next problem

 

마이클 르윗은 AIG의 붕괴라는, 잠복되어 있는 위험에 대해 언급하고 있다. 만약 AIG가 붕괴한다면, 한마디로 그 규모는 "아무도 모른다"는 것. 그리고 금융시스템에 주는 충격은 훨씬 더 근원적일 수밖에 없다는 것. 르윗은 AIG를 '헤지펀드 투자자'로 규정하고 있다. 한국인에게 이 AIG는 무척이나 유명하다. 박지성이 뛰고 있는 맨체스터유나이티드 선수들의 가슴에, 그리고 위성채널로 안방을 파고든 홈쇼핑의 보험광고를 통하여 AIG는 친숙하다. 이 헤지펀드 투자자가 운용하는 CDS(credit default swap)시장이 60트릴리온 달러(우리 돈으로 얼마인지 잘 계산이 안 된다)라고 한다. 미국 정부 당국이 죽어가는 거인의 목숨을 잠시 연장시켜 놓았지만, 그것은 종말을 잠시 늦춘 것일 뿐. 미국의 중앙은행이 AIG의 브리지론 요청을 받아들일 것인가. 중앙은행이 보험회사에 도움을 준 전례가 없다. 하지만 패니메와 프레디맥에 대한 구조금융을 단행했을 때, 원칙은 이미 깨졌다. 그리고 그것으로 자유시장의 신화는 끝장났다. 말하자면 르윗은 미국 정부가 개입할 거라고 예측하고 있는 거다. 하지만, 다음 아고라의 어느 네티즌은 이렇게 지적하기도 했다. "더 큰 본게임이 밀려오니, 미국 정부도 몸을 사려야 할 겁니다....이제 시작인데, 이 정도 가지고 전망 어쩌구 저쩌구는 언론 플레이에 지나지 않은 겁니다.... 08.09.16 IP 121.153.***.236 "

 

어떻게 될 것인가!

 

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원문출처: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16lewitt.html

 

Wall Street’s Next Big Problem

 

By MICHAEL LEWITT

Published: September 15, 2008

 

WHEN I drove to the Beverly Hills offices of Drexel Burnham Lambert on Feb. 13, 1990, the last thing I expected to hear was that the investment bank where I worked was going under. Yet early that morning, we were told that the company was filing for bankruptcy. I was, to put it mildly, blown away. At the time, Drexel had $3.5 billion in assets and was the biggest underwriter of junk bonds.

 

It all seemed like a very big deal at the time. But what’s happening this week makes me pine for the good old days.

 

When Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Monday, it became the latest but surely not the last victim of the subprime mortgage collapse. Lehman owned more than $600 billion in assets. Financial institutions around the world have already reported more than half a trillion dollars of mortgage-related losses and that figure will most likely double or triple before the crisis exhausts itself.

 

But there is a bigger potential failure lurking: the American International Group, the insurance giant. It poses a much larger threat to the financial system than Lehman Brothers ever did because it plays an integral role in several key markets: credit derivatives, mortgages, corporate loans and hedge funds.

Late Monday, A.I.G. was downgraded by the major credit rating agencies (which inexplicably still retain an enormous amount of power in the marketplace despite having gutted their credibility with unreliable ratings for mortgage-backed securities during the housing boom). This credit downgrade could require A.I.G. to post billions of dollars of additional collateral for its mortgage derivative contracts.

 

Fat chance. That’s collateral A.I.G. does not have. There is therefore a substantial possibility that A.I.G. will be unable to meet its obligations and be forced into liquidation. A side effect: Its collapse would be as close to an extinction-level event as the financial markets have seen since the Great Depression.

 

A.I.G. does business with virtually every financial institution in the world. Most important, it is a central player in the unregulated, Brobdingnagian credit default swap market that is reported to be at least $60 trillion in size.

 

Nobody knows this market’s real size, or who owes what to whom, because there is no central clearinghouse or regulator for it. Credit default swaps are a type of credit insurance contract in which one party pays another party to protect it from the risk of default on a particular debt instrument. If that debt instrument (a bond, a bank loan, a mortgage) defaults, the insurer compensates the insured for his loss. The insurer (which could be a bank, an investment bank or a hedge fund) is required to post collateral to support its payment obligation, but in the insane credit environment that preceded the credit crisis, this collateral deposit was generally too small.

 

As a result, the credit default market is best described as an insurance market where many of the individual trades are undercapitalized. But even worse, many of the insurers are grossly undercapitalized. In one case in the New York courts, the Swiss banking giant UBS is suing a hedge fund that said it would insure nearly $1.5 billion in bonds but was unable to do so. No wonder — the hedge fund had only $200 million in assets.

 

If A.I.G. collapsed, its hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-related assets would be added to those being sold by other financial institutions. This would just depress values further. The counterparties around the world to A.I.G.’s credit default swaps may be unable to collect on their trades. As a large hedge-fund investor, A.I.G. would suddenly become a large redeemer from hedge funds, forcing fund managers to sell positions and probably driving down prices in the world’s financial markets. More failures, particularly of hedge funds, could follow.

 

Regulators knew that if Lehman went down, the world wouldn’t end. But Wall Street isn’t remotely prepared for the inestimable damage the financial system would suffer if A.I.G. collapsed.

 

While Gov. David A. Paterson of New York on Monday allowed A.I.G. to borrow $20 billion from its subsidiaries, that move will only postpone the day of reckoning. The Federal Reserve was also trying to arrange at least $70 billion in loans from investment banks, but it’s hard to see how Wall Street could come up with that much money.

 

More promisingly, A.I.G. asked the Federal Reserve for a bridge loan. True, there is no precedent for the central bank to extend assistance to an insurance company. But these are unprecedented times, and the Federal Reserve should provide A.I.G. with some form of financial support while the company liquidates its mortgage-related assets in an orderly manner.

 

The Fed cannot afford to stand on principle. The myth of free markets ended with the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Actually, it ended with their creation.

 

Michael Lewitt is the president of a money management firm.