the New Zealand treasury.  I have a view – built from experience – that discipline on tax system design is almost the defining mark of sound government process.  

Governments who dish out money as cold hard cash are subject to (justified) public scrutiny.  Tax provisions for special interests are economically very similar but the scrutiny level is low.  Moreover – low tax conservatives should agree with me – in that tax cuts for special interest can often preclude general tax cuts for all interests.

Freshwater and Saltwater: macroeconomic theory and losing money

Background for the non economists. In 1976 Robert Hall christened the central schism in macroeconomic thought as being between the freshwater and saltwater schools. The division was picked by their location (on the Great Lakes and Rivers versus the coastal schools). The division exists today – and indeed is being played out in Krugman’s (saltwater) blog and by the Chicago economists who think he is a bozo idiot.

Having got through the background here is the post

Does everyone agree that Greenspan kept monetary policy too loose for too long?

I thought so!

When I did economics at University (admittedly at that Freshwater school on the Molongolo River called the Australian National University) that was meant to end in inflation – not deflation.

I like my theory to accord at least loosely with reality. Especially if I am going to bet real money on the outcome – rather than pontificate in papers from the ivory tower of academia.

More to the point – I thought (in true Freshwater style) that sustained low interest rates were a sign that monetary policy had been tight and that sustained high interest rates were a sign that monetary policy had been loose.

Given that basic understanding of macroeconomics I thought that regional banks that made more than half their profits out of carrying the yield curve would be carted out when loose monetary policy did eventually lead to higher long term interest rates. I was short a lot of banks – and whilst that was good – I spent a long time being short interest rate plays. I have detailed that mistake here. Bill Gross made a similar mistake declaring the 25 year bull market in long dated treasuries over – so despite Bill Gross’s saltwater location at Newport Beach I was in good company.

Now the subject of freshwater, salterwater and other macroeconomic elixirs is the thing in the subject de-jour amongst economic bloggers – but I have conducted the experiment – with real money – and I can confidently say (brutally backed by less-than-ideal-financial outcomes) that the saltwater guys were right.

John Hempton

Scandinavian bank collapse - not all the same

Do not bother reading this post unless you are directly interested in a history of Norwegian versus Swedish bank collapses...

It seems that some central bankers read this blog. I got an email from a senior Scandinavian central banker following the exchanges on this blog (see this exchange for an example).

Anyway he points me to a note by P Honohanen of the World Bank (written several years ago) and which I reproduce here. I think this should close some of the debate. Either way it is useful if you wish to know what actually went on...

For several years it has been fashionable to look to Sweden as offering a policy model for recovering from a banking crisis. And your editors have to admit that, along with most other commentators, they had been inclined to assume that the Swedish case was mirrored by the roughly contemporaneous crises in the rest of Scandinavia. But the Norwegian crisis actually predated that in Sweden and, as we have discovered by reading the comprehensive volume on the Norwegian case which has just been published by Norges Bank (“The Norwegian Banking Crisis”), containment and resolution policy was quite different. Certainly the two countries both made a good recovery: on some reckonings the Norwegian government, like that of Sweden, may have ended up with a small cash profit after selling back into the market bank shares that it had acquired in the crash. Though sometimes thought of as a classic macro boom-and-bust, the Norwegian crisis may be better classified as the result of inexperienced bankers trading in a newly liberalized market with recently lowered capital requirements and a sharply reduced frequency of on-site supervisory inspection. The crisis was a big one: the three largest banks (DNB, Fokus and Christiania) all failed along with many smaller banks including sizable regional banks. The privately owned and managed deposit protection schemes were overwhelmed and had to be nationalized – illustrating a weakness inherent in what is otherwise a good idea: distancing deposit protection from the government. Government took ownership of the major banks – and retains, for strategic or political reasons, a major stake in DNB. But, and this is the first important contrast with the policy stance adopted in Sweden, in no case were shareholders bailed out. (Yes, the authorities were sued by disappointed shareholders, but unsuccessfully.) Two other key points to notice: government did not issue a blanket deposit guarantee and they did not set up Asset Management Companies. These striking contrasts certainly argue for avoiding knee-jerk application of the Swedish policy approach in these three dimensions.

The perfect appointment

I have – framed above my desk – a $100,000,000 note – serial number AA23100220 and signed by Dr G Gono – the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

This – it seems – offers the solution to all our deflationary woes.

It seems that no matter how many dollars the Fed prints it can’t induce inflationary fears.  I suggested that the Fed rent a couple of hundred helicopters and (literally) push $2 billion out the window.  That I thought was irresponsible enough to raise inflationary expectations.

Alas real objections can be made – not the least that people might climb on rooftops looking for the booty – and slip and die.  I can’t morally justify the deaths.

But the Zimbabwe note has given me another solution – one that doesn’t require any helicopters or even the printing of any money.  It is more than sufficiently irresponsible – yet nobody will die.

Ben Bernanke should resign forthwith and Dr G Gono should be appointed as Chairman of the Fed Reserve.  

Nothing need change.  Monetary policy can remain in the effective hands of the other governors – but the appointment of Dr Gono will rapidly raise inflationary expectations – and the new inflationary expectations should induce the spending of the massive hoard of saved dollars – providing all the economic stimulus needed.

Dr Gono may be the wrong man for Zimbabwe – and the right hand man of a dictator.  But he is what America needs right now.  

Do you think we can get him confirmed?

John Hempton

What is a non-performing loan?

Once upon a time I saw loan restructurings as code for faking the accounts.  That was with good justification.

Conseco – before it blew up – had a habit of restructuring any loan that was delinquent.  After restructure it was no longer delinquent – and lo – the credit metrics seemed OK.

After Conseco finally went bankrupt the truth came out.  Loan performance went from sort-of-OK-if-you-ignored-the-fact-that-cash-actually-coming-back-in-payments-was-low to utterly desperate.  The AAA strips of Conseco securitisations failed widely.

These days restructuring loans is the stated objective of many powers that be – most notably Sheila Bair.  I never quite got that.  If you show too many non performing assets (NPAs) Sheila Bair will just confiscate your bank.  So the incentive is to restructure and restructure early.  If the borrower can perform to restructured spec then presumably they are no longer an NPA.  What Sheila Bair appeared to be advocating was government sanctioned account faking.

Then of course some banks tell it straight – and count the restructured loans amongst their NPAs.  Here is an extract from the recent Fifth Third conference call.  Fifth Third is a problematic bank and in WaMu fashion I own the subordinated debt – not the common – and in WaMu fashion I probably have reason to be nervous.  Anyway to quote:

Turning to the consumer portfolio, we also continued to be very aggressive in restructuring consumer loans, modifying over $200 million in the quarter. We believe restructuring loans where appropriate will result in significantly greater likelihood of payment and more value ultimately received by Fifth Third. These activities are beneficial not only to our shareholders, but are also consistent with the needs of our customers.  [Sheila Bair’s line precisely – are they pandering?]

As of year end, we had $574 million in troubled debt restructurings and NPAs, classified that way because they hadn't met the six-month consecutive performance threshold.  [Hey wow – they count restructured loans as non-performing – so they are not producing the Conseco fake numbers…  My cynicism is misplaced in this instance.]

Fifth Third has been among the most active of banks in the US in restructuring loans for consumer borrowers, a process we began over a year ago. We've been among the most active among our peers in these restructurings only one of the 15 largest US banks reports a higher dollar amount of restructured loans among its nonaccrual loans, according to regulatory filings.

Now this is very odd.  $574 million of restructured loans in the NPAs is about the highest in America!  But we know lots of banks are restructuring many loans – many billions worth.  Sheila Bair is telling them to do it.  But if you take Fifth Third at its word (and I think you should here) all the other banks are classifying most those restructured loans as performing.

In other words they are – Conseco like – faking their accounting.  And Sheila Bair is not only complicit – she is actively encouraging.

Welcome to modern banking.