By the looks of it Warren Buffet is playing the role of saviour, an angel investor in quite a few big companies today.
The Washington Post article compared Buffet to the man who saved the Wall Street in 1893 & 1907 & also loaned Gold to the US government, J P Morgan. The world's richest man (Buffet) provided $ 3 billion as new capital to GE (now it strikes me GE was actually founded by JP Morgan) on ofcourse very sweet terms. He earlier showed his faith in Goldman Sachs. Interestingly the article also mentions the Buffet as the coach, guiding the US treasury secretary Henry 'Hank' Paulson. Buffet also backed the $700 bn mentioning that it was such a great deal, he wants one percent of it, provided the troubled securities are bought at market price.
Think he puts 'the words' to assuage the concern and the take care the interest of ordinary tax payer. If you could convince (& ensure the corresponding action) that the troubled assets would be bought at right price, this proposed 'Bailout'-please-call-it-by-other-name actually becomes the great investment of 'American tax payer money'. All consequences of the 'bailouts-please-call-it-by-other-name then actually look good. Financial institutions are ready do business with each other and the with the consumers. Companies, banks & individuals are able to borrow money at reasonable rates for short periods (not at current levels which probably are the highest in decades). Government & taxpayer make money while we have liquity in this system. Lets face it we are used to faith & trust and the use of a currency. To think of going back to the barter system is just not possible.
This brings to me another of the much debated 'MTM' rule. Quite a few of politicians want me to believe that the 'mark to market rule' is the cause of all failure. That all problems of the world will go away if we pretended that they weren't there. Just ask financial institutions to showcase their assets through some tinted lens that makes them look healthier. If only we could make all of them sit in a Finance & Economy class. Ok its difficult to mark assets to market when there is no market but the fact of matter is an accounting 'fix' will furthur deepen the crisis of trust. It will send the institutions deeper into our current credit contraction because the balance sheets will be even farther from the truth than they are today.
As a matter of fact, financial institutions hold a lot of their assets for investment and hence do not mark them to market. The percentage varies for example in the case of failed Washington Mutual , 75% of the assets were not marked to market. A WSJ article this morning analyses this well but the online content is only accessible through a subscription. Hence not posting here.
Back home, there was a run on ICICI Bank's stock & the chairman KV Kamath, RBI , Indian finance minister quickly moved to control the damage after the stock fell 22% in one week to reach the price at which it issued equity almost three years ago. The interview by KV Kamath in Mint is here. ICICI BANK - Kamath sees agenda, says bank is safe
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