Financial Headlines 12/17/2009

• Yesterday's Fed decision yielded little unexpected news. Chairman Bernanke and his cronies basically said that the economy was a bit better, but not enough for them to actually do anything to stop the potential for a massive bubble reflation. The fed funds target will remain stuck between zero and .25%, so please, won't you please, keep buying the long bond cause we're going to need to sell ALOT more of those. But don't worry about agencies and MBS, we plan to buy another $150 billion or so of those. Oh, and by the by, you should expect some volatility in Feb after we let most of the artificial liquidity supports expire.
• Citi completed its $20 billion offering. The sale was considered a bit of a bummer, as the shares wound up being priced at around a 20% discount. Furthermore, the government backed out of its plans to sell up to $5 billion in Citi's shares that was intended to lower its stake from 34% to 30%. According to the FT, the government backed out because it would have suffered a loss on its investment. Frankly, that's a fairly stupid reason to back out of selling stock. I know the government wants to keep crowing about what a great money manager it turned out to be and how much money it has made on the TARP so far. You know, because Paulson and Geithner were smart enough to buy preferred stock in GS with a 5% dividend when Buffett got his with a 10% dividend? While the rest of the market was pricing in insolvency and the government could've and should've received a 25% dividend? Yeah, they're a bunch of geniuses. In any event, they're probably going to wait until the stock hits $2 and then try to offer it out at $3.
• In the cheery world of commercial real estate, Morgan Stanley handed over 5 more office buildings in downtown San Francisco to lenders. In yet another example of why we don't want these "savvy" investors, who don't lend to small businesses or consumers, playing with money that carries an implied government guarantee, the buildings have lost around 50% of their value since the purchase. The buildings were part of a $2.5 billion deal where MS purchased 10 buildings from Blackstone Group in May 2007. Blackstone had just purchased the buildings in its $39 billion buyout of Equity Office Properties and then flipped them for a nice profit. It's still hard to fathom how nobody recognized a bubble back in 2007 when office building flipping was a major financial activity.
• Bank of America finally found a new CEO. The job went to Brian T. Moynihan, a longtime B of A employee. In a sign that big transformative changes will be afoot as a result of hiring an insider, Mr. Moynihan said that he doesn't foresee any "big changes," nor does he plan to exit any of the companies current businesses. So yeah, his hiring will make a really big difference.