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What
does it mean for Citigroup to be at $3? As it turns out, it distorts the
information we think we are getting from the Dow Jones Industrial Index. And
more TARP money is surely in our future, and far more than anyone in authority
is now suggesting. This week's letter will cover both topics and a little more.
I think you will find it interesting. Before
we get into the letter, just two quick housekeeping items. First, I spend most
of my week researching and writing. Part of that process is the ability to call
friends and esteemed colleagues to discuss our different points of view about
the present markets and economy. I have offered, for the first time, exclusive
access for my readers to listen in on those conversations. The first
"Conversation" will be with Dr. Lacy Hunt and Ed Easterling next Tuesday, and
we will have it ready for subscribers to my new service shortly thereafter.
This new subscription service will allow you to listen in on Conversations with
me and my friends about the most critical financial and economic topics of the
day. If you ever wanted to be "at the
table" when I get to have wide-ranging talks with some of the top economists
and investment experts (to be determined, based on where the market takes us, week
to week) this is the next best thing. You can still subscribe for one more week
at the pre-launch half-off price of just $99! This is going to be a very
powerful, information-packed 45 minutes to an hour where we will weigh in with
lively debate and ideas. You will be able to listen online, download to your
iPod, or read a transcript. To learn more, just click on https://www.johnmauldin.com/newsletters2.html,
click the Subscribe button, and type in the code "JM33" at the
end of the registration process to get your 50% discount. And read about the
bonuses we will offer as well! My staff and Tiffani (partner and daughter) have
made me promise this offer will not extend past next week. Don't
procrastinate. Secondly,
along with my partners Altegris Investments, I will be co-hosting our 6th
annual Strategic Investment Conference in La Jolla, California, April 2-4. I
have invited some of the top economic minds in the country to come and address
us, giving us their views on what seems to be a continuing crisis. It will be a
mix of economic theory and practical investment advice. Already committed to speak are
Martin Barnes, Woody Brock, Dennis Gartman, Louis Gave, George Friedman (of
Stratfor), and Paul McCulley. I anticipate adding another stellar name or two.
This is as strong a lineup as we have ever had, and on par with any conference
I know of anywhere. And as a special bonus, we have invited Fredrik Haren from
Sweden. I heard him speak at a conference in Stockholm last year and was blown
away. You can click on the link below to learn more about the speakers. Due to securities regulations,
attendance is limited to qualified high-net-worth investors and/or
institutional investors, because we will be showcasing a select number of
commodity fund managers and other alternative strategies. Early registrants
will get a discount. Last year we had to close registration, and I anticipate
we will run out of room again, so again I would not procrastinate. Click this
link to find out more and register: https://hedge-fund-conference.com/register.aspx.
And if you cut and paste this link, make sure you copy the "https:" so you go
to the secure site. And now, to the letter. Mister Softee is Only Worth 136 Dow Points Off
and on over the years I have written about the distortions that the Dow Jones
Industrials creates by using a price-based index rather than a market cap
index. As an example, if Microsoft with a market cap of $153 billion went to a
price of zero, all the Dow would lose would be 136 points, or less than 2%. If
IBM with a market cap of $120 billion went to zero, the Dow would lose over 700
points! But it gets worse. David Kotok forwarded this note to me from our
mutual friend Jim Bianco (www.biancoresearch.com),
which Jim graciously allowed me to reproduce for your edification (prices
quoted below are from a few days ago): "Comment - The Dow Jones Industrial
Average (DJIA) is a price-weighted index. The divisor for the DJIA is 7.964782.
That means that every $1 a DJIA stock loses, the index loses 7.96 points,
regardless of the company's market capitalization. "Dow Jones, the keeper of the DJIA,
has an unwritten rule that any DJIA stock that gets below $10 gets tossed out.
As of last night's close (January 20), The DJIA had the following stocks less
than $10 ... Citi (C) = $2.80 GM (GM) = $3.50 B of A (BAC) = $5.10 Alcoa (AA) = $8.35 "If all four of these stocks went to zero on
today's open, the DJIA would lose only 157.3 points. "The financials in the DJIA are ... Citi (C) = $2.80 B of A (BAC) = $5.10 Amex (AXP) = 15.60 JP Morgan (JPM) = $18.09 "If every financial stock in the
DJIA went to zero on today's open, it would only lose 331.25 points, less than
it lost yesterday (332.13 points). "If you want to add GE into the
financial sector, a debatable proposition, then: GE (GE) = $12.93 "If the four financial stocks above
and GE opened at zero today, the DJIA would only lose 434.24 points. "The reason the DJIA is
outperforming on the downside is the index committee is not doing it job and
replacing sub-$10 stocks, and the financials are so beaten up that they cannot
push the index much lower. "So what is driving the index? The
highest-priced stocks: IBM (IBM) = $81.98 Exxon (XOM) = $76.29 Chevron (CHV) = $68.31 P&G (PG) = $57.34 McDonalds (MCD) = $57.07 J&J (JNJ) = $56.75 3M (MMM) = $53.92 Wal-Mart (WMT) = $50.56 "For instance, if all the sub-$10
stocks listed above, all the financials listed above, and GE opened at zero,
the DJIA loses 528.63 points. To repeat if C, BAC, GM, AA, JPM, AXP and GE all
open at zero, the DJIA loses 528.63 points. "If IBM opens at zero, it loses
652.95 points [IBM has risen since then -- JM]. So, the DJIA says that IBM
has more influence on the index than all the financials, autos, GE, and Alcoa
combined. "The DJIA is not normal as the index
committee is not doing their job during this crisis, possibly because to the
political fallout of kicking out a Citi or GM. As a result, this index is
now severely distorted as it has a tiny weighting in financials and autos." You could add Microsoft to the list
Jim created and not be over where IBM is today in terms of the DJIA index. Let's look at it another way. A 10%
positive move for IBM would move the Dow up by over 60 points. A 10% move by
Citigroup would increase the Dow by less than 3 points. Having stocks with low
prices clearly prevents the Dow from declining as much as other market-cap-weighted
indexes like the S&P 500. Stocks for the Long Run and Other Myths But there are other problems with
using the Dow. Since 1871, real stock prices (after inflation) have grown at
2.48% while the economy grew at 3.45%. There is almost 1% of
"slippage" between the growth of stocks and the economy. Bears could
paint a bleaker picture by pointing out that much of the growth was from an
increase in valuations. By that I mean, P/E ratios increased substantially.
Investors were paying more for a dollar's worth of earnings. The market was
valued at an average P/E of 12 (or 20 times dividends) for periods prior to the
last bull market. The current valuation levels are still over 20, even after a
nasty bear market. Almost 1% of the growth of the stock market over the past
130 years has been due to the recent bubble in prices. Wait a minute, what about the
studies which show the S&P 500 grew at almost 10% a year? Part of the
answer is that these indexes include dividends, which averaged almost 5%. You also
have inflation, which accounts for a great portion. And part of the answer is
that the indexes do not reflect the actual results of the companies. If you
measured the Dow or S&P by the companies that were in them in 1950, as an
example, the growth would not have been as much. That is not to say the Dow
should be fixed. They make the changes to reflect the broad economy, which is
what the Dow and other indexes are supposed to do. That is what makes index investing
so attractive in bull markets, and why it is so hard for a mutual fund to beat
an index. They keep adding fast-growing companies and getting rid of the dogs.
As valuations increase, the funds become self-fulfilling prophecies. But they
can have the opposite effect in a bear market, as we now experience. Nash-Kelvinator, Studebaker, and Other US Giants For instance, IBM and Coke were
added to the Dow in 1932. Coke was dropped for National Steel three years
later, and IBM was booted for United Aircraft in 1939. IBM was once again put
in the Dow in 1979. Coke returned in 1987. National Steel has long since
departed, as has Nash-Kelvinator, Studebaker (I learned to drive in a
Studebaker), Woolworth's, and American Beet Sugar. Let's hear it for progress. For those with no life, or the
insatiably curious (I will leave it to you to decide in which category you and
I are placed), you can go to http://www.djindexes.com/mdsidx/downloads/DJIA_Hist_Comp.pdf
and see the entire history of the Dow. (As an aside, if anyone knows of a
study which shows what $1,000 invested on October 1, 1928 [when the Dow was
expanded to 30 stocks] on a buy and hold would have grown to by today, I would
be interested in seeing the study.) Clearly, buying the component
stocks of the Dow and holding them for long periods would not have produced the
same returns as the managed index. In fact, the returns would have been rather
dismal. I would invite readers to think
about the implications of this for one moment. While today we might smirk at
Nash-Kelvinator or Studebaker or American Beet Sugar, or any of the scores of
firms that have been added and dropped from the Dow over the last 125 years, at
one time they were considered worthy of inclusion in the most prestigious roll
call of companies. Proponents of buy and hold use
indexes to support their claims of its effectiveness. Indexes, however, are not
instruments of a strict buy and hold philosophy. They clearly buy and trade.
For every GE -- which was added to the Dow in 1896
and then dropped in 1898 for US Rubber, and added again in 1899, dropped in
1901, and added yet again in 1907 -- there are scores of other firms which
were once a part of the mighty Dow and have now faded into oblivion. None of
the other companies from 1900 are names which are familiar to me, except as
historical curiosities. Fifteen of the Dow companies have
been added since 1990. There are only six stocks still in the Dow that were
there in 1940. IBM was dropped in 1939 and was not added back in until 1979.
Many of the stocks that have been dropped have gone to zero. If I remember
correctly, some 60% of the stocks in the S&P 500 have been replaced in a
little over 30 years. In fact, many of the large market cap companies now in
the index did not exist 30 years ago. So,
when you buy stocks "for the long run" you are buying stocks selected by a
committee (the Dow) or because their market caps increased to a size where they
were included (market-cap-weighted indexes). In a very real sense, the S&P
500 is a self-selective growth-stock index. As an aside, Dow Jones & Co.
has no plans to change the companies in its industrial average after four fell
below $10 a share, said John Prestbo, executive director of indexes at the Wall Street Journal parent. "Do I think the Dow is in need of
adjustment? No, not at this moment," Prestbo said. "Those stocks have been in
the Dow for a while, most of them, and I think changing horses right now would
be the very distortion that some people complain about." (Bloomberg) Prestbo has a tough job. As Jim
notes, can you imagine the political fallout if the dropped Citigroup or GM
right now? TARP 3 and 4 Are on the Way There
are a lot of complaints about the use of the first $350 billion in TARP money.
How could (now) former Merrill Lynch Chief John Thain have been so tone deaf as
to spend $1.2 million on decorating his office with the company clearly in
financial trouble? And some of it apparently after the government was kicking
in money? Large bonuses for select managers at the last minute before the
merger and subsequent major losses? The list could go on and on. The Obama
administration has plans to keep such abuses from happening. I wish them luck,
because the next round of $350 billion is just a down payment. (By the way, we should remember the
TARP money is intended to be a loan and not a subsidy. Taxpayers should at
least have the chance to come out whole. We will see.) Professor
Nouriel Roubini and his team at RGE Monitor (www.rgemonitor.com) have been noting in speeches in various venues around the
world that they estimate that losses from the financial world could be as high
as $3.6 trillion. That is composed of $1.6 trillion in loan losses and another
$2 trillion in mark-to-market losses of securitized assets. "U.S.
banks and broker dealers are estimated to incur about half of these losses, or
$1.8 trillion ($1-1.1 trillion loan losses and $600-700bn in securities
writedowns) as 40% of securitizations are assumed to be held abroad. The $1.8
trillion figure compares to banks and broker dealers capital of $1.4 trillion
as of Q3 of 2008, leaving the banking system borderline insolvent even if
writedowns on securitizations are excluded." Roubini
argues that banks will need an additional $1-1.4 trillion dollars in private-
and public-sector investments. Then he and colleague Elisa Parisi-Capone lay
out in detail how they come up with their numbers. They argue: "Thus, even the
release of TARP 2 (another $350 billion) and its use to recapitalize banks only
would not be sufficient to restore the capital of banks and broker dealers to
internationally accepted capital ratios. A TARP 3 and 4 of up to $1.05 trillion
(assuming generously that all of TARP 2 goes to banks and broker dealers) may
be needed to restore capital ratios to adequate levels." Even with all
the government money added to the banking system, net capitalization of US
financial institutions may fall to as low as $30 billion, from around $1.4
trillion before the credit crisis. Let's think about what that means. This same
exercise in principal works for England and other European countries. England
may be down $2 trillion pounds, which is relatively much larger than the US
losses. Senators at the
Banking Committee hearings which looked into the appointment of Tim Geithner as
Treasury Secretary (and kudos to the five who voted against approving him) were
outraged at the problem of giving banks all that TARP money and other Fed
commitments, and now they were not lending that money and indeed it looks like
they want more! I know this will shock some of my foreign readers, but most of
the Senators on the banking committee don't really understand the banking
system. Here's the
problem. The banks are lending. If you look at bank lending numbers, there is
growth. The banks, per se, are not the real problem with the lack of lending.
The real problem is that we vaporized an entire Shadow Banking System that
bought securitized debt in a wide variety of forms: autos, homes, student
loans, credit cards, etc. That industry exists no more. Banks over the
last ten years became originators of loans, and not actual lenders. They would
make the loans and then package them up for other institutions to buy. A
pension fund in Norway (or wherever) would look at the rating from Moody's, see
AAA, and buy it. Or banks would create off-balance-sheet vehicles (SIVs) to buy
their debt and leverage it up, and book some nice profits. In any event, the
debt did not end up on the banks' balance sheets for very long. That process
was responsible for the majority of debt that was extended over the last decade.
Now that process is broken, and it will not be fixed this year or next year or
the year after that. We are going to have to come up with new ways of credit
creation and debt processing. You can't go to Goldman and tell them to start
making auto loans. They simply don't have the people to do that. Now, they used
to be able to take auto loans from other actual originators and package them
and sell them, but they did not make the loans. And the buyers for much of that
securitized auto loan paper are gone. And they are not coming back any time
soon without greater transparency and real capital guarantees and higher
returns. A Moody's (or any rating agency) rating is not worth the paper, as far
as the markets are concerned. In essence, we
are asking the banking system, with greatly reduced capital, to do the heavy
lifting that all the buyers of securitized debt did a few years ago. And if
Roubini is remotely right, they simply do not have the capital to do it.
Further, the banks are in a bind. The regulators, properly so, are making sure
that banks have adequate capitalization and are marking assets to real market
prices. But they simply have less capital to make loans, even with TARP. And the loans
that many banks have made are showing higher losses than normal. Maine fishing
buddy and bank maven Chris Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics thinks that
loan charge-offs will be twice the 1990 level, or around $800 billion, not far
off from Roubini's number. That will force banks to loan less money and raise
capital. Not exactly what the Senators want. And it will
force banks to tighten lending standards. Look at this chart from Binit Patel,
Senior Global Economist for Goldman Sachs. It tells the story of a banking
industry in crisis: 
Notice that the
standards for commercial real estate are the highest of all lending standards?
And why wouldn't they be, as the banks watch the deals they have done lose
value? Think what a
Senate hearing in 2010 would be like if they lowered lending standards and
their balance sheets got worse. Senators would be asking how they could put
taxpayer money (FDIC) at risk by making risky loans that had now gone bad. And
where were the regulators? (It would be
helpful if Senator Schumer in particular stopped grandstanding and actually
thought before he made some of the statements he does. People assume he knows
something because he represents New York and the large money center banks, and
accept his pronouncements at face value.) Bottom line? It
is going to take a lot more TARP and private money to capitalize the banks. A whole
lot more. And that is before any of the other stimulus. And all that next $1
trillion does is get the banks back to where they were two years ago. Further,
it does not give them the capital they need to make up for the loss of the Shadow
Banking System. It is going to take some time to build what I call the new
private credit system. (See my e-letters of August 1 and 8, 2008 in the
archives at www.frontlinethoughts.com
for an explanation of private credit and how it will be the next big thing in
finance.) We are going to
get what Federal
Deposit Insurance Corp. chairman Sheila Bair calls an "aggregator bank," which
will buy bad loans from banks. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, she commented: "The idea here is that the aggregator bank would
buy the assets at fair value. Some are concerned that you'd have to mark the
assets down to purchase them, but I think it could help provide some rational
pricing, actually, for the market in some of these assets, because we don't
have really any rational pricing right now for some of these asset categories. "The idea would be to set up a facility, it could
be structured as a bank, to capitalize it with some portion of the TARP funds.
Financial institutions that wanted to sell assets into the bank could also
perhaps take part of their payment as an equity interest in the aggregator bank
to provide an additional cushion. If you sold $1 of assets into the bank, you
would get 80 cents in cash and you would get 20 cents in an equity interest in
the bank. So that would be an additional cushion against loss. "With a combination of private equity contributions
plus TARP capital, I think you could leverage that into some fairly significant
volume to purchase assets." This is an idea
that she calls "... beyond hypothetical. I think all of the agencies are
committed to coming up with a program for troubled asset relief. We're vetting
the various different structures, the pros and cons of those. I think we would
all like to have something in place in the not too distant future. I'm hoping
the decision making on it would be fairly quick. It has been discussed for some
time. So I think we are nearing the point to make a decision. But it's complicated.
We want to make sure we get it right." (Interestingly,
Prieur du Plessis, my South African partner, writes me at midnight tonite as I
am writing this letter: "... have tried
registering the domain www.aggregatorbank.com last night,
but no luck as somebody has already done this. The price? $100,000.") An aggregator
bank (the so-called "bad bank") is going to happen. So, for what it's worth,
let me make a few suggestions. Banks that are technically insolvent and which
will need to put taxpayer money at risk should just be "put down." The
shareholders and bond holders need to be wiped out before taxpayer money is
spent. And the banks should be put back in strong private hands as soon as
feasibly possible. We do NOT want government agencies subject to political
manipulation making decisions about lending. But deals should be structured
which give taxpayers a real chance to get their investments back. And please, no
more deals that are not on the same terms that Warren Buffett or other private
investors get. That was simply embarrassing for Paulson and team, or should
have been. In closing, let
me quote two paragraphs from Bridgewater Associates that I think sum up the
problem in a rather brilliant and clear way, and which I wholeheartedly agree
with: "The root problem is that debts
that were incurred to finance assets at high price levels remain in place at
their original amounts even though the assets that they financed are now worth
far less. Debt that was incurred to finance extrapolated high incomes remains
in place at its original amount even though incomes are now much lower. And,
debts that were incurred to finance loans remain in place at their original
values even though the loans that were made cannot be repaid. Until the debts
are brought in line with the assets and the income, there is no moving forward
no matter how much liquidity is provided or how eloquent the speech. And, until
this happens, the self-reinforcing nature of the debt squeeze will only reduce
incomes and asset values further. "There is no easy way out of a debt
restructuring. Someone will have to bear the cost of prior bad decisions. The
people who should bear the cost are those who made the bad decisions to make
the loans or those who financed the people who made the loans. They intended to
profit and would have profited if they were right. But they were wrong, so they
should lose. The government needs to allow the losers to lose and focus their
actions on minimizing the knock-on effects of their failure on people who
didn't do anything wrong (to minimize systemic risk). They should then take
action to minimize the future exposure of the innocent to the future dumb
decisions of the small minority, because no amount of regulation will ever
eliminate dumb decisions, so you have to plan for them (through much lower bank
leverage limits to cushion losses, bank size limits and non-bank entities
playing bank-like roles to improve diversification, safety nets to prevent
losers from poisoning the whole system, etc.)." Hear, hear! Bermuda, Baaad Banks, and Prenatal Vitamins I have to close with a few humorous
paragraphs from my friend Bill Bonner in his essay for the Daily Reckoning: "But if the 'bad bank' idea could work, why not
create a super baaaddd bank? We could use it to get rid of all our mistakes.
Writers could unload their bad novels. Businessmen could sweep their errors
under its broad carpet. What the heck, let people get out of bad marriages
without penalty; the super baaaddd bank could pay the alimony and divorce
costs. "The hitch with the bad bank idea is so obvious
even a banker could spot it. If the cost of mistakes is reduced, people might
make more of them. Like the rest of us, bankers are neither good nor bad, but
subject to influence. Unlike metallurgy or particle physics, banking does not
have a rising learning curve. It's not science. Instead, it's more like love
and gambling ... with a circular learning pattern. They learn ... and then they
forget. They get carried away in the boom upswing; then they get whacked when
it turns down. "So let them have a good beating. It will give them
of a lesson that will last a lifetime ... and give the next generation a solid
banking sector." I
will fly to Bermuda next Wednesday for four days, where I will take a little
R&R after speaking for the local CFA group on Thursday and work on the book
Tiffani and I are writing. It should be fun. And
speaking of Tiffani, she came in this evening with that "look" on her face. Her
best friend had a baby boy this week, and she got to be in the room for the
birth. You could see it had impacted her. But I didn't realize how much. "Dad, I started prenatal vitamins
this week. I am almost 32. That is older than you when you had me. And I want
at least three kids. You have a lot of kids, and look how much they mean to you
and how happy they make you. I want that when I am your age. I know you want us
to wait a little, but it is time. I need to get started." Not much arguing with that. Life is
going to change. Henry and Angel will have a child this summer. Amanda is
getting married, and soon she will get the baby bug. With seven kids my chances
for more than a few grandchildren are pretty good. I guess, at 59, being called
Papa John will not age me all that much. Maybe it will even keep me younger
longer! Have a great week. And remember
that even if a bank won't give you money, you can always get some love from
friends and family, and that is where the real value lies. Your can't believe how we throw the word trillion around so easily analyst,
 John Mauldin
John@FrontlineThoughts.com
Copyright 2010 John Mauldin. All Rights Reserved
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