Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.03.2012, Side 12

12
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 3 — 2012
py [-go-lucky] Vikings...”
• MarketWatch: “Iceland’s debt comes in
from the cold”
• RT (Russian News Channel): “Iceland
shows eurozone how to fight crisis”
• Business Insider: Iceland’s banks
“have forgiven 13 percent of the coun-
try’s debts…” easing the burden “…for
more than 25 percent of the country’s
population…”
• Bloomberg: Quoting Danish banker,
Lars Christensen: “…Iceland holds the
world record in household debt relief...”
• Bloomberg again: “Iceland’s approach
to dealing with the meltdown has put
the needs of its population ahead of its
markets every time.”
• Rabble.ca (a Canadian online maga-
zine): “Iceland is a great example of peo-
ple who stood up and fought for civility.”
• Rabble.ca again: “Even the IMF is hold-
ing up Iceland as an example of how to
overcome deep economic dislocation
without undoing the social fabric.”
• MoneyWeek (a UK investment web-
site): “The Lessons Learned from Ice-
land’s Economy: Let Banks Go Bust”
It goes on, but you get the idea, right?
But here’s my very favourite quote
of the past month…and the prize goes
to the Russian news channel, RT. Get
a whiff of this—a quote from Russian
investment banker, Tamerlan Khas-
simikov: Apparently it was not only ef-
fective crisis management that helped
Iceland to stay afloat, but according to
Khassimikov, “Iceland is a disciplined
country, it’s used not to spend more than
it has.”
So tell me, folks: How did we get into
this mess in the first place?
Khassimikov concludes that the cri-
sis occurred “because Iceland’s banks
are a part of global banking. As for
Greece, it became the victim of its own
careless approach to finance.”
Where did this guy get his master’s
degree?
Honestly speaking, only Macleans,
the Canadian current affairs magazine,
seemed to be talking with any measure
of balance this month. Though here too,
in Chris Sorensen’s article, “Iceland: a
new model for dealing with collapse?”
someone has been a victim of miscon-
struction. For example, Soerensen says
“[Ólafur Ragnar] Grímsson stepped
in—not once, but twice—so that the
[Icesave] deal [struck by Icelandic parlia-
ment] could be put to a referendum.”
Now, I am sure some folks would dis-
agree that he—er, just stepped in. Just as
no one quite knows whether he’s about
to just step out. Sensibly, however, So-
rensen also interviews Ragnar Arnason,
an economics professor at the University
of Iceland. “[Arnason] argues that many
foreign observers have conveniently ig-
nored key details when they marvel at
Iceland’s recovery.” As Arnason notes
among other things, capital controls
now threaten Iceland’s key industries,
preventing “export industries from de-
veloping.” And yes, that’s just the tip of
the proverbial iceberg.
Do any of these guys read between
the lines? For Odin’s sake, would some-
one please set the record straight?
Economics | Loans
Robbery By Math
The true story of Icelandic Index Linked Mortgages
It is the things that we think we un-
derstand that inevitably catch us un-
awares. We all know what loans are,
and what mortgages mean, so we
don’t bother questioning them as we
sign on the dotted line to pay up for
the next 25 years or so of our lives.
That at least, is the best explanation
I can come up with for the existence
of the most unique instrument of fi-
nancial self-destruction over the last
30 years: the Icelandic Index Linked
Mortgage.
UNDERSTANDING MORTGAGE
REpAYMENT SCHEDULES
To appreciate the full financial havoc that
the mortgages sold during the bubble
years are slowly wreaking on the Icelan-
dic economy requires an understanding of
how loan repayments usually work, which
means examining the loan amortization
table for these loans. Loan amortization
tables are something every borrower
should get to know intimately. Quite sim-
ply they show the monthly loan payments,
broken down into the amount of inter-
est and principal repaid, and the amount
of the loan still outstanding. If we use a
$100,000, 25 year US loan at a 9.3% an-
nual interest rate as an example, the first
few months of its amortization table would
look something like in table 1
The table shows the monthly repay-
ment broken down into the interest on the
loan, and the principal repayment, and the
total amount of the loan still outstanding
every month in the ‘Outstanding’ column.
Like all compound interest loans, at the
beginning of the loan most of the money
you pay goes on interest, with principal re-
payments being a depressingly small part
of the total. At least though, in a typical US
loan the principal outstanding on the loan
is decreasing.
NEGATIvE AMORTIzATION LOANS
Compare and contrast the amortization
table below for a notional 10 million ISK,
25 year Icelandic Index linked loan, taken
from Arion Banki’s website, for the “Verð-
tryggð íbúðalán með föstum vöxtum” with
an interest rate at 4.3% and an assumed
constant inflation rate of 5%, together
making the same total interest rate as the
American loan shown in table 2.
There’s good news and bad news in
this table. The ‘good’ news is that the re-
payments, initially at least are significantly
less than those on the American loan. The
bad news is what that will end up costing
you, as the Icelandic Housing loans sold
during the bubble years weren’t just index
linked—they were structured as negative
amortization loans.
Negative amortization loans are a spe-
cialized form of lending, supposedly only
for ‘sophisticated’ investors, a term widely
used within the financial industry to mean
‘gullible’. With NegAm loans, the initial
repayments on the loan aren’t sufficient
to cover the interest payments on the to-
tal amount borrowed, and so as you can
see, the total amount of the loan increases
over time, rather than decreasing. As the
amount of interest you pay on the loan de-
pends on the amount of the principal out-
standing, then the next month the interest
payable on the loan also increases. The
lower payments last at most eight years
(assuming nothing dramatic happens with
the inflation rate), at which point accord-
ing to the Arion Bank’s calculator the prin-
cipal owed is still climbing. Indeed it isn’t
until 17 years after the loan has been taken
out, that the original loan begins to be re-
paid.
HOW BAD CAN IT BE?
In comparison to an American 25 year
mortgage for $100,000 at 9.3%, a borrower
would end up repaying a total of just over
$257,000. With an Icelandic, NegAm Index
25 year linked loan for 10 million ISK, at
4.1%, and assuming a stable inflation rate
of 5%, the borrower would end up paying
slightly more than 31 million, or the no-
tional equivalent of $310,000 if we drop a
couple of zero’s.
While paying 5 million more ISK than
a comparable loan in the US (or Europe)
would cost might not seem so bad, in fact
the majority of the loans sold during the
bubble period in Iceland weren’t 25 year
loans; they were 40 year. The Arion Banki
calculator shows that the total repayment
for a 40 year loan of 10 million works out
to be 65 million ISK. A comparable 40 year
US loan by comparison, would come to
$380,000.
Recently it has become possible to get
five year fixed rate loans at 6% in Iceland,
and anybody who can is well advised to
do so. Whilst these still don’t match what’s
available in America, since the interest
rate after the 5 year fixed period is adjust-
able, they’re still a far better option than
the old NegAm index linked loans—which
are still available, both from the banks, The
Housing Financing Fund, and in doubt-
less well meant offers on local real estate
listings to take over the existing loan and
avoid having to put down a 20% deposit.
The real comparison, though, isn’t with
a 9.3% US loan since most people don’t
pay that kind of rate over there. Fixed rate
25 and 30 years loans can currently be
had in America for around 4.5% to quali-
fied borrowers. The total repayment on a
4.5% fixed rate 25 year loan, is just under
$167,000, nearly $140,000 less than the
9.3% 25 year Icelandic loan. All of which
assumes that nothing dramatic happens
to the inflation rate, and for Iceland at
least, 5% is decidedly on the low side as
an inflation estimate.
Now while you might think, and indeed
I have frequently heard it argued here, that
the high inflation rate somehow justifies
this form of robbery by math, this ignores
the important question of what causes
inflation in the first place. In particular, it
ignores the cause of inflation in Iceland,
which is usually the direct consequence
of the badly regulated lending activities of
its banks. Always accompanied by a nice
story from the salesman about how house
prices always go up and it would always
be possible to sell for more than the loan.
In fact with negative amortization loans
the direct opposite tends to be true, since
it is difficult, if not impossible, for bor-
rowers to build up capital while repaying
them. Quite often borrowers simply end
up selling the house for the total amount
still outstanding if they are lucky. However
there is no guarantee that the house price
will increase as quickly as the outstand-
ing loan amount will, so if they are unlucky
they’re left in negative equity and have to
sell for less than the loan and bring extra
money to the table to close. As the steady
flow of foreclosures in Iceland bears mute
testimony to, many Icelanders can’t even
do that.
Repayment principal Interest paid Outstanding
Feb. 2012 $859.83 $84.83 $775.00 $775.00 $99,915.17
Mar. 2012 $859.83 $85.49 $774.34 $1,549.34 $99,829.67
Apr-12 $859.83 $86.15 $773.68 $2,323.02 $99,743.52
May-12 $859.83 $86.82 $773.01 $3,096.03 $99,656.70
Jun-12 $859.83 $87.50 $772.34 $3,868.37 $99,569.20
Jul-12 $859.83 $88.17 $771.66 $4,640.04 $99,481.03
Aug. 2012 $859.83 $88.86 $770.98 $5,411.01 $99,392.17
Sept. 2012 $859.83 $89.55 $770.29 $6,181.30 $99,302.63
Oct. 2012 $859.83 $90.24 $769.60 $6,950.90 $99,212.39
Nov. 2012 $859.83 $90.94 $768.90 $7,719.79 $99,121.45
Dec. 2012 $859.83 $91.64 $768.19 $8,487.99 $99,029.81
Jan. 2013 $859.83 $92.35 $767.48 $9,255.47 $98,937.45
Table 1 - USD
Repayment principal Interest Fee paid Outstanding
13.03.2012 54.708 18.667 35.922 120 54.708 10.024.663
13.04.2012 54.843 18.780 35.943 120 54.843 10.030.673
13.05.2012 54.978 18.894 35.964 120 54.978 10.036.586
13.06.2012 55.113 19.008 35.985 120 55.113 10.042.398
13.07.2012 55.249 19.123 36.006 120 55.249 10.048.111
13.08.2012 55.385 19.239 36.026 120 55.385 10.053.722
13.09.2012 55.521 19.356 36.046 120 55.521 10.059.230
13.10.2012 55.658 19.473 36.065 120 55.658 10.064.636
13.11.2012 55.795 19.591 36.084 120 55.795 10.069.937
13.12.2012 55.932 19.710 36.103 120 55.932 10.075.133
13.01.2013 56.070 19.829 36.121 120 56.070 10.080.223
Table 2 - ISK
Outstanding debt over a 11 month period
of payments- US loan
Outstanding debt over a 11 month period
of payments - Icelandic loan
Continued
Jacky Mallet is a research scientist at Reykjavík University, working on models
of the banking system and its interaction with the economy. Expect more from
Jacky in upcoming issues!
“Negative amortization
loans are a specialized
form of lending,
supposedly only for
‘sophisticated’ investors,
a term widely used
within the financial
industry to mean
‘gullible’”
JACKY MALLETT
www.ishestar.is
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