Saturday, April 10, 2010

WSJ: Big Banks Mask Risk Levels

Excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:
Major banks have masked their risk levels in the past five quarters by temporarily lowering their debt just before reporting it to the public, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

A group of 18 banks—which includes Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.—understated the debt levels used to fund securities trades by lowering them an average of 42% at the end of each of the past five quarterly periods, the data show. The banks, which publicly release debt data each quarter, then boosted the debt levels in the middle of successive quarters.

Excessive borrowing by banks was one of the major causes of the financial crisis, leading to catastrophic bank runs in 2008 at firms including Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers. Since then, banks have become more sensitive about showing high levels of debt and risk, worried that their stocks and credit ratings could be punished.

That practice, while legal, can give investors a skewed impression of the level of risk that financial firms are taking the vast majority of the time.

Voltron says: I want to know how Wells Fargo breaks out . . . anyhow Zero Hedge has a great graph summarizing the data:



Voltron says: Notice how the red dot seems to be randomly distributed within the bars then suddenly starting in Q4 2008, it is always at the bottom.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304830104575172280848939898.html?mod=WSJ_Markets_MIDDLETopNews

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/evidence-primary-dealers-have-collectively-engaged-repo-105-and-qtr-end-book-cooking-type-sc

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