Can revenue bondholders relax now?
Bond markets generally focus on who has rights to specific cash flows and control over assets. That was what Alabama federal bankruptcy court Judge Thomas Bennett was addressing when he issued an opinion Friday afternoon covering the insolvent Jefferson County sewer system.
To recap the situation in Jefferson County, re-read what I wrote in November:
Last year, amid the county’s fiscal and political meltdown, the Russell County Circuit Court appointed a water system professional, John Young, to take over the management and operation of the sewer system. This action came at the request of the bond indenture trustee, the Bank of New York, which wanted the bond payments protected. Now the county is fighting with the receiver and creditors for control of the sewer system in bankruptcy court.
The crux of Judge Bennett’s ruling related to whether the sewer receiver, John Young, could keep control of Jefferson County’s most important asset, the sewer system, while the county was trying to consolidate its assets in the bankruptcy process. Bank of New York and other bondholders argued that the federal bankruptcy proceeding could not trump judicial actions taken at the local level. In other words BoNY, representing bondholders, wanted to keep the control of the sewer system and its cash flows. Although revenue bondholders have a lien, or right, to the cash flows of the sewer system, they also wanted control of the asset.
Judge Bennett, in his ruling, confirmed the right of bondholders to receive the revenue payments they are due from the sewer system. This will make the municipal markets cheer because it confirms an important plank of the system. On the other hand, the judge also ruled that control of the sewer system must be returned to Jefferson County. Bondholders would have preferred to keep control of this asset, which was collateral for the bonds.
Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy cases are rare and market players closely watch the outcomes. The judge made a sound ruling today and the case will grind on. Jefferson County is not yet out of the woods but the path is becoming a little clearer.
How Jefferson County trips up national reporters
The New York Times really needs to improve the quality of its reporting on the municipal bond market. Mary Williams Walsh makes such a terrible hash of the situation in Jefferson County, Alabama, that she is bound to set off another muniland hysteria in the mold of Meredith Whitney.
In the opening paragraphs, Walsh contends that general obligation bonds (GO) issued by state and local governments and with the pledge of their “full faith and credit” may not be as creditworthy as always assumed. About half of the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market is general obligation bonds. She dramatically states that investors who own GO bonds might be in for a “surprise:”
People who own what is considered the safest type of municipal bond may be in for a surprise.
This safe debt, called a general-obligation bond, is said to be the next strongest thing to Treasuries because it is backed by a “full faith and credit” pledge. That means the government that issued it will pay it on time, no matter what.
But now Jefferson County, Ala., has stopped paying such debt, breaking with convention and setting up a fundamental test of what full faith and credit truly means.
The cost of kleptocracy
Gary White, a former official of Jefferson County, Alabama, had his conviction on conspiracy and bribery charges affirmed by the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals today. White, a former county commissioner, is already serving a ten-year term in a South Carolina federal prison for his involvement in the sewer scandal that ended in the largest municipal bankruptcy ever. He’s just another piece of detritus from one of the largest cases of municipal corruption in recent American history. The Birmingham News reported the courts decision:
The opinion issued by the court, however, begins with stinging criticism of a period of corruption that included White and other Jefferson County commissioners.
“‘Kleptocracy’ is a term used to describe “[a] government characterized by rampant greed and corruption,” the court’s opinion began, citing three dictionaries. ”To that definition dictionaries might add, as a helpful illustration: “See, for example, Alabama’s Jefferson County Commission in the period from 1998 to 2008.”
Make Jefferson County’s receiver its salesman
The story of Jefferson County, Alabama filing the largest municipal bankruptcy ever last week is well-known. The county went into hock for about $3 billion to build an EPA-mandated sewer system. On the way to completing the system, every local crook and corrupt politician piled onto the project to skim off some pork. Many of these players ended up in prison and left the taxpayers saddled with a sewer system they really can’t afford.
Last year, amid the county’s fiscal and political meltdown, the Russell County Circuit Court appointed a water system professional, John Young, to take over the management and operation of the sewer system. This action came at the request of the bond indenture trustee, the Bank of New York, which wanted the bond payments protected. Now the county is fighting with the receiver and creditors for control of the sewer system in bankruptcy court. My advice to Jefferson County Commissioners is to stop fighting John Young and change his role into a salesman for the system. The sewer system is an albatross, and it should be sold and creditors repaid with the sale proceeds.
Jefferson County goes kaboom
Crushed by sewer debt and stripped of 48 percent of its general fund revenues by a state court, Alabama’s Jefferson County filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in history yesterday. The filing brings three years of financial chaos to an end and represents the largest default of municipal bonds and derivatives ever.
It’s been a long road for the county. In 1996 a federal judge ordered it to upgrade its sewer and waste water systems. To comply with that mandate, Jefferson County has issued over $3 billion in sewer debt, some of which was done in a blatantly illegal manner. The former Birmingham mayor and county commission president are now serving prison terms for bribery. Twelve others were convicted of bribery and conspiracy, and over twenty people involved in construction of the project have served jail time. The lead underwriter of the sewer debt, JP Morgan, also made the largest derivatives-related settlement with the SEC for an illegal payments scheme, although the bank admitted no fraud.
Crawling in the dark through the muni CDS market
I’m beginning to think that Europe’s sovereign debt crisis might kill more than municipal credit default swaps. As the financial system trembles alongside the deliberations of the Greek government, areas of the markets that have quietly lumbered along in the dark are getting more and more attention.
Bloomberg held an excellent state and local finance conference on Wednesday where there was a brilliant session with the state treasurers of North Carolina, Delaware and New Jersey. Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief Matt Winkler grilled the trio on the use of derivatives, mainly interest rate swaps, by public officials. In the most thought-provoking back-and-forth, Winkler asked what the difference was between Alabama’s Jeffereson County and Greece. Both Greece and Jefferson County have extensive ties to financial institutions through the bonds they issued and derivatives they have either entered into or that have been written on them. In the case of Jefferson County this exposure is mainly concentrated with JP Morgan Chase, the lead underwriter for most of the bonds and derivatives written on the county. In the case of Greece it’s fairly well-known who owns its bonds but it’s practically unknown how deep the interconnections are for derivatives. As Bloomberg wrote:
The European nations are linked in a network of debts, as Bill Marsh recently illustrated in the New York Times with a beautiful piece of graphic art. The image is like a complex wiring diagram for a ticking debt bomb. Yet what it shows may be less important than what it leaves out: a largely invisible network of ties among institutions around the world, which could ultimately cause global financial chaos.
This hidden network has been created by institutions that buy and sell unregulated credit-default swaps. These are essentially insurance contracts on bonds; in the event of a default on the bond, the seller of the swap promises to pay the buyer the bond’s value.
Thumbs down on Obama’s muni tax
Thumbs down on Obama’s muni tax
Unsurprisingly, the Treasurer of California and Bloomberg’s editorial board are pushing back on the Obama administration’s proposals to reduce the municipal bond tax exemption for those earning more than $200,000 per year. I wrote previously how the Republicans are cool to the proposal. The California Treasurer says that the increased tax would raise municipal borrowing costs and estimates that over time the act could add $2.7 billion to $7.7 billion to statewide borrowing costs. Bloomberg’s editorial board goes further and suggests that any changes to municipal bond taxation should be done as part of a broader tax reform effort. From Bloomberg:
How disruptive would this new tax, which the administration estimates will bring in $30 billion a year, be for the muni market? A report from Morgan Stanley Research saw little impact, pointing out that the premiums investors demand to hold munis over Treasuries “have little direct relationship with tax rates historically.” A report from Citigroup Global Markets, by contrast, argued that curbing the exemption would “increase state and local borrowing costs significantly.”
On balance, we suspect the impact on interest rates will be relatively small initially. (Certainly the proposal has had little effect on the market since the announcement, according to Bloomberg pricing data.) Of course, that could change rapidly if historically low Treasury yields rise and munis start to look less attractive.
If the aim is to help states build infrastructure and create jobs, Obama’s proposal starts to look somewhat unserious, given that it would probably make public-works projects more expensive. When one considers its chances of passing in Congress — approximately 0.0 percent, according to the latest Bloomberg View calculations — it starts to look downright disingenuous.
Municipal bonds are not just for rich people
This Bloomberg interview with John Miller, co-head of fixed-income at Nuveen Asset Management, is a good overview of the current state of muniland although I disagree with his comment that “many, if not most municipal bond holders are in the highest tax bracket”.
Actually IRS data tells us that about 75% of filers who claim exclusion for tax-exempt municipal interest earn less than $200,000 per year. As with all financial assets the richest own the most by quantity but municipal bonds are held pretty broadly. It’s not just a rich persons asset class.
Where are muniland’s cross-over buyers?
It’s an odd moment in muniland. There is an irregularity in the pricing of municipal bonds. Generally muni bonds have a lower yield than U.S. Treasuries because munis give investors a tax advantage. Investors use them to shield their investment income since coupon payments on municipal bonds from their state of residence are generally triple-tax-free — that is, they are not taxed at the local, state or federal level.
In this Bloomberg video Timothy Pynchon, a portfolio manager at Pioneer Investment Management, talks about how 30-year muni bonds are trading at 105 percent of the value of the 30-year Treasury. These bonds would usually trade at less than 100 percent of Treasuries because of their tax advantages. This is a very unusual situation and would usually attract so-called “cross-over” buyers from other parts of the bond market. In the video, Cumberland Advisors’ David Kotok suggests that since U.S. Treasuries are mispriced (too expensive with low yields as a result of a flight to quality) it’s having a carry-over effect for long-dated municipal bonds. Basically the long end of the municipal bond market has moved away from its normal pricing relationships and is cheap relative to Treasuries.
“We don’t have a deal”
The Jefferson County Commission met last Friday to decide if they would accept a proposed settlement from creditors led by JP Morgan on their $3 billion of sewer debt. After many hours of meeting in executive session and in public, the Commission voted to reject the proposal, remove the court appointed receiver and directly negotiate with the creditors.
I watched the live webcast of the meeting and it was actually one of the most open and informed county commission meetings that I’ve ever seen. I give the Commissioners a lot of credit for their efforts to clean up a problem which they did not create. In the meeting there was a lot of indignation against JP Morgan and their role in burdening the county with several billion dollars of derivatives. Several Commissioners felt especially that there had been fraud in these transactions and were not willing to release their right to sue JP Morgan and other banks for these problems. There were also calls for increased transparency in the process. There was a lot of drama in the meeting.
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Resident Muniland expert
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