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Counterfeit Value Derivatives: Follow the Bouncing Ball (Guest Essay)

February 3, 2012     (Mobile version)


This guest essay on derivatives was written by frequent contributor Zeus Yiamouyiannis.

Here is how the counterfeit value derivative con works. It’s a game of “I pretend, you pretend, we all pretend, and the taxpayer will pay in the end”.

1) I’ll create an instrument, say a credit default swap (CDS), an unregulated insurance with no capital requirements, with a certain “notional” value. Notional value is just something I assign. It does not have to be attached to or backed by any real asset or actual money/principal, but I can pretend as if it is. (Notional amount.)

2) As a seller, I will just declare that this swap covers the full value X of this company, contract, etc. if credit event Y happens. I receive lucrative insurance premiums and fees for my unbacked promise. The CDS’s value is based in nothing more than my promise to pay. I don’t have to have adequate capital reserves on hand, but I can pretend as if I do perhaps with some mini-reserves based on objective-seeming risk ratios calculated by my mathematical models. (credit default swap.)

3) As a buyer, you can then buy as many of these CDS’s as you want, even for a single default. If you are really sure something is going to tank you can insure it 30 times over (or a 100 or 1,000) and get 30 (or 100 or 1,000) times the return when it goes bust! In regulated insurance it is unacceptable to insure beyond the full replacement value of the underlying asset. Not so with CDS’s. The seller has gotten 30x the premiums and the buyer gets 30x value in the event of default. As a buyer of this phony “insurance” you don’t have a stake in the affected properties, but you can essentially pretend you do.

4) As buyer and seller of CDS’s either one of us can assign our risks to a third party through another contract, and pretend as if we are covered in case our own game playing blows up in our faces. This allows us to retain even less reserve capital and spend freed-up funds on more high-risk, high-(pseudo) return speculation. (The monster that ate Wall Street.)

5) We can purchase and sell of these derivative contracts to each other at unlimited rates to generate massive volume and huge fees and profits. We can simply hyper-cycle risk and take our chunk each time.

According to the Bank of International Settlements, as of June 2011 total over-the-counter derivatives contracts have an outstanding notional value of 707.57 trillion dollars, ( 32.4 trillion dollars in CDS’s alone). Where does this kind of money come from, and what does it refer to? We don’t really know, because over-the-counter derivatives are not transparent or regulated.

With regulated economic markets, when an underlying real asset is impaired (i.e. the company in question is bankrupt, the mortgage has defaulted, etc.), market value is assessed, default insurance is paid up to replacement or full value, bond holders and stock holders make claims on remaining value and the account is closed. There is no need for bailouts because order and proportion of compensation has been established and everything is attached to the value of the underlying asset.

When the unreal, counterfeit economy intrudes, you now have a situation where a person can put in an unregulated, but recognized, claim to be paid a thousand times over in case of impairment. Say market participants have negotiated for a bankrupt company a 70% payback for bondholders and (36% payback for insurance claims), and I come with not one but rather 1,000 CDS claims demanding to be paid for each CDS.

Where does that money come from? Well if it were regulated insurance, I would have to be invested in the company in some way, my bond or stock payout would be limited by the actual asset value of the company, and my insurance payout would be limited as well. However, since I am unregulated and unrestrained, the money due me has to come from the CDS seller and my contractual agreements with that company (say AIG).

AIG could easily have sold 1,000 different unregulated insurance policies to the same person or a million CDS’s to a hedge fund, and when AIG could not pay up, it was threatened with insolvency, under which both its regulated and unregulated insurance policies and investments would become impaired. In fact there is abundant evidence that hedge funds (i.e. Magnetar) did in fact multi-insure certain portfolios while simultaneously pressuring the portfolio managers to select risky investments to ensure that the portfolios would crash. This is the opposite of a traditional “stake,” and this is the disease that modern derivatives bring—profit from intentional market destruction.

This chaotic state of affairs and its cascading implications for other interlinked parties and counterparties (read “too big to fail banks”), essentially resulted in economic extortion to force a huge public bailout of the whole crooked mess (totaling somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 – 14 trillion dollars in giveaways, loans and guarantees starting in 2008 in the U.S. alone.) Instead of agreeing to the extortion temporarily to prevent collapse and then aggressively pursuing orderly investigation, prosecution, and receivership, regulators and world leaders have simply covered up the events and even rewarded the perpetrators.

No wonder the market goes up dramatically when there is talk about another quantitative easing (Fed bailout) or emergency rescue (government/taxpayer bailout). These financial game players already know that an open public spigot is on its way, pouring real capital directly into their pockets.

In regulatory actions and legal courts, unregulated insurance claims should simply be declared null and void when applied to real assets and real compensation. “You have no stake, therefore you have no claim. Your agreement was with a third party that did not have adequate capital to pay for a contract with you. Take them to court.” Or “You have an imaginary claim for imaginary damage. Here’s your imaginary money. Your deal was private and unregulated, then it should be settled in private between companies without public intervention or support.”

Did that happen? No, because AIG had collapsed its unregulated private and regulated public functions and Congress had allowed it to do so with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Because the wall came down between regulated and unregulated activity, transparent and “shadow” markets, traditional and investment banking, this private fiat virus broke quarantine and the resulting contagion cannot be put back in the lab.

Because world leaders and their regulators blinked and did nothing, counterfeit private fiat (backed by nothing) has metastasized and infiltrated “genuine” public fiat (backed by country’s productivity if not by gold), and more and more actual money and productivity in the form of austerity is being thrown at a gargantuan and unrecoverable sea of counterfeit obligation.

How can you exceed 700 trillion dollars in unregulated derivatives alone? This is easy when market players are buying and selling from each other and when people can buy an infinite number of claims, insurances, and guarantees on credit events rather than assets. When banks are allowed to mark-to-model and then claim somehow that their back-and-forth trading and abstract multiplication of asset value is real, then all bets are off (or “on” depending upon which side of the fence your sitting).

Is it any wonder that the market for derivatives has grown another 100 trillion over the last two years? “We’ll concoct value and you’ll pay us real money for it? Of course we are going to keep doing it! Why not another 100 trillion!”

This probably is not going to stop until there is massive world-wide outcry and political change, a “black swan event,” or both. Let’s hope the first gains steam along with some long-overdue accountability for fraudsters before these nefarious banks destroy the body politic with their hubris and greed.

by Zeus Yiamouyiannis, copyright 2012


Recent related entries:

Fraudulent Debt = Counterfeit Money

Our Counterfeit Economy

Counterfeit Money, Counterfeit Policy.


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This Month's entries:

Counterfeit Value Derivatives: Follow the Bouncing Ball (Guest Essay)
(February 3, 2012)

Fraudulent Debt = Counterfeit Money
(February 2, 2012)

Our Counterfeit Economy
(February 1, 2012)


Counterfeit Money, Counterfeit Policy
(January 31, 2012)

One Dam Metaphor for the 2012 Global Financial System
(January 30, 2012)

Has Housing Really Bottomed?
(January 28, 2012)

What's Priced Into the Market Uptrend?
(January 27, 2012)

Between Various Rocks and Various Hard Places
(January 26, 2012)

The New American Divide
(January 25, 2012)

What Have We Learned in the Past 13 Years?
(January 24, 2012)


January 2012 entries

December 2011 entries

November 2011 entries

October 2011 entries

September 2011 entries

August 2011 entries

July 2011 entries

June 2011 entries

May 2011 entries

April 2011 entries

March 2011 entries

February 2011 entries

January 2011 entries

Archives       2010       2009       2008       2007       2005-2006


                                                                       


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"There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity."
(Douglas MacArthur)

"We are what we repeatedly do." (Aristotle)

"Success: To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
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(Theodore Roosevelt, submitted by Kenneth R.)

"To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it -- who can say this is not greatness? (William Makepeace Thackeray, recommended by U.Doran)

"Daydreams of a fair world which would treat him according to his real worth are the refuge of all those plagued by a lack of self-knowledge." (Ludwig von Mises)

"The way of the Tao is reversal." (Lao Tzu)

"Chance favours the prepared mind." (Louis Pasteur)

"It is neither necessary to hope to undertake, nor to succeed to persevere." (William of Orange)

"Economic history is a never-ending series of episodes based on falsehoods and lies, not truths. It represents the path to big money. The object is to recognize the trend whose premise is false, ride that trend, and step off before it is discredited." (George Soros)

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"May a fair road always be open to you." (CHS, April 2, 2006)

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"Greed is a wonderful motivator but fear works much faster." (Riley T., Sept. 2008)

"Democracy can be likened to two wolves and one lamb voting on what to have for lunch." (unknown source, submitted by Tim B.)

"Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life energy." (Nikola Tesla, submitted by Kenneth R.)

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." (Eric Hoffer, submitted by Angry Saver)

"In times of change, learners will inherit the earth." (Eric Fromm, submitted by Tom P.)

"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality." Michael Ellner (submitted by Gene M.)

"The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." John Steinbeck
(submitted by Ken R.)

"Do the thing and you shall have the power." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"Radical self-reliance begins with rock-solid personal integrity and a willingness to ask cui bono-- to whose benefit?--of every arrangement."
(CHS, October 30, 2009)

"Do you know what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize anything." (Napoleon Bonaparte)

"Concentrations of wealth disrupt the ecology of power."
(CHS, March 13, 2010)

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." (George Orwell)

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." (Leo Tolstoy)

"The path out of darkness begins with those exasperatingly persistent individuals who are constitutionally incapable of capitulation." (Winston Churchill)

"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty." (James Madison, submitted by Ken R.)

"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?" (Jean Cocteau)

"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center." (Kurt Vonnegut, via Chinle)

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen." (Mark Twain, via Dublin Mick)

"But we are told that we need not fear; because those in power, being our representatives, will not abuse the powers we put in their hands. I am not well versed in history, but I will submit to your recollection, whether liberty has been destroyed most often by the licentiousness of the people, or by the tyranny of rulers.

I imagine, sir, you will find the balance on the side of tyranny. Happy will you be if you miss the fate of those nations, who, omitting to resist their oppressors, or negligently suffering their liberty to be wrested from them, have groaned under intolerable despotism!

Most of the human race are now in this deplorable condition; and those nations who have gone in search of grandeur, power, and splendor, have also fallen a sacrifice, and been the victims of their own folly. While they acquired those visionary blessings, they lost their freedom."(Patrick Henry)

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people…. [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and … degeneracy of manners and of morals…. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." (James Madison)

"When sacrifice, trade-offs and accountability are anathema, then so too is liberty." (July 17, 2010, CHS)

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." (Mark Twain)

"You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul. (Mahatma Gandhi, via Ken R.)

"Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. A demand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation." (Marshall McLuhan)

"...there is a contemporary form of violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.

More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his or her work for peace. It destroys one's own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of one's own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful." (Thomas Merton, via Ken R.)

"Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn in no other." (Benjamin Franklin, via Eric A.)

"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." (Bertrand Russell).

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." (Hunter S. Thompson)

"It's not where you take things from, it's where you take them to." (Jean-Luc Godard)

"The man who has a garden and a library has everything." (Cicero, via Lee Bentley)

"Without health there is no happiness. An attention to health, then, should take the place of every other object." (Thomas Jefferson, 1787, via Ken R.)

"It's hard for bad things to happen when you have no debt." (Howard Lutnick, CEO of Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald)

"I'd rather be condemned than have other people think for me." (reader David C.)

"Our world only cares for unenchanted things." (Li Po, Chinese poet, 701-762 C.E.)

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power." (Franklin D. Roosevelt, submitted by C. Ikehara)

"A currency is not just stock of ownership in a particular economy. A currency is also the best possible reflection of the quality of supply chain mechanisms within a particular economy." (John Feier)

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was duty.
I acted and behold, duty was joy.

(Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941, via Dan C.)

"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority." (Thomas H. Huxley)

"Its not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it." (Aung San Suu Kyi)

"All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns." (Bruce Lee)

"Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it." (Bruce Lee)

"All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun." (Jean-Luc Godard)

"Television is motion sickness of the soul." (Dr. David D.)

"Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom." (Thomas Jefferson)

"...Suffering to see your youth pass like a drift of smoke, but if it springs up again and comes to life in what you do, nothing has been lost and the power to work is another youth." (Vincent Van Gogh)

"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." (Henry James, via Lynn B.)

"Reality is just so hard to get past security." (Dan C., "Auntiegrav")

"What we need is not a new technology but a new way of living." (Bernard Rudofsky)

"You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who does what you do.” (Jerry Garcia)

"But I stuck with the practice. The one single way of practice. I made no excuses for myself. I did not allow my practice to fade out in feelings of discouragement. There were rough, rough times. Even times when I thought I was not going to live through it. But I stayed with the practice, no matter what. And this is what each one of you must do. I remember that there were times when I could no longer breathe, times when all went dark before my eyes, times when I thought I was going to pass out. But even then I refused to give in to my old self-centered patterns of behaviour. I did not try to adjust the practice to do it my way. I stuck with the simple practice that was given to me. I cannot stress enough to you the absolute importance of sticking to your practice no matter what. No adjustment is required, no calculation is needed. I went through the same thing that you are going through now, so I can tell you from personal experience what you must do. You must give your life to this, and refuse to let anything, any thoughts, ideas, attitudes, get in your way. Your “yes” must be open. Your resolve must be of steel." (Zen master Harada Tangen Roshi Teisho)

"Victory favors those who take pains." (amat victoria curam)

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." (C.S. Lewis)

"I don’t know the secret to success, but the secret to failure is trying to please everyone." (Bill Cosby)

"Genius is a non-marketable asset." (CHS, July 17, 2011)

"Progress is not possible without deviation." (Frank Zappa, via Richard Metzger)

"America is in love with Apocalypse. It always has been." (Alexander Cockburn)

"Philosophy is the battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by language." (Wittgenstein, via William S.)

"He who will not risk cannot win." (John Paul Jones)

"When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army." (Honore de Balzac)

"Don’t underestimate this idea of mine, which calls to mind that it would not be too much of an effort to pause sometimes to look into these stains on walls, the ashes from the fire, the clouds, the mud, or other similar places. If these are well contemplated, you will find fantastic inventions that awaken the genius of the painter to new inventions, such as compositions of battles, animals, and men, as well as diverse composition of landscapes, and monstrous things, as devils and the like. These will do you well because they will awaken genius with this jumble of things. (Leonardo Da Vinci, via Kathy K.)

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing." (Abraham Lincoln)

"I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell." (Harry S. Truman)

"If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month." (Theodore Roosevelt)

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." (Thomas Jefferson)

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." (Calvin Coolidge)

"In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins." (Ulysses S. Grant)

"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." (Abraham Lincoln)

"Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play." (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

"Impermanence is swift." (Huaug Po, Tang Dynasty Zen Master, via Lonn V.)

"Some of the worst things in my life never happened." (Mark Twain, via Lonn V.)



                                                                       




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