The Institutional Risk Analyst

Bank earnings this week have been mostly what we expected, with income up, credit loss rates continuing to trend lower and most banks refusing to provide additional disclosure on private credit exposures. As the private credit mess proceeds in the weeks and months ahead, a lot of the “debt” in these deals will turn to equity – which is what it should’ve been all along.

Whereas in the early part of the year, mortgage lenders were looking forward to lower interest rates and higher lending volumes, the start of hostilities in Iran suddenly reversed this narrative. As we discussed this week in our podcast with Julia LaRoche, the war with Iran will likely keep inflation and interest rates elevated for months or years to come.

This week in “The Wrap,” we report in summary fashion about the latest events in Washington and Wall Street this week. The Trump Administration departed from Davos with a variety of “wins,” but there was nothing substantive about housing affordability or really anything else.

Only the Fed under Janet Yellen was dumb enough to buy $3 trillion in MBS, costing the taxpayer hundreds of billions in losses without really affecting mortgage rates. A mere $200 billion from Donald Trump is a rounding error, pure populist political pulp -- another progressive political display that will have zero impact on LT interest rates. In fact, the childish suggestions coming from the White House on housing may continue to push LT interest rates up.

Kevin Hassett's comments on Federal Reserve independence may have undercut his chances for the top Fed job. President Donald Trump has observed in recent days that there are “two Kevins,” Hassett and former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, who we personally support.

The Trump FSOC document reads like a Marvel comic book and is entirely laudatory towards crypto fraud, but uses the same idiotic language as former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in describing the grave systemic risks posed by residential mortgage servicers. The report states incredibly: "The continued use of U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins is expected to support the role of the U.S. dollar in the international financial system..."

As we have said consistently, it is better to own the shares of stronger crypto enablers like HOOD and SOFI than the tokens themselves. It is the enablers who profit at the expense of the remaining true greater. We were watching a fascinating conversation with independent technology analyst and advisor Benedict Evans earlier this week and he made the point that serious technologists have largely abandoned crypto as an area of study.

Jim Rickards: False Narratives in Crypto & AI, and the Case for Gold

With the FOMC cutting the target for fed funds one quarter point last week, we expect to see funding costs for banks continue to fall, part of the larger narrative that has seen bank loan demand and share repurchases leaving a great deal of dry powder. Deposits are growing 2x loans, meaning that the balance must go into securities. One of the reasons that lenders of all sorts have been pushing down loan yields is to capture assets in a market that is short quality duration.

The real threat of tariffs announced by Trump is not inflation, but rather a LT decline in the dollar as the global reserve currency

The big story nobody is discussing is the fact that large banks led by JPM, BAC and TFC continue to sell off briskly