It appears that derivatives (in this case, credit default swaps) played a large part in the demise of AIG. Warren Buffett was absolutely clairvoyant when he stated in his 2002 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter,
"The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some event makes their toxicity clear. Knowledge of how dangerous they are has already permeated the electricity and gas businesses, in which the eruption of major troubles caused the use of derivatives to diminish dramatically. Elsewhere, however, the derivatives business continues to expand unchecked. Central banks and governments have so far found no effective way to control, or even monitor, the risks posed by these contracts."
"Charlie and I believe Berkshire should be a fortress of financial strength – for the sake of our owners, creditors, policyholders and employees. We try to be alert to any sort of megacatastrophe risk, and that posture may make us unduly apprehensive about the burgeoning quantities of long-term derivatives contracts and the massive amount of uncollateralized receivables that are growing alongside. In our view, however, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal."
Originally posted by Mad RookThanks for sounding the alarm Warren!! Its just too bad no one heard it and/or cared.
It appears that derivatives (in this case, credit default swaps) played a large part in the demise of AIG. Warren Buffett was absolutely clairvoyant when he stated in his 2002 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter,
"The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some e ...[text shortened]... apons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal."
Originally posted by Mad RookThat's why they call him the Oracle of Omaha.
It appears that derivatives (in this case, credit default swaps) played a large part in the demise of AIG. Warren Buffett was absolutely clairvoyant when he stated in his 2002 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter,
"The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some e ...[text shortened]... apons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal."
Originally posted by uzlessI'm sure if any of our politicians had bothered to pick up the phone years ago and ask Warren for his opinions, he would have gladly given them a number of possible solutions. However, I doubt if Warren ever got any of those calls.
Sometimes there are no answers. The only solution is to dump it onto American taxpayers....again.
Regarding AIG, it's clear that the feds considered AIG to be too big to fail. I've been trying to figure out the details of the bailout/loan, or whatever you want to call it. It seems to me that it's almost like a controlled bankruptcy. The government get about 80 percent of the common shares and gets the right to oust the present management. They give a 85 billion dollar loan to AIG, but it appears that the loan must be repaid within two years, and they have to pay a hefty interest on the loan principal. (Could the fed actually make money on this deal? That's almost too good to even contemplate.) They also have the right to suspend dividend payments to the shareholders. And since the existing shareholders have to suffer with having their equity diluted by 80 percent, I'm sure the existing shareholders don't look at this as a bailout.
But I do have a few concerns about this takeover. I really hope that the government has a clear exit strategy, and I hope they don't wait too long to do it. Also, the government will have to ensure that AIG doesn't continue to be mismanaged, because a second AIG crisis further down the road would be a complete disaster for us taxpayers.
Buffett is an extremely intelligent man. I didn't know about these quotes, but they it doesn't surprise me that he felt that way AND got it right. He was always an in investor that focused on the fundamentals (the long-term) and I share his contempt for trading based on technical analysis (i.e. a la Jim Cramer).
Edit - One of my favourite quotes of him:
"I realized technical analysis didn't work when I turned the charts upside down and didn't get a different answer"
An update: In my original post, I quoted from Berkshire's 2002 report. Here's a later warning about the dangers of derivatives that Warren had in his 2005 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder report:
"Long ago, Mark Twain said: 'A man who tries to carry a cat home by its tail will learn a lesson that can be learned in no other way.' If Twain were around now, he might try winding up a derivatives business. After a few days, he would opt for cats."
"We lost $104 million pre-tax last year in our continuing attempt to exit Gen Re’s derivative operation. Our aggregate losses since we began this endeavor total $404 million."
"Originally we had 23,218 contracts outstanding. By the start of 2005 we were down to 2,890. You might expect that our losses would have been stemmed by this point, but the blood has kept flowing. Reducing our inventory to 741 contracts last year cost us the $104 million mentioned above."
"Remember that the rationale for establishing this unit in 1990 was Gen Re’s wish to meet the needs of insurance clients. Yet one of the contracts we liquidated in 2005 had a term of 100 years! It’s difficult to imagine what “need” such a contract could fulfill except, perhaps, the need of a compensation conscious trader to have a long-dated contract on his books. Long contracts, or alternatively those with multiple variables, are the most difficult to mark to market (the standard procedure used in accounting for derivatives) and provide the most opportunity for “imagination” when traders are estimating their value. Small wonder that traders promote them."
"A business in which huge amounts of compensation flow from assumed numbers is obviously fraught with danger. When two traders execute a transaction that has several, sometimes esoteric, variables and a far-off settlement date, their respective firms must subsequently value these contracts whenever they calculate their earnings. A given contract may be valued at one price by Firm A and at another by Firm B. You can bet that the valuation differences – and I’m personally familiar with several that were huge – tend to be tilted in a direction favoring higher earnings at each firm. It’s a strange world in which two parties can carry out a paper transaction that each can promptly report as profitable."
"I dwell on our experience in derivatives each year for two reasons. One is personal and unpleasant. The hard fact is that I have cost you a lot of money by not moving immediately to close down Gen Re’s trading operation. Both Charlie and I knew at the time of the Gen Re purchase that it was a problem and told its management that we wanted to exit the business. It was my responsibility to make sure that happened. Rather than address the situation head on, however, I wasted several years while we attempted to sell the operation. That was a doomed endeavor because no realistic solution could have extricated us from the maze of liabilities that was going to exist for decades. Our obligations were particularly worrisome because their potential to explode could not be measured. Moreover, if severe trouble occurred, we knew it was likely to correlate with problems elsewhere in financial markets."
"So I failed in my attempt to exit painlessly, and in the meantime more trades were put on the books. Fault me for dithering. (Charlie calls it thumb-sucking.) When a problem exists, whether in personnel or in business operations, the time to act is now."
"The second reason I regularly describe our problems in this area lies in the hope that our experiences may prove instructive for managers, auditors and regulators. In a sense, we are a canary in this business coal mine and should sing a song of warning as we expire. The number and value of derivative contracts outstanding in the world continues to mushroom and is now a multiple of what existed in 1998, the last time that financial chaos erupted."
"Our experience should be particularly sobering because we were a better-than-average candidate to exit gracefully. Gen Re was a relatively minor operator in the derivatives field. It has had the good fortune to unwind its supposedly liquid positions in a benign market, all the while free of financial or other pressures that might have forced it to conduct the liquidation in a less-than-efficient manner. Our accounting in the past was conventional and actually thought to be conservative. Additionally, we know of no bad behavior by anyone involved."
"It could be a different story for others in the future. Imagine, if you will, one or more firms (troubles often spread) with positions that are many multiples of ours attempting to liquidate in chaotic markets and under extreme, and well-publicized, pressures. This is a scenario to which much attention should be given now rather than after the fact. The time to have considered – and improved – the reliability of New Orleans’ levees was before Katrina."
"When we finally wind up Gen Re Securities, my feelings about its departure will be akin to those expressed in a country song, 'My wife ran away with my best friend, and I sure miss him a lot.' "