No matter which path GM chooses – conventional restructuring or bankruptcy – the U.S. Big Three of GM, Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) and Chrysler LLC will have to adjust to the U.S. auto market’s post-financial-crisis “new reality.” Automakers will sell only 10 million cars and trucks in the U.S. market this year, the worst in at least 3 decades – and roughly 38% less than the 16 million vehicles that were sold in the United States annually in recent years before the financial collapse caused an accompanying collapse in auto sales.

Part of the reason for the slump in new vehicle sales is that consumers are increasingly turning to used cars. Pre-owned car sales are up 10% this year over last, as credit availability increases, but buyers focus on affordability. In fact, according to the most-recent report, used-car sales jumped in April, and the trend is expected to continue at least until the middle of the year as pent-up demand for affordable, pre-owned vehicles jacked up the used-vehicle segment of the auto marketplace.

Market Matters

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner put his most optimistic face forward in assessing the progress with the bank bailout plan. Geithner pointed out that the 19 stressed-tested banks have already raised $56 billion in capital [including Bank of America Corp.’s (NYSE: BAC) $13.5 billion stock offering] and several could begin to pay back Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP) money shortly.  He also indicated that the public-private partnership to remove “toxic” assets from banks’ books should be up and running in the next month-and-a-half, a move that may instill greater confidence in the financial markets.

However, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal rained on Geithner’s parade by estimating that small and mid-sized banks could face losses on bad commercial real estate loans of $100 billion by year-end 2010. A Money Morning investigation of the looming commercial real estate crisis predicted that this sector of the real-estate market would pose major problems for the U.S. economic recovery.

Meanwhile, GMAC LLC may be close to receiving a fresh $7 billion in new (bailout) money as the government continues to seek ways to rescue the auto industry.  GM reached an agreement with its main union (UAW) that would reduce retiree benefits and overall labor costs to make them comparable to those of their foreign rivals.

As another negative earnings season comes to a close, investors searched long and hard for a bright spot – any bright spot.  With most Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies reporting, earnings plunged more than 30% in the first quarter and are on track to fall 13% for the full year, the worst annual performance in six years.

Still, Thomson Reuters PLC (Nasdaq ADR: TRIN) says that a consensus of sell-side analysts projects a 29% increase in earnings in 2010 as cost-cutting measures pay off and relative results begin to look more attractive.

The Lowes Cos. Inc. (NYSE: LOW) reported better-than-expected quarterly profits and raised its outlook for the year, but The Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) saw its numbers disappoint investors who were looking for stronger signs from the home improvement giant.  Likewise, Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) reported weaker earnings, and that spawned renewed pessimism for the high-tech sector.

On a brighter note, retailers Sears Holdings Corp. (Nasdaq: SHLD) and Aeropostale Inc. (NYSE: ARO) reported better-than-expected quarterly profits.  Ratings upgrades brought early promise as Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) boosted its forecast on homebuilder Lennar Corp. (NYSE: LEN); Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE: DB) raised its views on McDonalds Corp. (NYSE: MCD); and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) made Bank of America a “Buy.”  However, S&P warned it may downgrade the United Kingdom’s debt below AAA due to ongoing economic obstacles, a development that prompted others to wonder if U.S. securities could face similar dire possibilities.

Crude oil surged past $62 a barrel on lower inventory data and gasoline climbed above $2.36 a gallon heading into the Memorial Day holiday weekend, a far cry from the $3.80 of this time last year – although it was 30 cents higher than late April levels.

Economically Speaking

While Geithner was “spinning” the bailout progress in the most favorable light possible, the U.S. Federal Reserve meeting minutes painted a picture of a more sluggish economy than most had predicted just three months ago.  In fact, the policymakers negatively revised their projections for economic contraction and warned that the unemployment rate could push toward 10% by the end of the year.  Still, central bank Chairman Ben S. Bernanke believes improvements are on the way as the impact of the Obama administration stimulus package aids in the recovery over the year’s second half. Furthermore, the Fed stands prepared to buy more U.S. Treasury and mortgage-related securities should such moves be deemed beneficial.

In the “it could be worse” category, Mexico (-21.5%), Japan (-15.2%), and Germany (-14.4%) each reported severe economic declines (as measured by gross domestic product, or GDP), as these three primary U.S. trading partners suffered the ill effects of the lower domestic demand for foreign-made goods and services.

Though the economic calendar was rather light during the week, some positive signs did emerge from deep within the numbers.  While analysts were surprised by a decline in April housing starts, the losses stemmed from a reduction in apartment activity, and single-family construction actually jumped by almost 3%, its second consecutive positive monthly showing.

Additionally, a private survey of the nation’s construction professionals depicted that homebuilder sentiment soared to its highest level in eight months, another sign that the prolonged housing slump may finally be nearing an end.

Finally, leading economic indicators, a predictive index that forecasts activity for the ensuing six months, turned positive after six straight down months.  Unfortunately, labor continued to struggle as the number of folks who have been receiving unemployment benefits for over a week hit a new record high.  While the economy definitely seems to be moving past the dreaded recession, any recovery will be limited as long as the labor picture remains weak and employees hold off on purchases until their job situations become more stable.  And the risk of a “double-dip” downturn remains somewhat high.

Weekly Economic Calendar

Source: As GM Cruises Toward Government Deadline, U.S. Automakers Must Learn to Deal With a Permanently Smaller Market

And it gets worse. That increase in borrowing costs will spread to other parts of the global debt market, representing an across-the board threat to corporate, institutional and sovereign borrowers. If interest rates remain high and interbank lending remains tight, the credit crisis is not likely to recede.

This raises two key questions. Are desperate times prompting desperate measures? Is LIBOR being manipulated by banks that are trying to make their financial positions appear better than they really are?

If that’s the case, it’s one more reason the credit crisis will fester and spread undetected: The artificially low interbank lending rates removed a key “early warning” indicator, leading investors to believe the credit market was healthy when it actually wasn’t.

The Lowdown on LIBOR

LIBOR, or the London Interbank Offered Rate, is arguably the most important interest rate in the world. It is used to calculate the interest rates on hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate debt, mortgages and innumerable other loan products – including hundreds of trillions of dollars of derivatives.

It is important to understand that LIBOR is a “reference” rate, meaning it isn’t imposed on a borrower by any regulation or law. Developed in the middle 1980s, LIBOR is the benchmark rate banks use when they offer to lend unsecured money to other banks in the London wholesale money market.

LIBOR was created to make sure that banks that offer loans with “floating” – or adjustable – interest rates know just what their constantly changing cost-to-borrow actually is.

Lenders offering floating or adjustable rate loans typically charge borrowers a “spread” above LIBOR. When you hear: “Your cost on this loan is three-month LIBOR plus 5,” it means the lender is charging you the three-month LIBOR rate – plus an additional five percentage points. If three-month LIBOR is 4%, your actual rate is 9% (4% + 5% = 9%). If your loan re-sets in the future, it will do so based on the LIBOR rate that day – plus an additional five percentage points.

LIBOR is calculated for 15 different loan durations, ranging from overnight to a year, and is listed in 10 different currencies. For this discussion, we are focusing on only the dollar LIBOR rate, which is the rate, in terms of dollar borrowings, that banks theoretically charge each other when buying and selling dollars in the London market.

Each morning, “panels” of banks submit loan data to Thomson Reuters PLC (ADR: TRIN) in London, usually by 11:10 a.m. London time, and Reuters (a news, information, data and market quoting service corporation) calculates LIBOR, which is subsequently published each day by the British Bankers’ Association (BBA).

Subverting the System

That brings us to the current problem in the LIBOR market: As Money Morning has previously reported, there’s substantial evidence that LIBOR is being “managed.” This has been happening and the BBA is actively looking into it. In fact, several months ago, when the BBA announced it was speeding up its probe, LIBOR jumped.

The dollar LIBOR rate, or “fixing,” as it is known, is calculated based on the submission of quotes from 16 major world banks. The banks send in data as to what they paid, or could pay, to borrow from other banks at each maturity level. Reuters throws out the four highest and four lowest quotes, and calculates the average of the eight that remain to come up with the dollar LIBOR fixing.

If banks are seeking to charge one another higher rates, that’s telling us one of two things. Either:

• Banks don’t have excess cash to lend.
• Or they are unwilling to lend freely to other banks, which they fear are facing potential troubles because of bad loans, defaulted mortgages, and other pending hits to their capital and threats to their solvency. [Pending hits to capital could include anticipated higher foreclosure rates brought on by mortgage re-sets].

No bank wants to admit it is being charged a premium to borrow: That sends a bad signal. If a reporting bank submits data that shows its own borrowing costs are higher than average, it will very likely raise questions about that institution’s financial strength and stability – the kind of uncertainty that recently brought down such financial institutions as The Bear Stearns Cos. [now part of JP Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM)], and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ).

So what might that bank do? Since the submitting banks providing data to Reuters are on the “honor system,” maybe this institution has an incentive to not submit its actual borrowing costs? Maybe this bank submits rates at which it could borrow – which it is permitted to do, by definition, under the submitting rules – if those rates are lower by virtue of only being a quote it received?

Maybe this bank – and the rest of its brethren – would like to keep LIBOR lower than the interbank rate should actually be, realizing that if rates rise, bad-loan exposure increases. And if bad-loan exposure increases, derivative exposure will escalate, too. What if U.S. ARM re-sets (based on LIBOR) bump up the interest-rate charges that already-strapped homeowners have to pay? What will more foreclosures do to already-battered bank balance sheets?

We already know the answers to those questions.

Since the interbank-lending markets here in the United States have not been freed up, the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Federal Reserve have gone to extraordinary lengths to thaw out the frozen markets and get credit flowing across the economy. Included in their buckshot-pattern arsenal of misguided turnaround initiatives is one that forces the largest U.S. banks to borrow directly from the government. That initiative hasn’t helped because banks are simply afraid to lend to other banks because of the problem of toxic balance sheets and future loan-loss probabilities. Worst of all, no bank’s balance sheet has become a single bit more transparent. Nor will that ever happen if we do away with fair-value, mark-to-market accounting.

But, last Friday, at the same time Citigroup Inc. (C) reported November re-sets on adjustable rate mortgages will exceed $24 billion – which can only lead to further mortgage defaults – it was also revealed that some of the banks our government gave money to actually lent it to banks in London. Strange? Not really.

When JP Morgan, Citigroup and other big U.S. banks place money with London banks, specifically banks that submit borrowing cost statistics to Reuters that ultimately determines the LIBOR fixing, could it be that there’s more than free-flowing lending going on? Did the London banks lend any of the pittances that the U.S. banks lent across the pond?

By simple virtue of actually having more money to lend, and without any lending between themselves, London banks have the cover to say: “There’s money available to borrow, but we didn’t borrow any, but we could have borrowed and the cost to us would have been lower than it has been.”

So, they submit to Reuters the lower cost at which they could have borrowed and, presto, the LIBOR fixing is lowered.

Blueprint for a Turnaround

Desperate times, it has been said, require desperate measures.

While it is imperative that credit flows freely here and around the world, the desperate and manipulative measures that banks, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are employing are the equivalent of the Air Force using a carpet-bombing campaign when it’s clear that a couple of smart bombs would do a better job. As a result, U.S. taxpayers are being bombed into a deeper, wider and steeper crater from which it will be very difficult – if not impossible – to climb out of.

There’s just not enough dirt to fill in the craters created by the repeated pounding of the errant policy bombs, as well as the disinterested and abetting regulation, unencumbered Wall Street greed and the profligate orgy of spending that’s come to define Main Street.

Fixing this massive problem – of which LIBOR is just an element – will take time. But we can start by taking all the lobbyists, ex-legislators and ex-regulators and their former staff members (and perhaps some current legislators who are serial enablers of such problems, and who enrichen themselves each time along the way) and burying them in the craters as we fill the holes in.

That rant aside, devising an actual fix for our problems starts by understanding just what it was that caused them. We can assign blame later. For now it’s far more important to stop the flood of red ink that’s washing down Main Street.

Understanding LIBOR and what’s really going on is critical to understanding the motivation and maneuvering of the players that have us headed for a worldwide financial Armageddon.

Source: Fears of Mortgage Rate Re-Sets May Fuel LIBOR Manipulation and Mask Deeper Banking System Problems

Editors Note: This is the ninth installment of an ongoing series in which retired hedge-fund manager R. Shah Gilani breaks down the credit crisis for readers.