Thursday, July 16, 2020

Big Banks set billions aside to deal with bad consumer loans

In this Bloomberg article, "A $35 Billion Bite From U.S. Banks May Be Only The Start," the spin doctors seem like they're trying to make you dizzy.  One one hand, the article explains that major banks have set about $35 billion aside to deal with delinquent loans that may be coming their way.  On the other hand, comes the "everything's fine" spiel you get form mainstream outlets.  Unemployment is up, but "seriously delinquent loans" are down in the last couple months.  Um... yeah, because The Fed has thrown over $3 trillion or of created money into first the repo market, then many other aspects of the economy, in the past 9 months, something never done in history.  At the same time, because of the intense nature of the virus shutdown, banks and lenders have been going to great lengths to offer forbearance and other terms to help the millions of people laid off, with lowered pay, and struggling to pay all kinds of debts. 

This article reminds me a lot of the early rumblings of the subprime mortgage mess in 2008.  We have at least three major forms of debt that have been packaged and sold as investments, very much like the subprime mortgage backed securities and CDO's in 2008.  The three main ones I'm aware of are Student Loan Asset Backed Securities (SLABS), Commercial Lending Obligations (CLO's), and Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS).  We'll see where this leads...

No comments:

Post a Comment

Update: July 16, 2021

 So... the Fed has continued to drop "helicopter money," though not as much as last year, to prop up the economy as a whole.  Asse...