CNBC Television personality Jim Cramer penned an article on Thursday, June 5^th 2008 entitled Why Own Lehman? In that article he said that No, he did not think that Lehman Brothers was going under. "It's got a great franchise with a good cash position, reduced leverage, much better management than Bear [Stearns] and a buyback that's kicking in that wouldn't if things were as bad as the bears make it out to be." The questioner then apparently asked if Cramer would buy the Lehman Brothers stock. Cramer said, "Why the heck would I do that? To catch a 2- or 3-point rally? There is no earnings power at Lehman."

Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") normally approaches such pronouncements from television pundits with a healthy dose of skepticism. However in this case, Jim Cramer is right on. The article continues:

I explained that some stocks are neither longs nor shorts -- that, to me, is Lehman. There's no reason to short it, because I don't think it is going under but many are betting that way, and there is no reason to go long it, because the place is set up for a period of big fees from fixed-income products, from structured products, but clients have at last figured out that they will lose their jobs if they keep buying this nonsense.

And that's really the rub. These places have oodles of high-priced salespeople, tons of them, and they are all being paid fortunes to sell products that don't work. They sell broken vacuum cleaners with no warranties.

It is that stark.

I know that anyone in brokerage is always reluctant to admit that structured products really have no value or are too risky, that they're just a way to figure out how to take a little extra per million -- a fraction, but they do add up. But that's what happened to a lot of these great firms that got fixed-income-heavy. There isn't enough money to be made selling regular commodity fixed-income products, so you have to talk people into buying things they shouldn't that they don't understand.

That game is over. But the people are still there, as is the overhead. Without this stuff, I don't know how you make a lot of money at an investment firm, particularly when you have decided to shrink your balance sheet and make fewer loans. Some can get away with it: Bank of America BAC, for instance, because it has a deposit base (same reason Wachovia WB is worth something, but I don't want to own it, either), doesn't need to rely on structured products to make some money.

LEH? I just don't see how they can deliver $5-6 earnings power anymore. Worse, I can't even figure out what they could earn in this environment. The franchise isn't too dicey, just the earnings estimates.

Jim Cramer puts much more bluntly what Toomre Capital Markets LLC has been struggling with as illustrated by the post Value of the Investment Banking Franchises?? Just what can these investment banking franchises earn in the post credit-crunch environment where there is limited demand for structured finance, mortgage securities, and complex derivatives and where they must operate with sharply decreased leverage and more limited proprietary trading operations? The regulatory changes that are going to be forthcoming as a result of the credit crunch are as of yet unknown. However, surely there will be increased capital charges under Basel II for what are classified as "trading positions."

The Financial Times Alphaville blog is a worthy read. On Wednesday, January 16th 2007, it is particularly so. Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") thanks that site for the significant news that S&P again is in the process of readjusting its structured finance risk models. S&P last adjusted its risk models back at the end of October 2007.

Alphaville relays "In a late press release, S&P announced it was adjusting its cumulative loss measure on 2006 subprime collateral to 19 per cent - up from 14 per cent:

We revised our expected losses for the 2006 vintage subprime collateral to 19% from 14%, as delinquencies continue to rise, and we will recalculate lifetime loss expectations for all vintages of U.S. RMBS. Additional losses are projected to result directly for the additional delinquencies and defaults.

The implications of this small change are significant. Many RMBS are structured on something akin to 70% Senior / 20% Mezzanine / 10% Junk/Equity. As a result, S&P is effectively saying that all of the subordinated debt/equity and close to half of the typical mezzanine will be wiped out. The ratings of the senior classes are also more suspect although they are likely to remain investment grade.

Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") is simply amazed. How the heck does an institution like the combined Citicorp/Salomon Brothers lose $17.4 billion dollars on its CDO and subprime mortgage positions? In just one quarter!!!! Maybe it is just TCM, but does not anyone really care about how abysmally, shitty, horrible, horrendous this bank's risk management controls have been?

Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") has previously written about the other ticking credit bombs that will affect the Capital Markets in the coming months. TCM posts to review include Estimated Investment Bank Fourth Quarter Earnings??, Where is Value in Structured Mortgage Products? – Early December 2007 edition and Incestuous Mix: Structured Credit, Financial Guarantors and Rating Agencies.

On Monday January 14th 2008, The Los Angeles Times published yet another excellent article written by E. Scott Reckard. This one is entitled Adjustable loans spur new worries and has more details on the most toxic mortgage credit "bomb" of all: the Pay Option ARMs. Typcially, these Pay Option ARMs present the mortgage borrowers with a choice every month during the first five years of the loan: pay the interest due and some of the principal; pay interest only, leaving the loan balance untouched; or pay less than the interest due, making the loan balance rise. Then, at the end of the five year option period, the loan is reset to fully pay-off with a fully indexed adjustable interest rate.

Since many of the mortgage borrowers elect to pay less than the amount that will fully amortize the mortgage and the effect of fully indexing the interest rate from the typical more "teaser" initial rate, when Pay Option ARMs are reset, they almost always require a higher principal and interest ("P&I") payment than initially was required. Sometimes these reset P&I payments are as much as two or even three times what the borrower was originally paying on the mortgage each month. If the borrower elects only to pay interest only during the initial months and the balance rises above a set percentage of the original loan amount, the reset process can occur earlier as soon as three years.

This LA Times article suggests that the second tide of the mortgage defaults are about to start. After reviewing data from mortgage industry data trackers, the author concludes that Pay Option ARM borrowers -- "most of whom boast respectable and often top-tier credit scores and appear to have substantial incomes and home equity" – are having severe delinquency problems that are tied to the loose lending practices that inundated the sub-prime business. Pay Option ARM loans often were granted on the basis of stated income, not proof of a borrower's income, giving rise to their nickname, "liar's loans."

"This is not a sub-prime crisis. This is a stated income crisis," said Robert Simpson, chief executive of Investors Mortgage Asset Recovery Co. in Irvine, which works with lenders, insurers and investors to recover losses related to mortgage fraud. "Simpson said loan officers routinely inflated earnings of workers with regular paychecks. On some written requests to confirm a borrower's employment, officers would specify that an employer should not provide a salary figure, he said." As a result, borrowers often overstated either their income or their assets.

The article references Mortgage Asset Research Institute in Reston, Virginia, which investigates lending fraud. Apparently one of that firm's customers checked one hundred stated-income loans against tax documents and found that nine in 10 of them overstated income by at least 5%. "More disturbingly, almost 60% of the stated amounts were exaggerated by more than 50%," the institute reported, saying the Pay Option ARM mortgages clearly deserve their "liar's loan" handle.

Oh no… Why is it a surprise to hear that Wall Street has been selling to CMO securities to retail investors in these times of sharply reduced liquidity? And now Wall Street's regulators need to investigate?

As this Wall Street Journal article suggests, "Securities regulators, broadening their review of Wall Street's role in the mortgage industry, have asked several brokerage firms for information about the marketing and sale of mortgage-related products, specifically those sold to individual investors." Apparently, The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ("FINRA"), Wall Street's self-regulatory body, last month sent letters to firms asking for documents, including marketing materials, a list of supervisory policies and procedures, and descriptions of how collateralized mortgage obligations were valued. These letters, part of an on-going "sweep" operation directed at more than a dozen Wall Street firms, asks for PowerPoint presentations, sales scripts and detailed customer-account information from June 30, 2006, through July 31, 2007.

The WSJ article discloses that FNRA "specifically asks for offering documents on products sold, created or distributed during the months of March and June 2007." Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") notes with interest that those months just happen to coincide with the quarter ends for three of the largest Wall Street entities with both large retail brokerage personnel and the biggest CDO losses from aggressive underwriting – UBS, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup. Could these firms and others possibly have tried to cram as much CMO (and CDO) product down less sophisticated retail channels ahead of their earnings reports? No, Wall Street never would do such a thing…