Financial Update

Don't panic: a market meltdown survival guide Financial Post Article below
· TSX -631.83pts
· Dow -733.08 pts –
· Dollar +1.91cto $84.18US.
· Oil -$4.09to $74.54US per barrel
· Gold -$.80 to $835.50US per ounce

Ottawa may make millions on CMHC plan for banks TARA PERKINS AND BOYD ERMAN
Globe and Mail

The federal government stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars off of its new program to buy mortgages from banks.

The government today is launching the first purchase of $5-billion of mortgages from Canada's banks as part of a program to buy $25-billion of home loans from banks to give them cash to make new loans.

It is taking advantage of its ability to borrow cheaply to buy the mortgages, which will pay a higher rate of interest. The difference will be the government's profit.

Ottawa doesn't have a forecast of its likely take, but given current market prices and the guidance that the Finance Department has provided to bankers on the prices to be paid, the federal government may expect to earn about $250-million a year. That could rise to $1-billion if the government increases the size of the mortgage purchases to $100-billion, as some in the banking sector suggest could be done.

Those potential profits are significant at a time when Ottawa projects its surplus will fall to $1.3-billion for the year ended March, 2010.

While government officials say any profit isn't the point, earning money on the program does drive home the message that Ottawa has been sending: The program isn't a bailout at taxpayers' expense.

“The goal is not to make money for the government,” said a Finance Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity. While the program is an efficient way to support lending in Canada by providing reliable funding to banks, it is important that the banks pay a competitive rate to tap into the funds, the official said.

“This is not a subsidy for banks.”

The credit crunch, which first erupted more than a year ago, has made it more expensive for banks to raise long-term funding to finance mortgages.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the initiative last Friday to have government-owned Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. buy up loans from banks. The loans are solid, but by taking them off bank balance sheets in return for cash, the banks will theoretically be able to make new loans.

Ottawa has committed to buy up to $25-billion in total, but has not yet set the dates for the remaining purchases. Participants expect the government to carry out four more purchases of $5-billion each.

The purchases will be conducted by so-called reverse auction, where banks will essentially have to tell the government how much they will pay in the form of interest to move the loans off their balance sheets. The government will accept the most profitable bids.

Mortgage lenders can submit up to three bids for various amounts, but no one lender can sell more than $1.25-billion of loans to the government.

The government will establish a minimum acceptable yield, or interest rate. That minimum is expected to be above the yield on comparable five-year Canada Mortgage Bonds that CMHC sells to investors.

Banks are expected to place bids somewhere above the minimum, with more-stressed banks giving the government a better deal as they try to ensure they can raise cash.

John Manley, a former deputy prime minister and finance minister, said he was surprised Ottawa didn't pick up the program earlier.

“They make money on it, it increases liquidity in the system – why don't you answer the phone when people suggest things?” he said, pointing out that banks had been suggesting the program for some time.

One bank chief executive officer said that, even as the financial crisis worsens, Canada is in a unique position where it can establish programs to ease the flow of funds that don't put taxpayers on the hook. A shortage of government bonds and an excess of mortgages sitting on the banks' books make this an easy program to increase if necessary, he said.

Don't panic: a market meltdown survival guide

Joshua Zumbrun, Forbes Financial Post

Washington, D.C. -- It's been a bad week on Wall Street. The Dow has been avalanching downward, and the July to September summary of 401(k) statements in people's mailboxes look like black diamond ski slopes. It's a lousy time to be an investment banker, or a hedge fund manager, or planning a December retirement.

So Forbes.com asked some of the nation's foremost experts in financial crisis what people should do in a moment like this. Their message (and picture this in large, friendly letters): DON'T PANIC.

"Sit still," says Robert Aliber, a professor of international economics and finance at the University of Chicago. Mr. Aliber helped write the book on manias, panics and crashes. Literally. He co-authored the most recent edition of Charles Kindleberger's classic Manias, Panics and Crashes which chronicles and anatomizes crashes from tulip mania to the Great Depression to the dot-com bubble.

"By and large what we have is a liquidity crisis," says Mr. Aliber. Banks depend more than anyone on the constant availability of credit, and they're in a much worse position than they were a year ago. But should a freezing of liquidity cause a 40% drop for all stocks? A recession would cut into firms' profits but not by that much, says Mr. Aliber. That means there are a lot of cheap stocks out there.

In the long term, economists agree. Markets have always recovered in the past. But a famous bit of dismal science wisdom is that in the long term we are all dead. What about in the here and now?

"I would worry about a crash on Monday, but it could also be a huge buying opportunity," says Robert Shiller, the Yale economics professor who wrote Irrational Exuberance and The Subprime Solution and has made much of his career studying bubbles. Even if the majority of businesses are fundamentally OK, that doesn't stop people from overreacting. Irrational exuberance on the way up and irrational panic on the way down are all part of market psychology.

"One question is how big a role patriotism pays in their thinking. You don't want to be part of a market panic," says Mr. Shiller. "There's a moral issue in not pulling out."

There's also the issue of not being the sucker who sells at the very bottom of a market.

Stefan Nagel, an assistant professor of finance at Stanford recently co-wrote a paper on this very topic titled "Inexperienced Investors and Bubbles." Harvard's Robin Greenwood and Nagel found that inexperienced investors, in terms of age, are particularly likely to focus too heavily on recent returns.

After the lousy returns of the 1970s, inexperienced investors were more reluctant to invest in stocks. They missed out when stocks returned. After the boom years of the '90s, inexperienced investors were more likely to increase their stock exposure. When the dot-com bubble burst, they got burned.

"We don't have the latest numbers on the current situation yet, but, based on the historical experience, it seems likely that it is particularly inexperienced investors who are rushing for the exit at the moment," says Mr. Nagel.

It's another old market maxim, and it's as true on the way down as it is on the way up: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

In the past four weeks, the Dow Jones industrial average has lost 26% of its value. In the past year, it's lost 40%. And despite comparisons to the Great Depression, the economists who talked to Forbes.com see nothing nearly that severe.

People don't panic forever. And compared with watching CNBC all day, the economists are optimists. That's the pain of being an academic, always the Cassandra: pessimistic when times are good (because there's always a fall coming) and optimistic when times are bad (because things always recover).

But they're not just optimistic because a crisis boosts book sales. "I borrowed money to buy stocks," confides Mr. Aliber, with a hint of excitement. "They've lost money since earlier in the week, but I'm going to make a bundle."