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Hedge Funds and 2007-2008 Financial Crisis: - Is This Time Really Different?
Hedge Funds and 2007-2008 Financial Crisis: - Is This Time Really Different?
Hedge Funds
and
2007-2008 Financial Crisis
Overview
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S&P500: 2007-2008
10 1700
Fed opened Fed cut rate
Fed cut Rate Discount window To almost zero
Fed cut Rate By another25 bps To I-Banks 1600
0 1400
Index Return (%)
10/1/2007
11/1/2007
12/1/2007
10/1/2008
11/1/2008
12/1/2008
1/1/2007
2/1/2007
3/1/2007
4/1/2007
5/1/2007
6/1/2007
7/1/2007
8/1/2007
9/1/2007
1/1/2008
2/1/2008
3/1/2008
4/1/2008
5/1/2008
6/1/2008
7/1/2008
8/1/2008
9/1/2008
Index Value
1300
-5
Subprime 1200
Bear Stearns
defaults Sold to
Shot up Major banks
-10 JP Morgan 1100
Wrote down
MBS IndyMac
MBS Rating failed
Downgrades Fitch downgraded
1000
Insurer AMBAC
-15
TED Spread up
Lehman Bankcrupt
900
Merril sold to BA
Fannie Mae,
-20
Freddie Mac and AIG 800
Rescued by Gov
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• Bear Stearns
– Early March 2008: Credit spreads between agency bonds (issued
by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) started to widen again.
• Large exposure to agency bonds on its own.
• One of the creditors of a failed hedge fund (Carlyle Capital) that heavily
invested in agency bonds.
– March 11, 2008: Fed announced $200 billion Term Securities
Lending Facility.
• Allowing investment banks to swap agency and mortgage-related bonds for
treasury bonds for 28 days.
• Market interpreted this as a sign that Fed knew that some investment banks
were in trouble.
• Naturally, they pointed to the smallest, most leveraged investment bank
with large mortgage exposure: Bear Stearns.
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• Jay
– My 401K almost became “201K” at one point
– Furlough…
• University Foundations and Endowments
– During the 12 months ended June 30, 2009, the ten largest
endowments lost a combined $36 billion.
• Harvard: $10 billion loss (27.3% loss)
• Yale: $5.6 billion loss (24.6% loss)
• Stanford and Princeton: $3 to $4 billion loss
– Harvard’s responses:
• Halted construction of a $1.2 billion science complex
• Eliminated 275 jobs and frozen salaries
• HBS stopped providing sushi as refreshment during regular seminars.
• …
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A Historical Perspective
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• Comparisons:
– Housing prices
– Equity prices
– Real GDP growth
– Public debt
• Time Horizon:
– 4-year period leading to the crises and
– 3-year period following the crises
Housing Prices
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Public Debt
Striking Similarity!!
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Individual
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Corporate/Institutional
Government/Regulatory
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Darden Case:
“Bear Stearns and the Seeds of Its Demise”
Preceding Events
• A reinforcing event:
– Flight to “safety” : large inflows of international capital after
several international credit crises (Asian 1997 crisis and Russian
1998 default)
• Further fueled the housing boom
• Spurred dramatic growth in hedge funds and private equity
• Prompted a search for yield: delivered by new securities such as CDOs
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Consequences of securitization
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Exhibit 4
Exhibit 5
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Mismatch in maturity:
investing long and borrow short
– Financing structure of SIVs and I-banks
• Invested in illiquidity long-maturity assets: Mortgage
• Financed with short-term ABCP and repos: overnight, 90 days, 1 year
– Deadly interplay between credit risk and liquidity risk
• Mortgage defaults drove down the value of collaterals -- credit risk.
• The ABCP and repo market suddenly dried up – liquidity risk.
– Investors unwilling to extend more credit to banks.
• Unable to rollover short-term financing and facing margin calls, banks were
forced to sell assets.
• The large sell off further drove down the asset value.
• More margin calls …
• More sell off …
• Domino effect soon took out liquidity from the entire financial system
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Exhibit 7
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• Ring a bell?
– “We are now witnessing how damaging the trading of money
can be to the economies of some countries and their currencies.
It can be abused as no other trade can. Whole regions can be
bankrupted by just a few people whose only objective is to
enrich themselves and their rich clients…. We welcome foreign
investments. We even welcome speculators. But we don’t have
to welcome share- and financial-market manipulators. We need
these manipulators as much as travelers in the good old days
needed highwaymen.”
• Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamad, Sep 23, 1997.
• No conclusive evidence!
• It is possible that hedge funds involved in currency trade
played a destabilizing role.
• However, there is no evidence that these funds
maintained significant positions in the Asia currency
basket over the time of the crisis.
• As for George Soros, singled out by Dr. Mohamad, his
funds actually lost five to ten percent return per month
over the Asian crisis period.
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Crowded Industry
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• Market conditions:
– Relatively little movements in fixed income and equity markets
on August 7th and 8th.
– S&P 500 lost nearly 3% on August 9th.
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• Systemic risk:
– The risk of a broad-based breakdown in the financial system,
often realized as a series of correlated defaults among financial
institutions that occurs over a short period of time and typically
caused by a single major event.
• Traditional banking panics have virtually disappeared.
– Thanks to the FDIC and related central bank policies
• However, systemic risk exposures have taken shape in
the “shadow banking system”.
– Investment banks, hedge funds, insurance companies, …
– Providing the same services that banks have traditionally
provided, but are outside of the regulated banking system.
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Better Disclosure
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