It’s now December 13, and the news this morning is that Citigroup has decided to face the music and take $49B in SIV exposure onto its balance sheet. Thankfully the “conduit” is dead, and other banks around the world will soon enough be forced to face the music too. So I think we’re almost to the bottom of the credit crash; note that Blackstone has raised a new $1.3B fund to bottom-feed on debt-related assets. Maybe the small-investor play is to shift money into a broad financial-sector fund around year-end.
Meanwhile, what about the ratings agencies (Moody’s, S&P, Fitch) that gave these SIVs and their constituent debt slices inordinately high credit ratings? And what about the fact that the ratings agencies get paid by the very entities they rate? Does anybody see the parallels with Enron here (off-balance sheet shenanigans, compliant accounting firms (now ratings firms), public-company shareholders losing billions)? Get ready for more execs trading pinstripe suits for prison garb, and more government meddling (a la Sarbanes-Oxley) in the free market after the cow is already out of the barn.
Great. And maybe we can get another SOX law to fuck over small and medium sized businesses who want to go public.
