Everybody who even perfunctory follows the news must have heard about the string of terrible financial developments in the United States. More and more investment and banking companies are going bankrupt or are being threatened by spreading credit crisis. This is a spillover effect from excessive lending practices during a prolonged housing bull market, which came to an end as a “bursting bubble” over a year ago.
Now more and more companies find themselves in possession of securities tied directly to mortgages issued during that time. With more and more houses going into foreclosures and loosing value, an increasing number financial instruments are rapidly becoming non performing, or outright worthless. Companies holding them are experiencing losses going into billions of dollars. Some of them are becoming insolvent.
Such was the case with Washington Mutual, which was seized by federal authorities and sold at a bargain price to JP Morgan Chase. Washington Mutual set a sad record, becoming the biggest bank to ever fail in USA. But not the only one lately. So far the crisis has claimed 12 banks, investment banks and even insurance companies, like the industry giant American Insurance Group.
To date US Treasury managed to avoid real disaster by stepping and taking over failing institutions or facilitating financing to keep them alive, by lending money to other companies for purchase of weakened rivals. Intervention has cost Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars, including $25 billion to bailout Bear Sterns, $100 billions each for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, $85 billion for AIG. This list goes on and on.
Now FED is asking congress for additional $700 billions in order to bail out entire financial industry, by establishing a market for mortgage backed securities. Federal authorities would purchase instrument from most at risk firms. That would set some kind of pricing guidelines for all other such securities, making it possible for all holders of such notes to start trading in them again, potentially lowering risk of owning them.
Nobody really knows if this is going to be enough, but the price of such action will be staggering. With the money already spent and the funds requested, the total bill will surely top $1 trillion dollar by a wide margin. This would signal new wave of borrowing by Treasury, which would last for years and push the total debt level into record and uncharted level.
Dollar lost value while all this was unfolding, and is likely to continue slide until congress works out details of this massive funds infusion. After that it will take some time to see if the steps FED is taking are having desired effect. US dollar will probably stay under pressure during this time. One might expect this to continue through the reminder of 2008.
In order to finance rising level of debt, we can expect to see interest rates rise on USD, which would make Treasury paper more attractive. Combined with economic slow down in the rest of the world, this might prove very bullish for dollar going into 2009. This will only be the case if the interest increases are done in a slow, measured pace and not due to some market panic. This particular scenario is compatible with very long term dollar charts.
We should be watching with interest what comes out of the chambers of congress. Once the funding is granted, it will be up to the financial authorities to prove it is money well spent. If it works even half as well as promised, we should see steady appreciation of Dollar in 2009 and perhaps a little longer.
Mike P. Kulej is a Chief Forex Strategist for Spectrum Forex LLC. He specializes in mechanical trading systems as explained on http://www.spectrumforex.com. Spectrum Forex LLC offers numerous services to individual traders. He also publishes trading blog http://www.fxmadness.com. With questions and comments e-mail him at kulej@spectrumforex.com
