Sunday, Oct. 5, CBS’ “60 Minutes” examined the credit crisis. Among those interviewed by Steve Kroft was Jim Grant. Following are a few excerpts.
---
“This is a full-blown financial storm and one that comes around perhaps once every 50 or 100 years. This is the real thing,” says Jim Grant, the editor of “Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.”
Grant is one of the country’s foremost experts on credit markets. He says it didn’t have to happen, that this disaster was created entirely by Wall Street itself, during a time of relative prosperity. And they did it by placing a trillion dollar bet, with mostly borrowed money, that the riskiest mortgages in the country could be turned into gold-plated investments.
“If you look at how this started with the subprime crisis, it doesn’t seem to be a good bet to put your money behind the idea that people with the lowest income and the poorest credit ratings are gonna be able to pay off their mortgages,” Kroft points out.
“The idea that you could lend money to someone who couldn’t pay it back is not an inherently attractive idea to the layman, right. However, it seemed to fly with people who were making $10 million a year,” Grant says.
With its clients clamoring for safe investments with above average returns, the big Wall Street investment houses bought up millions of the last dependable mortgages, chopped them up into tiny bits and pieces, and repackaged them as exotic investment securities that hardly anyone could understand.
---
“How much of this catastrophe had to do with the instruments that Wall Street created and chose to buy…and sell?” Kroft asks Jim Grant.
“The instruments themselves are at the heart of this mess,” Grant says. “They are complex, in effect, mortgage science projects devised by these Nobel-tracked physicists who came to work on Wall Street for the very purpose of creating complex instruments with all manner of detailed protocols, and who gets paid when and how much. And the complexity of the structures is at the very center of the crisis of credit today.”
“People don’t know what they’re made up of, how they’re gonna behave,” Kroft remarks.
“Right,” Grant replies.
But it didn’t stop ratings agencies, like Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, from certifying the dodgy securities investment grade, and it didn’t stop Wall Street from making billions of dollars selling them to banks, pension funds, and other institutional investors all over the world. But that was just the beginning of the crisis.
What most people outside of Wall Street and Washington don’t know is that a lot of people who bought these risky mortgage securities also went out and bought even more arcane investments that Wall Street was peddling called “credit default swaps.” And they have turned out to be a much bigger problem.
---
“You’ve got Wall Street firms, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers. You got insurance companies like AIG. Merrill lost a ton of money on this,” Kroft says. “Everybody’s lost a ton of money. They’re supposed to be the smartest investors in the world. And they did it themselves.”
“They did it all on their own,” (Frank) Partnoy agrees. “That’s the most incredible thing about this crisis is that they pushed the button themselves. They blew themselves up.”
Asked how much of this was incompetence on the part of Wall Street and the people who ran it, Jim Grant tells Kroft, “The truth is that on Wall Street, a lot of people just weren’t very good at their jobs. It’s as simple as that.”
“These people were being paid $50 to $100 million a year. Some of them, the guys that were running the places,” Kroft remarks.
“There is no defending it,” Grant replies. “A trainee making $45,000 a year would have had the common sense not to bet the firm on mortgage contraptions that no one in the firm actually understood. That is not a deep point to comprehend. Somehow, though, I will call it criminal neglect and incompetence, the people at the top of these firms chose to look away, to take more risk, to enrich themselves and to put the shareholders and, indeed, the country, itself, ultimately, the country’s economy at risk. And it is truly not only a shame, it’s a crime.”
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Wall Street History
10/10/2008
Jim Grant on the Credit Crisis
Sunday, Oct. 5, CBS’ “60 Minutes” examined the credit crisis. Among those interviewed by Steve Kroft was Jim Grant. Following are a few excerpts.
---
“This is a full-blown financial storm and one that comes around perhaps once every 50 or 100 years. This is the real thing,” says Jim Grant, the editor of “Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.”
Grant is one of the country’s foremost experts on credit markets. He says it didn’t have to happen, that this disaster was created entirely by Wall Street itself, during a time of relative prosperity. And they did it by placing a trillion dollar bet, with mostly borrowed money, that the riskiest mortgages in the country could be turned into gold-plated investments.
“If you look at how this started with the subprime crisis, it doesn’t seem to be a good bet to put your money behind the idea that people with the lowest income and the poorest credit ratings are gonna be able to pay off their mortgages,” Kroft points out.
“The idea that you could lend money to someone who couldn’t pay it back is not an inherently attractive idea to the layman, right. However, it seemed to fly with people who were making $10 million a year,” Grant says.
With its clients clamoring for safe investments with above average returns, the big Wall Street investment houses bought up millions of the last dependable mortgages, chopped them up into tiny bits and pieces, and repackaged them as exotic investment securities that hardly anyone could understand.
---
“How much of this catastrophe had to do with the instruments that Wall Street created and chose to buy…and sell?” Kroft asks Jim Grant.
“The instruments themselves are at the heart of this mess,” Grant says. “They are complex, in effect, mortgage science projects devised by these Nobel-tracked physicists who came to work on Wall Street for the very purpose of creating complex instruments with all manner of detailed protocols, and who gets paid when and how much. And the complexity of the structures is at the very center of the crisis of credit today.”
“People don’t know what they’re made up of, how they’re gonna behave,” Kroft remarks.
“Right,” Grant replies.
But it didn’t stop ratings agencies, like Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, from certifying the dodgy securities investment grade, and it didn’t stop Wall Street from making billions of dollars selling them to banks, pension funds, and other institutional investors all over the world. But that was just the beginning of the crisis.
What most people outside of Wall Street and Washington don’t know is that a lot of people who bought these risky mortgage securities also went out and bought even more arcane investments that Wall Street was peddling called “credit default swaps.” And they have turned out to be a much bigger problem.
---
“You’ve got Wall Street firms, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers. You got insurance companies like AIG. Merrill lost a ton of money on this,” Kroft says. “Everybody’s lost a ton of money. They’re supposed to be the smartest investors in the world. And they did it themselves.”
“They did it all on their own,” (Frank) Partnoy agrees. “That’s the most incredible thing about this crisis is that they pushed the button themselves. They blew themselves up.”
Asked how much of this was incompetence on the part of Wall Street and the people who ran it, Jim Grant tells Kroft, “The truth is that on Wall Street, a lot of people just weren’t very good at their jobs. It’s as simple as that.”
“These people were being paid $50 to $100 million a year. Some of them, the guys that were running the places,” Kroft remarks.
“There is no defending it,” Grant replies. “A trainee making $45,000 a year would have had the common sense not to bet the firm on mortgage contraptions that no one in the firm actually understood. That is not a deep point to comprehend. Somehow, though, I will call it criminal neglect and incompetence, the people at the top of these firms chose to look away, to take more risk, to enrich themselves and to put the shareholders and, indeed, the country, itself, ultimately, the country’s economy at risk. And it is truly not only a shame, it’s a crime.”
