Word: bond
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...governments' debt expansions to increase the cost of funding. In other words, the long end of the yield curve will continue to be depressed, just as it has been in Japan for the past 16 years. In the early 1990s observers in Japan argued that 10-year Japan government-bond yields of 3.5% could not persist for long. That was when the government debt-to-GDP ratio was around 50%. It now stands at 150% and 10-year yields are 1.36% (having gone as low as 60 basis points in the interim...
None of this means Geithner will be a success as Treasury Secretary. He's still got to actually succeed at nursing the financial system back to health. "Hank [Paulson] was in emergency-room care," says Paul McCulley, a managing director and head of the short-term-bond desk at money-management giant Pimco, "whereas Tim is still in emergency-room care but also preparing a room for further care after the emergency." He at least shows signs of having a good bedside manner...
...wait, there's more. Unlike other CDOs, Strata is a so-called single tranche CDO. Most CDOs own hundreds of millions of dollars of loans. Those loans are pooled together and then various bonds are sold based on the portfolio. But all the bonds are not the same. They are stacked based on risk. The highest tranche bond gets paid its dividends based on the first loan payments that come in the door. Bonds at the bottom of the stack get paid last, which means those investments are wiped out first if borrowers fail to pay back their loans. Those...
...That's basically the scenario for Strata. Its investors don't owe a dime on the first $130 million (or 13%) in losses on the $1 billion bond portfolio. That may seem like it gives Strata investors a lot of protection. But if just 15% of BofA's $1 billion imaginary bond portfolio, which are real bonds just not necessarily owned by BofA, goes bad, then 100% of the investment in Strata is toast. Because of that, Moody's rated the bond the equivalent of BBB-, which is the lowest investment grade rating the firm...
...what is Strata worth today? Certainly not the original $20 million it's investors paid for it. According to research firm Markit, the average CDO tied to mortgage bonds lost half its value last year. CDOs based on corporate bonds have performed better. However, Strata sold insurance against high-yield corporate bonds, and those will be the first corporate debts to go bad if the economy gets worse. Indeed, one of the companies in Strata's bond pool, Hawaii Telcom Communications, recently filed for bankruptcy. In mid-January, Moody's put Strata on its list of bonds it was thinking...