主题：原油期货下跌，造成美国史无前例的巨亏？ -- NTLS

這是我看到的版本。屠殺對沖基金延續至今。

As of mid-July, Hank Paulson faced the following components of what was clearly Wall Street’s biggest crisis since 1929:

1. Gold was once again threatening to break through the psychologically important $1,000 mark, as US CPI was

soaring to 15-year peaks.

2. Oil was above $140 a barrel, corn was at $7.50, and soybeans were above $14. Cost passthroughs were being vigorously resisted, but food infl ation was threatening to outpace fuel inflation.

3. The dollar was threatening to break down anew, through the 70 level. Despite spreading recessions across the

Eurozone, the euro was threatening to break $1.60. European investment banks who had stuffed their systems with US subprime products had been protecting their balance sheet exposure to the sinking dollar by shorting the greenback, adding to the enormous pressure on the world’s currency standard.

4. The Bank Stock Index had plunged in six months from 90 to 50. All those bank equity deals with Sovereign Wealth Funds were under water at depths that once looked to be open only to submarines.

5. The Fed’s policy of swapping Treasurys for dubious CDOs valued according to the overlevered banks’ own discredited models was imperiled: at the rate of degradation, the world’s flagship Central Bank, whose promises are the sole backing for the nation’s currency, would soon have a balance sheet whose assets resembled those held by the worst and weakest of Wall Street’s discredited institutions. Already, the Fed was

trying heroically to cut back on the inflow of model-valued paper, and this meant trouble ahead for Lehman and other overstressed institutions.

6. The European Central Bank was experiencing a similar problem, because many banks, particularly Spanish and German mortgage lenders, were swapping their illiquid assets for loans—in euros and dollars. Ben Bernanke was probably getting worried calls from Jean-Claude Trichet.

7. The Wall Street Journal and other leading publications were demanding that the Fed stop the rush to infl ation by raising rates. In particular, The Journal insisted that soaring prices for gold and oil were driven by the descent of the dollar.

8. Fannie and Freddie (F&F) were on the edge of collapse, with hundreds of billions’ worth of their paper held by government funds abroad, including $100 billion by Russia. If they went down, the housing bear market would become a collapse of potentially Depression proportions. There were anxious calls from treasurers abroad about the reliability of the unspoken promise of the Treasury to back F&F obligations. Barney Frank, the House kingpin on the F&F relationship, kept saying that they were fi nancially sound and there was no government guarantee—nor would it ever be needed.

What to do?

Answer: take the pressure off the heavily-levered banks by putting pressure on the heavily-levered speculators and hedge funds that were short the banks and the dollar, and long the commodities.

With help from the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation, Paulson and Bernanke sprang the trap.

They knew that, in recent weeks, there had been a big boost in “Long” speculative commodity contracts that had helped fuel the most recent runup in gold, grains and oil. This was a large deviation from the six-year pattern in the commodity bull market in which professionals and industrial participants had generally been the dominant forces in commodity pricing, as evidenced by the general pattern of backwardation, as opposed to a 1970s-style proliferation of contangos. (Backwardation means that the heavy participation of front-month players

willing to take delivery dominates price movements. Contangos, could, as in the 1970s, show that bettors on future inflation are in charge.) They also knew that many big hedge funds had prospered mightily from the most popular trade—shorting the banks and going long the commodities and commodity stocks.

When should the trap be sprung to inflict the most pain on levered bettors against financials, the dollar and levered longs on oil, gold, and grains? Answer: Ideally, when Asian markets are opening on the weekend, before real liquidity returns to both the commodity futures market and, in particular, the US bank stocks. That would force panic short-covering overnight as markets opened sequentially, and the hedge funds would be in desperate

positions when the Big Board opened to try to cover their shorts and unwind their longs.

Chris Cox of the SEC would add the icing to the cake: on Monday, he announced new, albeit temporary, rules against shortselling of F&F and leading fi nancials. So, as the panicking hedge funds tried to cover their shorts, they would not face any offerings from other speculators as the beaten-down bank stock share prices were soaring…

The Sunday night announcement was timed for the opening of Asian markets. The supply of leading US fi nancial stocks in Asian markets was thin, so they leapt dramatically. When Europe opened, that rally continued, so that by the time New York opened the stocks were up big, commodities were down big, and the SEC anouncement let hedge funds know that Washington was pulling out all the stops.

Paulson knew:

that the ultimate goal was to permit the banks to raise new equity, and that meant their share prices had to rise a long way; and

that this would force a panic short-covering of dollar positions, setting off a mutually-reinforcing pattern of collapsing commodities, soaring financial stocks, and a rising dollar; and

that a decisive break in gold, grains and oil futures, accompanied by the biggest dollar rally in years, would blow the inflation dragons away—at least for a while; and

therefore, the Fed would no longer be under daily pressure to

raise rates.

The genius in this strategy was that it relied on the excess leverage among hedge funds to take the pressure off the overlevered banks, which held huge exposure to F&F paper, guarantees, and preferred shares.

It worked…