Morgan Stanley: Trailblazing the Art of Securitizing FAIL




I can't really claim to understand this. If someone understands this, please, by all means, I would love for you to explain it to me. Why would this be attractive? What would compel investors to touch this? Who is letting this kind of crap go down?

Bloomberg:

Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded collateralized debt obligation backed by leveraged loans into new securities with AAA ratings in the first transaction of its kind, said two people familiar with the sale.

Morgan Stanley is selling $87.1 million of securities that it expects to receive top AAA ratings and $42.9 million of notes graded Baa2, the second-lowest investment grade by Moody’s Investors Service, according to marketing documents obtained by Bloomberg News. The bonds were created from Greywolf CLO I Ltd., a CDO arranged in January 2007 by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and managed by Greywolf Capital Management LP, an investment firm based in Purchase, New York.

Two years after the credit markets began to seize up, costing the world’s biggest financial institutions $1.47 trillion in writedowns and losses, banks are again taking so- called structured finance securities and turning them into new debt investments with top credit ratings. While the Morgan Stanley deal is the first to involve CDOs of loans, banks have been doing the same with commercial mortgage-backed securities in recent weeks.

A lot of banks and insurers “cannot buy anything but AAA,” said Sylvain Raynes, a principal at R&R Consulting in New York and co-author of “Elements of Structured Finance,” which is due to be published in November by Oxford University Press. “You’re manufacturing AAA out of not AAA, therefore allowing those people who have AAA written on their forehead to buy.”


Come on. JP Morgan stalker? Goldman rats? Anyone?

This weird Michael Jackson shit makes more sense to me than this. Twitterati? Anyone?

Huh?

The strategy is increasingly being used for commercial mortgage debt. Standard & Poor’s said on June 26 that it may lower the rankings on $235.2 billion of bonds backed by loans on properties such as office buildings and shopping malls.

Banks have issued about $2 billion of the debt in the last three weeks, according to Barclays Capital. That compares with $5.8 billion of similar offerings in all of 2008, Credit Suisse Group data show.

“Somebody does something and it seems to make magic, and the other guy says ‘Hey, let’s do that, too,’” Raynes said.

New York-based Goldman Sachs plans to sell $216.9 million of repackaged commercial mortgage debt, according to people familiar with the sale who declined to be identified because terms aren’t public. The re-REMIC is being carved out of four bonds sold in 2006, said the people. Michael DuVally, a Goldman Sachs spokesman, said he couldn’t comment.


So at this point you should be asking yourself "who in the fuck is allowing this sort of shit to go on right now?" (A: the New York Fed of course) Followed by "and why the fuck are they the ones about to get more responsibility?"

And if you're not completely outraged by the beast yet, you probably deserve everything that is about to come down on your ass.

SRY.

3 comments:

a said...

Investors want interest income. These terms are not public so we dont know the duration. Could be 6 months a year my guess is that isnt figured in. Clue is fraudulent AAA rating by FED.

The banks need to show TARP money is really going into the economy to do some good via creating illusory assets on its balance sheet, which up till now the money just keeps finding its way back into the stock market, and that is a bigger problem later. So perhaps a clue is since MS's clients have broke even from last Novembers stock losses, now MS et al are rolling over capital it just plans of deferring along with the maturity too.

Failure is built into this deal.

beebs said...

I blame the rating agencies. Didn't they learn their lesson last time?

Anne said...

"Why would this be attractive? What would compel investors to touch this?"

I believe Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still obligated to buy $40 billion in securities per week.