I'm normally skeptical of politicians wading into issues of executive compensation, but I think Barack Obama and Senators Charles Schumer and Jack Reed are right to ask for a government review of the departure packages for
Outgoing Freddie Mae (NYSE: FRE) CEO Richard Syron and Fannie Mae's (NYSE: FNM) Daniel Mudd could walk away with $14 million and $9.2 million respectively -- a far cry from the 9-digit packages that several top executives at the big banks left with, but still an awful lot of money for running companies into the ground to the point where a taxpayer funded bailout was necessary.
In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Housing Finance Agency director James Lockhart, Obama asked that (subscription required) the takeover deal "void any such inappropriate windfall payments to outgoing CEOs and senior management."
Is it political grandstanding? Of course, but it's also right on. Syron and Mudd should leave Freddie and Fannie without two nickels to rub together and if things are so dire that we have to fund a bailout, there shouldn't be enough left to pay outgoing CEOs multi-million dollar severance packages.
While intoning somberly about how the global financial markets would collapse absent its wipe out of Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) common and preferred shareholders, the Treasury has gotten a very slim payoff from its latest weekend bailout plan. To be sure, mortgage rates have fallen almost four-tenths of a percent and the value of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) may rise.
But is it worth all the pain? Investors in their 1.6 billion common shares have lost tens of billions of dollars in shareholder wealth ($139 billion off their peak prices), preferred shareholders will take $30 billion worth of write-offs, and the taxpayer will be on the hook for somewhere between $200 billion and $800 billion. BusinessWeek reports that "the banking industry [is expected] to collectively write down $25 billion to $30 billion on their balance sheets for losses on the preferred shares they are holding."
These banks will experience a decline in their capital ratios which could put some in peril. "There are 12 banks and thrifts that would lose 5% or more of tangible capital were they to take a 100% aftertax, mark-to-market adjustment on their GSE preferreds," writes BusinessWeek. It reports that three banks in particular will fall below minimum "well capitalized" levels -- Gateway Financial Holdings (NASDAQ: GBTS), Midwest Banc Holdings (NASDAQ: MBHI), and Cascade Financial (NASDAQ: CASB).
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama today sharply criticized the pay packages given to the departing chief executives of Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE).
Obama told reporters that he wrote letters to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart stating that "it would be unacceptable for executives of these institutions to earn a windfall at a time when U.S. Treasury has taken unprecedented steps to rescue these companies with taxpayer resources," according to CNBC.
He's absolutely right.
Yes, I realize that compared with the fallen CEOs of Wall Street, the pay packages are chump change. Fannie Chief Executive Daniel Mudd is 'only' getting around $9.3 million and his counterpart at Freddie Mac Richard Syron stands to receive $14.1 million. But just because Mudd and Syron are getting less than 10% of the $160 million parting gift awarded to Stan O'Neal for ruining Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER) does not make them any less egregious.
WSJ Magazine has a story on Sarah Palin's exercise of choice, running. It's interesting that the story must have had a four month lead time -- well before John McCain chose her as his VP candidate. The piece paints her as someone who ran five to seven miles a day before she became pregnant, at which point she did aerobics. Sounds healthy to me.
But it's McCain's health we have to worry about. Now it's come to light that although Palin could be a heartbeat away from the presidency, she doesn't know what Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) are. CBS News reports Palin said that they "have become too big for the taxpayers." But the taxpayers never owned them or paid taxes to support them. Thanks to Hank Paulson, we may spend as much as $800 billion of taxpayer money bailing them out. So if Palin is going to be president -- assuming 72-year-old John McCain needs to step down -- someone better get her up to speed on what's going on outside of Wasilla.
And aside from the glowing fitness report, there's some bad news about Palin. She has tried to "cover up investigations of her firing of a public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called 'October surprise' that would produce embarrassing information about her on the eve of the election," according to Capitol Hill Blue.
The government bailed out banks to the tune of $234 billion so far ($205 billion for Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) plus $29 billion for the Bear Stearns deal). Now General Motors (NYSE: GM) wants a $50 billion bailout (in the form of loan guarantees). So why not give the airline industry a bailout too?
After all, Wired reports that they're poised to lose $5.2 billion this year. Why? Well it doesn't help that "fuel bills have jumped $50 billion this year to an estimated $186 billion. Jet fuel now accounts for 36 percent of the industry's costs, up from 13 percent just six years ago," according to Wired. So why not bail out the industry -- after all it's hard to have a global economy if the airlines can't operate flights. To its credit, airlines seem to have had some success in pushing Congress to crack down on oil speculators -- oil's price has fallen from $147 to $101 in the last few months.
But since the administration seems to be in such a giving mood -- after all, our VP notes that his hero, Ronald Reagan, "proved deficits don't matter." And after bailing out banking, automobiles, and airlines, maybe they can get around to bailing out the three million homeowners in foreclosure and the 39% of mortgage holders whose properties are "underwater." Finally, why not use more taxpayer money to compensate investors whose stocks have lost 13% in the last year? Anybody else want a bailout?
It looks like the CEOs pushed out at Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) will do very well. According to MarketWatch, "Daniel Mudd, the outgoing CEO of Fannie Mae, could receive more than $9 million in combined severance pay, retirement benefits and deferred compensation." The head of Freddie, Richard Syron, could do even better. The amounts may come down a little if performance clauses in the contracts cut bonus pay.
The complaining is misplaced. The departing CEOs at places like Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) did much better. Paying financial firm chief executives large sums is part of doing business. That issue is not confined to banks and brokerages. It extends to almost every other large industry.
The US business culture has become one of paying CEO hundreds of times more than entry level workers at the same companies. The entire systems would have to be altered for that to change. Activist investors have been working on the problem for years, and nothing has happened.
The excitement over the Fannie and Freddie CEO comp deals only serves to show that the company's boards believed that the executives would do a good job when they came into the firms and that, at the time, there was no reason to think that their stocks would trade for under $1.
No one puts together a pay package on the assumption that a corporation's stock will fall 99%. It is hard to find senior management who will take $1 as an exit package, even if things do go wrong..
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.
Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin told Colorado voters that Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) have "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers."
Oops. The reality is that, as privately-held companies, Fannie and Freddie took no money from the federal government and it is only now that they will become a liability for taxpayers. The Huffington Post reports that "The major concern about Palin's position on the ticket is that she lacks the economic and foreign policy wherewithal to serve as vice president. This certainly doesn't help on that front. At the same time, the remark went almost entirely unnoticed over the weekend and discussions on the developments of the housing market can be difficult to process for even the most attuned voter."
When Palin made the remark, the audience cheered and McCain clapped -- meaning that neither the Republican Presidential candidate nor the Vice Presidential candidate, or even their supporters, understand the roles of Fannie and Freddie. More troubling, McCain toldThe Boston Globe last year that "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," and, here's the real kicker, said that he would look for someone who was a true economics expert in his VP pick.
Apparently that didn't happen, and voters will have to decide whether they want to vote for a ticket that doesn't have two supply curves to rub together.
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC and Deloite & Touche LLP had a ring side seat to the collapse of Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) and Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) which may cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. The two auditing firms have some serious explaining to do to taxpayers and members of Congress.
According to the New York Times, advisers to the U.S. Treasury Department found that Freddie's accounting methods overstated its financial cushion.
"The company had made decisions that, while not necessarily in violation of accounting rules, had the effect of overstating the firm's capital resources and financial stability," the paper said. "Indeed, one person briefed on the company's finances said Freddie Mac had made accounting decisions that pushed losses into the future and postponed a capital shortfall until the fourth quarter of this yearwhich would not need to be disclosed until early 2009." Fannie Mae used the same methods, though, apparently not as aggressively as Freddie Mac.
A spokesman for Freddie Mac's auditors, Pricewaterhouse, did not immediately return an email seeking comment. In its letter to shareholders filed with the 2007 annual report report, PwC noted that Freddie Mac had changed some accounting policies. It elected to offset the amounts of some derivative contracts as of October 1; elected to measure newly acquired interests in securitized financial assets that contain embedded derivatives at fair value as of January 1, 2007; changed its method for accounting for uncertainty in income taxes as of January 1; changed the method for accounting for defined benefits plans as of December 31, 2006, changed its method for determining gains and losses on sales of certain guaranteed securities as of October 1, 2005
That's quite a bit to keep track of, no? I am sure Congressional investigators will want more detail about why these policies were changed.
Fannie Mae, whose former chief executive Franklin Raines was ousted in 2004 following another accounting scandal, paid Deloitte $49.3 million in fees in 2007. The firm was hired by Fannie Mae in 2005 because its predecessor KPMG missed accounting errors that cost the housing finance company $9 billion in previously reported profit. A Deloitte spokesman declined to comment.
Chief Executive Daniel Mudd told investors following weaker-than-expected first quarter results that this year and next year would beg "tough." Little did he know that those words would foreshadow his ouster along with his counterpart at Freddie Mac Richard Syron. They no doubt will be getting a pretty fat golden parachutte. Both companies have lost a combined $14 billion over the past year.
If the auditors were not as diligent with Freddie and Fannie as they should have been, then members of Congress needs to hold them accountable. The shareholders who have been wiped out by the government's rescue deserve to know if auditors missed signs of the collapse that they should have caught.
Minyanville contributor Sean Udall dares to share the kind of keen insight and actionable information you won't find in any prospectus. For more original thought, visit www.minyanville.com.
AT&T (NYSE: T) became the first US carrier to make Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) the default search engine on its cell phones. Default search engines on traditional web portals probably don't carry as much weight as in the past. However, being selected the default for cellular searches is stickier due to the design of many devices. Moreover, YHOO will be providing the tag along ads that appear in conjunction with these searches.
Tech is lagging this morning as the finance stocks experience the biggest lift from the Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM)/Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) news. Meanwhile, YHOO is flat and on a day like today as a story like this won't carry much weight, but over time, the fact that YHOO is making significant deals in wireless search strengthens the long term valuation case. I suspect the shares of YHOO will lag the broader market until we get renewed take-out chatter or we see better action from other technology leaders.
Meanwhile, one of my newer favorite Naz names is simply theNasdaq(Nasdaq: NDAQ) itself. NDAQ has traded terribly the last few months with the decline in its own index. However, volumes and business fundamentals are quite strong a the poor market doesn't necessarily mean that the NDAQ itself is weakening. In fact I would say their market share and overall strategy has strengthened over the last year or more.
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson announced over the weekend that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being placed into conservatorship. The government is injecting capital into the entities and assuming responsibility for the senior debt. It also receiving warrants in both entities. The status of the common and preferred shareholders is tenuous, and it is highly unlikely that they will receive much in the end.
The equity markets have received this news with euphoria and are up substantially across the board. Everyone appears to be hoping that this move breaks the logjam that is currently affecting the credit markets. They are also anticipating that this move will help to stabilize the housing market.
I believe that this move will accomplish both of these objectives in the short term. The current situation could not continue without a potential financial meltdown occurring. In essence, the government had no choice but to take these steps. One can argue over the exact details but not over the actual move itself.
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says it doesn't 'solve everything.' No one is saying it does.
The biggest canard of all: "This is not going to be a cure-all, nor will it solve the 'real problems' of the U.S. economy." Why is it a canard?
Because no one -- I repeat, no one -- is saying it is. Not even the biggest bulls.
This bailout of Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) is a piece of the puzzle that is meant to stop house price depreciation. It is one of the major pieces. Mortgage rates are being called down big this morning, big, with some mortgage brokers thinking we will lop a full percentage point off of rates. In case you think they are biased, these people had been forecasting a big gain in rates.
What's driving me crazy here is the falseness of the critics. They are all assuming that things won't be happy. It is about being happier.
Let's take Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take) and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) (Cramer's Take). These changes are huge for them. If you owned them, you are going to make a lot of money. Why? Because the competition just got diminished, and the company that was making them pay more for money is gone.
No, that doesn't cure their bad loans. It does make it better!
Morgan Keegan upgraded Marvell Tech (NASDAQ: MRVL) to Outperform from Market Perform based on valuation and sustainable growth.
Merrill upgraded Lehman (NYSE: LEH) to Neutral from Underperform and said the government bailout of the GSE's removes "considerable uncertainty" in the residential mortgage markets and that the housing market is now closer to a bottom. The analyst believes the environment has improved for Lehman to attract equity capital needed and that loss expectations are reflected in valuation.
Lehman downgraded shares of Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) to Equal Weight from Overweight after the U.S. government said it will place Fannie and Freddie into a conservatorship. Citigroup also downgraded shares to Sell from Buy following the federal government's plan to place the GSEs into conservatorship as they believe both Fannie and Freddie will no longer be managed to maximize common shareholder returns.
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) was cut to Hold from Buy at Deutsche Bank. The firm downgraded shares following the company's guidance reduction and believes the forecast could still be optimistic.
The U.S. Government 'adds' $5 trillion in debt, but the dollar doesn't fall. How is this possible?
"Because the currency markets months ago had already factored-in or priced into the dollar some form of U.S. Government takeover of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," Andrew Resnick, currency trader, told BloggingStocks Monday.
The U.S. Treasury will buy as much as $200 billion in new, senior, preferred stock in Fannie (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) as part of its takeover of the government service giants, whose business models ran into trouble as the housing boom ended and mortgage defaults soared. The large, potential increase in government spending/borrowing would appear to be unquestionably dollar-bearish. Not so, says Resnick.
"The bailout is going to cost the U.S. Government and taxpayers more money, there's no doubt about that. But if it represents the first step toward reaching a bottom in the housing mess and at the same time stabilizes credit markets, that would be dollar bullish," Resnick said. "And that's the currency market's view at the present time."
Indeed, the dollar showed little signs of a collapse Monday. After dipping early Monday morning in Asia, the dollar firmed and was up about one-half cent to $1.4430 versus the euro, and added three-tenths of a cent versus the British pound. The dollar was rose about 1 yen to 108.52 versus Japan's yen and rose 1 cent to $1.1290 versus the Swiss Franc.
To understand why as much as $800 billion in taxpayer money could be at risk in this bailout, it pays to look at its winners and losers. Last month I appeared on CNBC's Power Lunch discussing the potential winners and losers from a bailout of Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE).
The bailout has been announced -- featuring a government takeover of their operations, receipt of senior preferred stock worth $1 billion paying 10% dividends, the promise of buying up to $200 billion more worth of senior preferred each quarter to keep their net worths positive, $5 billion worth of open-market mortgage-backed securities (MBS) buys, and a demand that they reduce their MBS holdings by two-thirds over the next several years.
It is clearer today that this takeover was triggered by a report from Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) that Fannie and Freddie needed $50 billion in capital "to offset the companies' combined losses," according to the New York Times. They had reported $84 billion in capital at the end of June, $12 billion more than the minimum required to trigger a government takeover. The Morgan Stanley report suggested that overly optimistic accounting understated their capital needs.
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says this plan for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a positive for the market, taxpayers and homeowners.
It would be very easy for me to say something like this about the federal government's plan for Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take): "The plan is a joke, it will mean nothing, the taxpayers are going to be stung and the market should be sold aggressively."
In fact, I feel like writing that. I feel like writing it because it is fun and simple and consistent with pretty much everything else every "intellectual" and "thoughtful" person was saying.
But then I reach back to my writings from last Thursday and Friday, which asked the bears if anything good could happen and what to buy, and everyone was pretty scornful or ignored me. Even as the Bank Index (BKX) turned out to be a home run to buy.
So, I am urging, without any prejudice, that bears DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER. Just join the "Jim Cramer is a Moron Club" and go switch on some football, because here is what I have to say about the Treasury plan:
It is what I have been calling for. It is what I have wanted. So I can't turn around now, even though I have been the world's most vocal critic of the Treasury, and say that it's bad.