Photo:endlesstorture, Creative Commons, Flickr
The folks at Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services crack me up. In December they said that they don’t expect a U.S. recession. Now they say there is a light at the end of the subprime tunnel, claiming that we are halfway through a forecasted $285 billion in writedowns. I must admit that I find their optimism refreshing. If we are in fact halfway through the subprime crisis, what will the second half look like?
As I mention on thepanelist.net, don’t expect Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) to be a part of the party. They were an integral player in the first part of the credit crisis, rushing to the aid of Western banks and providing some $50 billion of equity and mandatory convertibles to keep Wall Street afloat. But these SWFs have been catching falling knives. A few examples: China Investment Corporations highly publicized $3 billion pre-IPO investment in Blackstone has lost a third of its value and the Singapore Investment Corporation has lost $6 billion on its $11 billion investment in Swiss bank UBS.
SWFs have been burned badly and they are unlikely to come to Wall Street’s rescue in the second half of the crisis. SWFs stayed away from a last minute deal to try to steal away Bear Stearns, and they will stay away from future deals. And if the funds of foreign governments can’t support Wall Street, it’s up to Bernanke and Paulson.
Now that the SWFs have packed up and run away, expect the rumor mongers to run the asylum. “If the banking world has learnt anything in the past few days, it is that rumors can kill,” says Siobhan Kennedy at The Times. “Bear Stearns was forced into an emergency sale not because its banks stopped lending it money but because its customers and its counterparties were so scared it was on the brink of collapse they decided one by one and in the space of 72 hours to run for the exit.”
The dramatic collapse of Bear Stearns demonstrates an important point: If there really is some light at the end of the subprime tunnel, as S&P suggests, rumor mongers will go out and build some more tunnel. And SWFs won’t be there to save the day.
Photo:mellyjean, Creative Commons, Flickr