TALF Fails Its Objectives

That title might be misleading. It fails the stated objectives, but some might wonder if the real objective is to ensure a steady stream of large transactional revenue for primary dealers.

According to the federal reserve:

The Federal Reserve created the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), to help market participants meet the credit needs of households and small businesses by supporting the issuance of asset-backed securities...
Source: NY Fed

Notice on the July 16th facility, a full $0.6 billion in loans were requested. However, they weren't new loans. These were legacy securities. That means someone is putting up some old commercial real estate loans as collateral for cash, so they can do something better with them. It also reveals while they want to "support the issuance" of new securities, those working face to face with them aren't interested. There's too much junk in bonds they need to get rid of first.

One might argue, the proceeds from this loan might be used to fund new loans. While that's possible, its also possible they might be using the proceeds to fund payroll, pay bills, or who knows what.

But you see why the larger banks are in the money these days?

...Eligible borrowers must use a primary dealer...

The fee for the Fed alone is 20 basis points, or $1.3 million for this one operation on one day. No telling what kind of haircut the borrowers of the securities have to take with the primary dealers.

That also means one or more of the 17 dealers get piece of this action, even if they don't lend consumers a penny. One way to keep the banks solvent is to simply lend money back and forth between them; and you wonder if GDP is going to take off?

Maybe, maybe not. But one thing is for sure: those Goldman employees are going to be buying some pretty nice cars, clothes, jewelry, and other luxuries with their $386,395 annual salaries. Goldman is one of the primary dealers, and is no doubt making a boatload of money churning these legacy assets through all the facilities, not to mention the new bonds being issued by corporations, and the Federal Reserves direct purchase of securities.

As a matter of fact, Goldman is doing so well they confidently plan to issue around a billion dollars in unsecured bonds so they can leverage this new world of global liquidity. We don't yet what asset class is going to get that billion dollar stimulus injection, but something bubble somewhere is being pumped up.