# Charles Davì

## You’re Trespassing On My Credit Event

In Politicized Economy on November 20, 2008 at 9:10 pm

#### Insurable Interests

When you purchase fire insurance on your own home, you are said to have an insurable interest. That is, you have an interest in something and you’d like to insure it against a certain risk. In the case of fire insurance, the insurable interest is your house and the risk is fire burning your house down. Through an insurance policy, and in exchange for a fee, you can effectively transfer, to some 3rd party, financial exposure to the risk that your insurable interest (house) will burn down.

When you purchase protection on a bond through a credit default swap, you may or may not own the underlying bond. As such, you may or may not have something analogous to an insurable interest. David Merkel over at The Aleph Blog brought this issue to my attention in a comment on one of my many rants about credit default swaps. Although you should read his article in its entirety, his argument goes like this: just like you wouldn’t want someone you don’t know taking out a life insurance policy on you (because that would give them an incentive to contribute to your death), corporation ABC doesn’t want swap dealers selling protection on their bonds to those who don’t own them (since these buyers would profit from ABC’s failure). Technically, ABC wouldn’t want protection being sold to those that have a negative economic interest in ABC’s debt.

#### Courting Disaster

We might find it objectionable that one person takes out an insurance policy on the life of another. This is understandable. After all, we don’t want to incentivize murder. But we already incentivize creating illness. Doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies all have incentives to create illnesses that only they can cure, thus diverting money from other economic endeavors their way. More importantly, even if you don’t accept the “it’s no big deal” argument, insurance contracts have a feature that prevents the creation of incentives to destroy life and property: they are voluntary, just like derivatives.

In order for you to purchase a policy on my life, someone has to sell it to you. And like most businesses, insurance businesses are not engaged in an altruistic endeavour. So, when you come knocking on their door asking them to issue a $100 million policy on my life, they will be suspicious, and rightfully so. They will probably realize that given the fact that you are not me,$100 million is probably enough money to provide you with an incentive to have me end up under a bus. And of course, they will not issue the policy. But not because they care whether or not I end up under a bus. Rather, they will not issue the policy because it’s a terrible business decision. They know that it doesn’t cost much to kill someone, and therefore, as a general idea, issuing life insurance policies to those who have no interest in the preservation of the insured life is a bad business decision. The same applies to policies on cars, houses, etc that the policy holder doesn’t own. As is evident, the concept of an insurable interest is simply a reflection of common sense business decisions.

#### You Sunk My Battleship

So why do swap dealers sell protection on ABC’s bonds to people that don’t own them? Isn’t that the same as selling a policy on my life to you? Aren’t they worried that the protection buyer will go out and destroy ABC? Clearly, they are not. If you read this blog often, you know that swap dealers net their exposure. So, is that why they’re not worried? No, it is not. Even though the swap dealer’s exposure is neutral, if the dealer sold protection to one party, the dealer bought protection from another. While the network of transactions can go on for a while, it must be the case that if one party is a net buyer of protection, another is a net seller. So, somewhere along the network, someone is exposed as a net buyer and another is exposed as a net seller.

So aren’t the net sellers worried that the net buyers will go out and destroy ABC? Clearly, they are not. The only practical way to gain the ability to run a company into the ground is to gain control of it. And the only practical way to gain control of it is to purchase a large stake in it. This is an enormous barrier. A would be financial assassin would have to purchase a large enough stake to gain control and at the same time purchase more than that amount in protection through credit default swaps, and do so without raising any eyebrows. If this sounds ridiculous it’s because it is. But even if you think it’s a viable strategy, ABC should be well aware that there are those in the world who would benefit from the destruction of their company. This is not unique to protection buyers, but applies also to competitors who would love to take ABC over and liquidate their assets and take over their distribution network; or plain vanilla short sellers; or environmentalist billionaires who despise ABC’s tire burning business. In short, ABC should realize that there are those who are out to get them, whatever their motive or method, and plan accordingly.

#### Hands Off My Ether

The fact that others are willing to sell protection on ABC to those who don’t own ABC bonds suggests that any insurable interest that ABC has is economically meaningless. For if it weren’t the case, as in the life policy examples, no one would sell protection. But they do. So, it follows that protection sellers don’t buy the arguments about the opportunities for murderous arbitrage. So what is ABC left with? An ethereal and economically meaningless right to stop other people from referencing them in private contracts. This is akin to saying “you can’t talk about me.” That is, they are left with the right to stop others from trespassing on their credit event. And that’s just strange.

## Mark To No Market Accounting

In Politicized Economy, Systemic Counterparty Confusion on November 17, 2008 at 8:31 pm

#### The Meaning Of It All

In this article I explore an oft discussed topic: mark to market accounting. I will not come down on either side of the debate. Rather, I will try to make sense of the implications and assumptions of mark to market accounting. But before we can explore the world of mark to market accounting, we must understand the economic significance of the data reported under accounting regimes in general. And in order to do that, we must have a practical concept of economic loss/gain. From here on, we simply write the term loss to signify both loss and gain, except where context indicates otherwise (philosophers, please relax, the meaning is clear).

#### What Is Economic Loss?

In my mind, the answer depends on who you ask and when. That is, every economic endeavor involves multiple parties with different rights and obligations that vary over time, and so any meaningful concept of loss should consider both who incurs “loss” and when. As usual, we will proceed by way of example.

Assume that Tony (T) has had a life long passion for the manufacturing of shoes. He decides to raise money from investors to open up a factory that will manufacture a new line of shoes, “Tony’s Shoes.” The investors contribute a total of $100 to T’s endeavor through debt. Assume that T bought manufacturing equipment from M for$70 and that T’s debt to the investors is secured by the factory equipment. After 6 months, it becomes clear that the market is not ready for T’s postmodern shoe design, and so T’s factory generates no income whatsoever. As a result, T commits suicide. T leaves only $15 and title to the manufacturing equipment in his estate, having set his entire inventory on fire in a rage prior to his suicide. The investors successfully obtain title to the machinery and claim the remaining$15. Because the machinery has been used for 6 months, they are only able to recover $30 for it in an auction. So who lost what and when? Well, as an initial matter, in order for there to be loss, there must be change. It follows that we should ask how the state of affairs has changed over some time frame. Let’s mark the beginning of our time frame at just before T’s purchase of the manufacturing equipment and the end at immediately after the investors liquidate the manufacturing equipment. So, our concept of loss will compare the state of affairs at those two points in time for each participant. In our example, T began alive with$100 cash and $100 in debt, and ended up dead with his estate owing$55 to the investors.  The investors started out with notes with a par value of $100 and ended up with$45 in cash. M started out with manufacturing equipment and ended up with $70 in cash. The first problem we face is comparing dissimilar assets. That is, T started out with cash and debt, the investors started out with notes and ended up with cash, and the manufacturer started out with equipment and ended up with cash. While the choice of a common basis is arbitrary, we choose cash. So, assume that at the beginning of our time period T valued his debt at negative$100, the investors valued the notes at par ($100) and that M valued the equipment at$60. One reasonable interpretation of the facts is that over the relevant time period T lost nothing, the investors lost $55, and M gained$10. It is reasonable to say that T lost nothing because he began with a net cash value of zero and although his estate still owed the investors $55, there was nothing left to pay them with. We could be pedants and say that T ended with a negative$55 cash value, but what would that mean? Nothing. The investors’ claim is worthless since T is dead and his estate is empty. If T had survived or if his estate expected to receive assets or income at some future time, then T or T’s estate could be indebted in an economically meaningful way. But since this is not the case in our fact pattern, the investors have a worthless claim against T’s estate.

#### A Truly Human Story

In my mind, the goal of any accounting system is to tell a story about economically significant events that occurred over a given time period. And so, in designing a system of accounting, we must choose which aspects of each market participant’s state of affairs that we want to report, simply because there could be events we don’t find particularly relevant to our story. For example, T died. We may or may not want to report that. Whether or not we choose to report it, T’s death did have economic significance. Because T died and left an estate with inadequate resources to cover his liabilities, the debts owed by T’s estate were worthless. As is evident, it would be impractical to report the death of every market participant. But as T’s case demonstrates, there are some events we wouldn’t normally consider economically significant which turn out to have a meaningful impact on the rights and obligations of market participants.

#### Truth In Numbers

We must also have a method of valuation. In our example above, we simply relied upon the subjective valuations of the market participants. Given that market participants will likely have an incentive to misrepresent the value of certain assets, we probably don’t want to rely too heavily on purely subjective valuations. For example, we calculated M’s gain based on M’s valuation of the equipment. What if M’s valuation was pure wishful thinking? What if his cost of inputs and labor suggested a price closer to $150? It would follow in that case that M actually lost money by selling the equipment for$70. What we need is a method of valuation that limits each participant’s ability to misrepresent, whether through wishful thinking or malice, the value of assets. There are several ways to go about doing so. We could establish guidelines, rules, or allocate valuation to trusted entities. Another approach is to simply quote the price of an asset from a market in which the asset is usually bought and sold.

#### Synthetic CDOs

In reality, if D is a swap dealer, D probably sold protection on more than just ABC bonds. Let’s say that D sold protection on k different entities, $E_1, ... , E_k$, where the notional amount of protection sold on each is $n_1, ..., n_k$ and the total notional amount is $N = \sum_{i=1}^k n_i$. Rather than maintain exposure to all of these swaps, D could pass the exposure onto investors by issuing notes keyed to the performance of the swaps. The transaction that facilitates this is called a synthetic collateralized debt obligation or synthetic CDO for short. There are many transactions that could be categorized fairly as a synthetic CDO, and these transactions can be quite complex. However, we will explore only a very basic example for illustrative purposes.

So, after selling protection to the swap market as described above, D asks investors for a total of $N$ dollars. D sets up an SPV, funds it with the money from the investors, and buys $n_i$ dollars worth of protection on $E_i$ for each $i \leq k$ from the SPV. That is, D hedges all of his positions with the SPV. The SPV takes the money from the investors and invests it. For simplicity’s sake, assume that the SPV invests in the same Treasuries mentioned above. The SPV then issues notes that promise to:  pay investors their share of $N - L$ dollars after all underlying swaps have expired, where L is the total notional amount of protection sold by the SPV on entities that triggered an event of default; and pay investors their share of annual interest, in amount equal to $(R + F - \Delta) \cdot (N - L)$, where $F$ is the sum of all swap fees received by D.

So, if every entity on which the SPV sold protection defaults, the investors get no principle back, but may have earned some interest depending on when the defaults occurred. If none of the entities default, then the investors get all of their principle back plus interest. So each investor has synthetic exposure to a basket of synthetic bonds. That is, if any single synthetic bond defaults, they still receive money. Thus, the process allows investors to achieve exposure to a broad base of credit risk, something that would be very difficult and expensive to do in the bond market.

## A Conceptual Framework For Analyzing Systemic Risk

In Politicized Economy, Systemic Counterparty Confusion on November 8, 2008 at 7:24 pm

#### The Cart Before The Horse

There has been a lot of chatter about the systemic risks posed by derivatives, particularly credit default swaps. Rather than offer any formal method of evaluating an enormously complicated question, pundits wield exclamation points and false inferences to distract from the glaring holes in their logic. Below I will not offer any definite answers to any questions about the systemic risks posed by derivatives. Rather, I will describe what I think is a reasonable and useful framework for analyzing systemic risks posed by derivatives. Unfortunately for some, this will involve the use of mathematics. And while the math used is fairly elementary, the concepts are not. This is especially true of the last section. That said, even if you do not fully understand the entirety of this article, one thing should be clear: questions about systemic risk are complex and anyone who gives declarative answers to such questions is almost certain to have no idea what they are talking about.

#### Risk Magnification And Syndication

As discussed here, derivatives operate by creating and allocating risks that did not exist before the two parties entered into the transaction. That is an unavoidable fact. Moreover, there is no physical limit to the notional amount of any given contract or the number of derivative contracts that parties can enter into. It is entirely up to them. That said, derivatives can be used to negate risks that parties were already exposed to in exchange for assuming other risks, thereby acting as a risk-switching/risk-transferring device. So, a corollary of these observations is that derivatives could be used to create unlimited amounts of risk but through that risk creation they could be used to negate an unlimited amount of risk that parties are already exposed to and thereby effectively “transfer” an unlimited amount of risk to those willing to be exposed to it.

Practically speaking, there is a limit to the amount of risk that can be created using derivatives. This limit exists for a very simple reason: the contracts are voluntary, and so if no one is willing to be exposed to a particular risk, it will not be created and assigned through a derivative. Like most market participants, derivatives traders are not in engaged in an altruistic endeavor. As a result, we should not expect them to engage in activities that they don’t expect to be profitable. Therefore, we can be reasonably certain that the derivatives market will create only as much risk as its participants expect to be profitable. Whether their expectations are correct is an entirely different matter, and any criticism on that front is not unique to derivatives traders. Rather, the problem of flawed expectations permeates all of human decision making.

Even if we ignore the practical limits to the creation of risk, derivatives allow for unlimited syndication of risk. That is, there is no smallest unit of risk that can be transferred. Consequently, any fixed amount of risk can be syndicated out to an arbitrarily large number of parties, thereby minimizing the probability that any individual market participant will fail as a result of that risk.

Finally, we should ask ourselves, what does the term systemic risk even mean? The only thing it can mean in the context of derivatives is that the obligations created by two parties will have an effect on at least one other third party. So, even assuming that derivatives create such a “problem,” how is this “problem” any different than that created by a landlord who plans to pay a contractor with the rent he receives from his tenants? It is not.

#### A Closer Look At Risk

As stated here, my own view is that risk is a concept that has two components: (i) the occurrence of an event and (ii) a magnitude associated with that event. This allows us to ask two questions: What is the probability of the event occurring? And if it occurs, what is the expected value of its associated magnitude? We say that P is exposed to a given risk if P expects to incur a gain/loss if the risk-event occurs. As is evident, under this rubric, that whole conversation above was grossly imprecise. But that’s ok. Its import is clear enough. From here on, however, we will tolerate no such imprecision.

#### Identifying And Defining Risks

Using the definition above, let’s try to define one of the risks that all parties who sold protection on ABC’s series I bonds through a CDS that calls for physical delivery are exposed to. This will allow us to begin to understand the systemic risk that such credit default swaps create. There is no hard rule about how to go about doing this. If we do a poor job of identifying and defining the relevant risks, we will have a poor understanding of those relevant risks. However, common sense tells us that any protection seller’s risk exposure is going to have something to do with triggering a payout under a CDS. So, let’s define the risk-event as any default on ABC series I bonds. For simplicities sake, let’s limit our definition of default to ABC’s failure to pay interest or principle. So, our risk-event is: ABC fails to pay interest or principle on any of its bonds. But what is our risk-magnitude? Since we are trying to define a risk that protection sellers are exposed to, our associated magnitude should be the basis upon which all payments by protection sellers are made. So, we will define the risk-magnitude as $M=1 - \frac{P_d}{P}$ where $P_d$ is the price of an ABC series I bond after the risk-event (default) occurs and $P$ is the par value of an ABC series I bond. For example, if ABC’s series I bonds are trading at 30 cents on the dollar after default, $M = .7$ and a protection seller would have to payout 70 cents for every dollar of notional amount. The amount that bonds trade at after a default is called the recovery value.

#### One Man’s Garbage Is Another Man’s Glory

When one party to a derivative makes a payment, the other receives it. That seems simple enough. But it follows that if we consider only those payments made under the derivative contract itself, the net position of the two parties is unchanged over the life of the agreement. That is, derivatives create zero-sum games and simply shift and reallocate money that already existed between the two parties. So in continuing with our example above, it follows that we’ve also defined a risk that buyers of protection on ABC series I bonds are exposed to. However, protection buyers have positive exposure to that risk. That is, if ABC defaults, protection buyers receive money.

#### Exposure To Risk And Settlement Flow Analysis

If our concept of exposure is to have any real economic significance, it must take into account the concept of netting. So, we define the exposure of $P_i$ to the risk-event defined above as the product of (i) the net notional amount of all credit default swaps naming ABC series I bonds as a reference obligation to which $P_i$ is a counterparty, which we will call $N_i$, and (ii) $M$. The net notional amount is simply the difference between the total notional amount of protection bought and the total notional amount of protection sold by $P_i$. So, if $P_i$ is a net seller of protection, $N_i$ will be negative and therefore its exposure, $N_i \cdot M$, will be either negative or zero.

Because the payments between the two counterparties of each derivative net to zero, it follows that the sum of all net notional amounts is always zero. That is, if there are $k$ market participants, $\sum_{i=1}^kN_i = 0$. The total notional amount of the entire market is given by $N_T = \frac{1}{2} \sum_{i=1}^k|N_i|$. This is the figure that is most often reported by the media. As is evident, it is impossible to determine the economic significance of this number without first knowing the structure of the market. That is, we must know how much is owed and to whom. However, after we have this information, we can choose different recovery values and then calculate each party’s exposure. This would enable us to determine how much cash each participant would have to set aside for a default at various recovery values (simply calculate each party’s exposure at the various recovery values).

Let’s consider a concrete example. In the diagram below, an edge coming from a participant represents protection sold by that participant and consequently an incoming edge represents protection bought by that participant. The amounts written beside these edges represent the notional amount of protection bought/sold. The amounts written beside the nodes represent the net notional amounts.

In the example above, D is a dealer and his net notional amount is zero, and therefore his exposure to the risk-event is $0 \cdot M = 0$ . As is evident, we can vary the recovery value to determine what each market participant’s exposure would be in that case. We could then consider other risk-events that occur in conjunction with any given risk-event. For example, we could consider the conjunctive risk-event “ABC defaults and B fails to pay under any CDS” (in which case D’s exposure would not be zero) or any other variation that addresses meaningful concerns. For now, we will focus on our single event risk for explanatory purposes. But even if we restrict ourselves to single event risks, there’s more to a CDS than just default. Collateral will move through the above system dynamically throughout the lives of the contracts. In order to understand how we can analyze the systemic risks posed by the dynamic shifting of collateral, we must first examine what it is that causes collateral to be posted under a CDS.

#### We’re In The Money

CDS contracts come in and out of the money to a party based on the price of protection. If a party is out of money, the typical market practice is to require that party to post collateral. For example, if I bought protection at a price of 50bp, and suddenly the price jumps to 100bp, I’m in the money and my counterparty is out of the money. Thus, my counterparty will be required to post collateral. We can view the price of protection as providing an implied probability of default. Exactly how this is done is not important. But it should be clear that there is a connection between the cost of protecting debt and the probability of default on that debt (the higher the probability the higher the cost). Thus, as the implied probability of default changes over the life of the agreement, collateral will change hands.

#### Collateral Flow Analysis

In the previous sections, we assumed that the risk-event was certain to occur and then calculated the exposures based on an assumed recovery value. So, in effect, we were asking “what happens when parties settle their contracts at a given recovery value?” But what if we want to consider what happens before any default actually occurs? That is, what if we want to consider “what happens if the probability of default is $p$?” Because collateral will be posted as the price of protection changes over the life of the agreement and the price of protection provides an implied probability of default, it follows that the answer to this question should have something to do with the flow of collateral.

Continuing with the ABC bond example above, we can examine how collateral will move through the system by asking two questions: (i) what is the implied probability of the risk-event (ABC’s default) occurring and (ii) what is the expected value of the risk-magnitude (the basis upon which collateral payments are made). As discussed above, the implied probability of default will change over the life of the agreement, which will in turn affect the flow of collateral in the system. Since our goal in this section is to test the system’s behavior at different implied probabilities of default, the expected value of our risk-magnitude should be a function of an assumed implied probability of default. So, we define the expected value of our risk-magnitude as $M_e = p^* \cdot M$ where $p^*$ is our assumed implied probability of default and $M$ is defined as it is above. It follows that this analysis will break CDS contracts into categories according to the price at which they were entered into. That is, you can’t ask how much something changed without first knowing what it was to begin with.

Assume that $P_i$ entered into CDS contracts at $m_i$ different prices. For example, he entered into four contracts at 20 bp and eight contracts at 50bp, and no others. In this case, $m_i = 2$. For each $P_i$, assign an arbitrary ordering, $(c_{i,1}, ... , c_{i,m_i})$, to the sets of contracts that were entered into at different prices by $P_i$. In the example where $m_i = 2$, we could let $c_{i,1}$ be the set of eight contracts entered into at 50bp and let $c_{i,2}$ be the set of four contracts entered into at 20 bp. Each of these sets will have a net notional amount and an implied probability of default (since each is categorized by price). Define $n_{i,j}$ as the net notional amount of the contracts in $c_{i,j}$ and $p_{i,j}$ as the implied probability of default of the contracts in $c_{i,j}$ for each $1 \leq j \leq m_i$. We define the expected exposure of $P_i$ as:

$EX_i = M_e \cdot \sum_{j = 1}^{m_i}\left(\frac{p^* - p_{i,j}}{1 - p_{i,j}} \cdot n_{i,j}\right)$ .

Note that when $p^* = 1$,

$EX_i = M \cdot \sum_{j = 1}^{m_i}\left(\frac{1 - p_{i,j}}{1 - p_{i,j}} \cdot n_{i,j}\right) = M \cdot N_i$.

That is, this is a generalized version of the settlement analysis above, and when we assume that default is certain, collateral flow analysis reduces to settlement flow analysis.

#### So What Does That Awful Formula Tell Us?

A participant’s expected exposure is a reasonable estimate for the amount of collateral that will be posted or received by that participant at an assumed implied probability of default. The exact amount of collateral that will be posted or received under any contract will be determined by the terms of that contract. As a result, our model is approximate and not exact. However, the direction that collateral moves in our model is exact. That is, if a party’s expected exposure is negative, it will not receive collateral, and if it is positive, it will not post collateral. It also shows that even if a party is completely hedged in the event of a default, it is possible that it is not completely hedged to posting collateral. That is, even if it bought and sold the same notional amount of protection, it could have done so at different prices.