The Worst May Be Over, but...

By David Wessel
Wall Street Journal
April 17, 2008; Page A2

Watching the housing-mortgage-banking-credit crisis is like watching the goriest parts of a scary movie. You put your hands over your eyes, spread your fingers a bit, peek through the cracks and ask: "Is it over yet?"

Here's where the story stands right now: Barring any unanticipated collapse of a pillar of Wall Street or a European bank, the risk of financial catastrophe has receded, even though markets remain so far from normal that they're exceptionally hard to read. But the wave of economic pain -- the foreclosures, bankruptcies, pay cuts and layoffs -- has yet to crest.

The plot began with sinking U.S. housing prices triggering a massive disturbance in global financial markets last summer, a disturbance that continues. Yet some key measures suggest things are moving in the right direction. In markets where speculators can bet on the collapse of a big bank or company, the odds placed on a big bank going bust have fallen from implausibly high levels. The odds the markets put on a wave of defaults by nonfinancial corporations also are down. And yields on short-term U.S. Treasury bills, which plunged as money rushed into the ultimate in safe securities, have inched up, even on days when bad news about the U.S. economy ordinarily would have pushed those yields down in anticipation of further interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

The Fed's aggressive actions -- cutting short-term rates by three percentage points since September and devising new ways to lubricate money markets -- have helped. Equally important is the ability and willingness of big financial companies -- Citigroup, Wachovia, Washington Mutual and (if they keep their promises to regulators) mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- to raise billions of dollars to rebuild their diminished capital cushions. This capital-raising is essential if banks are to keep lending, instead of contracting and strangling the economy in a prolonged credit crunch. It's also a hopeful hint that some big-money players think it's time to invest in U.S. banks, albeit at bargain-basement prices.

But all is not yet well. Persistent strains in the market where banks lend to one another overnight, or for just a few days, are baffling, even to smart observers inside the Fed and on Wall Street. Banks understandably continue to be cautious about making mortgages and other loans, given how many bad loans they've made. But cautious about lending to other banks? That's unnerving to say the least.

"The fragility of short-term credit markets," Fed governor Kevin Warsh said in a speech this week, "is a powerful manifestation of...loss of confidence" in the entire architecture of the financial system. (That, too, is a bit unnerving coming from a Fed governor.) "There are some encouraging, early signs of repair, but regaining the confidence that markets require will take time, and perhaps uncomfortably to some, patience," he said.

So much for the markets. What about the rest of the economy? Employment is falling. So are housing prices. The bulk of forecasters in the latest Wall Street Journal survey foresee home prices declining into 2009; nearly one in eight say they won't touch bottom until 2010.

Prices of food and energy are rising. And a credit crunch is sure to make it tougher than usual for American consumers to borrow to keep spending. (President Bush is probably relieved he isn't up for re-election.) Macroeconomic Advisers, the St. Louis forecaster that makes a monthly guess about gross domestic product, estimates the U.S. economy contracted at a 13% annual rate in February, the sharpest monthly decline in its data since September 2001.

Offsetting that drag on the economy is the vigor of U.S. exports. And, of course, the impact of the interest-rate cuts the Fed already has made and the checks Mr. Bush and Congress decided to send to most American families this spring has yet to be fully felt. "The fiscal stimulus is in the mail," says Richard Berner, a Morgan Stanley economist. "The monetary stimulus is in the pipeline."

Nevertheless, the economy where most Americans live and work -- that is, off Wall Street -- looks likely to get worse before it gets better. Maybe credit markets already are so pessimistic that they won't turn lower on any further bad economic news.

But stocks? Predicting their direction is treacherous. If this is truly the worst financial crisis in a generation, is it plausible that the Dow Jones Industrial Average -- now down more than 11% from its October peak -- has fallen as far as it is going to fall? And if banks are groaning under the weight of bad loans now, further deterioration of the job market and consumer finances can only make matters worse and discourage them from lending.

The scariest scenes of the movie may be past, but the good guys haven't won yet.

Write to David Wessel at capital@wsj.com