homes are market valued at over 20 trillion dollars with nearly half of the value supported by mortgage finance of one sort or another. At first blush that appears to be reasonably levered, but at the margin, homes purchased in 2004 and beyond are now at risk of turning upside down - negative equity - and there are some 25 million or so of those. The "upsidedownness" in many cases results in foreclosures, or outright abandonment and most certainly serves as an example of what not to do for millions of twenty-somethings or new citizens choosing between homeownership and renting. The dominoes fall month-by-month, forcing prices ever lower as shown in Chart 1 provided by Case-Shiller. An asset deflation in turn becomes a debt deflation, as subprimes, alt-As, and finally prime mortgages surrender to the seemingly inevitable tide. PIMCO estimates a total of 5 trillion dollars of mortgage loans are in risky asset categories and that nearly 1 trillion dollars of cumulative losses will finally mark the gravestone of this housing bubble. The problem with writing off 1 trillion dollars from the finance industry's cumulative balance sheet is that if not matched by capital raising, it necessitates a sale of assets, a reduction in lending or both that in turn begins to affect economic growth, creating what Mohamed El-Erian fears as a "negative feedback loop."
A trillion dollars is a lot of money, but in this age of photoshop wizardry it seems that experts can make just about anyone or anything look good. Lose a trillion? Well, just write it off a little more slowly, or suggest that mark-to-market accounting is not applicable to banks and investment banks. As a matter of fact it may not be. GaveKal's Anatole Kaletsky points out that "the whole point of a bank is to exchange short-term, liquid liabilities for long-term illiquid assets whose value is hard to gauge. This liquidity and maturity transformation, in fact is the main social function that a banking system provides." I and others on PIMCO's Investment Committee wholeheartedly agree. But the reluctance to remark rancid mortgage loans rests on the heretofore inevitable conclusion that home prices will bottom and then reflate within a reasonable period of time. If they go down even more, and stay down, well then Washington - Wall Street - and ultimately, Main Street - we have a problem. That is why Hank Paulson and in turn Christopher Cox are waving their independent but coordinated wands in an effort to 1) prevent a market run on the price of bank and investment bank stocks until there is enough time to reflate the U.S. housing market, and 2) ultimately recapitalize our primary mortgage lenders - FNMA and Freddie Mac. An interesting press release by the CBO on July 22nd, by the way, points out that the GSEs are barely solvent (9 billion dollars) when their assets are valued at current market prices. Housing's cow needs to turn into a bull real quick.
Make no mistake, the current conundrum that must be solved is: how to make the price of 120 million U.S. barns stop going down in price and then to make them go up again. That, however, is easier said than done.
