There was this little press release that came out Friday at around 10 PM. It says….

American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. (NYSE: AHM – News) announced today that its Board of Directors has decided to delay payment of its quarterly cash dividend on the Company’s common stock and anticipates delaying payment of its quarterly cash dividends on its Series A Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock and Series B Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock in order to preserve liquidity until it obtains a better understanding of the impact that current market conditions in the mortgage industry and the broader credit market will have on the Company’s balance sheet and overall liquidity. The disruption in the credit markets in the past few weeks has been unprecedented in the Company’s experience and has caused major write-downs of its loan and security portfolios and consequently has caused significant margin calls with respect to its credit facilities.

Now when I first saw this on Calculated Risk, I did not think much of it. Lots of companies are having problems because of the sub prime crisis. What’s one more? Besides, Calculated Risk’s only comment in his blog post highlighting this press release was “I can’t recall a declared dividend being “delayed”. This can’t be good.”

This seemed to me to be a no duh statement. Of course a dividend being delayed is not good. But apparently Calculated Risk is one of those dudes who is prone to understating disasters. It became clear in the comment section that Calculated Risk regarded this development as a major disaster.

In one of his first comments he professes to be speechless. Replying to another commentator who argued that there was less than 90 days left until people woke up to the carnage Calculated Risk said….

y.s.wayne, 90 days? How about Monday?

I’ve served on the board of a public company, and I can’t imagine declaring a dividend and then delaying it. That is simply incredible … but I’ve also never had to put out a press release worded like that one: “major write-downs” and “significant margin calls”.

And I’ve never been with a Company that felt compelled to put out a press release in the evening on a Friday either. That had to be an ugly BOD meeting.

Now I have never seen Calculated Risk sound alarmist or predict the short term movement of the market. Normally he is very careful to hedge his bets. For him to talk about carnage coming on Monday was unprecedented. It made me sit up and take notice.

But I still did not understand why this of all things should be such a big deal. Luckily Calculated Risk’s co-blogger Tanta put up a post of her own on the subject titled Saturday Rock Blogging: Speechless. The post itself is just a clip of a rock band playing a song without words, but in the comments section Tanta illuminates the problem for ignorant souls such as me.

All of her comments on the post are worth reading(here, here, and here, for starters), but this one basically sums it all up…

bofiz, to me it’s not just that. It’s that AHM’s stock took a bad tumble a week ago, apparently on a rumor that Lehman was pulling a warehouse facility. Per published reports AHM actually denied that rumor to a reporter. The stock recovered a lot of value (although not all of it) the next day. A week later, we find out they don’t have enough cash to pay dividend.

Surely everyone already knew you don’t cancel a dividend you affirmed 30 days ago on a Friday night at bedtime. I think the problem is that nobody’s going to believe that a lot of companies still have functional access to credit markets unless they fax their bank statements to the WSJ. We’re all wondering what a dividend affirmation means in this climate, not really whether it’s legal or not. (Although I for one suspect that they did it because the clear alternative was even more illegal.)

I feel sorry for a certain elderly gentleman that I know who has most of his retirement savings tied up in Real Estates REIT’s. After all I have read on Calculated Risk, I have a feeling that he is not going to have a fun Monday.

P.S, for extra giggles, read this comment.

Update:7/29/07

Ape Man asked for (and received) Marco Man’s opinion on the matter here.

Calculate Risk has a new post on the subject here.

And the issue has just made Google News. Which means the story is starting to hit a large number news outlets right about now. It is going to be an interesting Monday.

This week’s essay is an overview of the current housing situation by Calculated Risk.

How trustworthy do you think most of the governments in the Middle East are? This question is important because according to a study requested by US Energy Secretary Bodman almost all the new oil for export in the coming years is going to come from the Middle East.

Now all by itself this is pretty depressing. But what would be even more depressing is that if no one could increase oil exports. After all, demand is projected to soar in China and other places. Without new sources of oil, prices are going to soar.

But as Stuart Staniford argues in this post, it is very likely that government in the Middle East are lying through their teeth about there likely reserves.

I won’t provide any quotes from his post, because his argument is too involved and chart dependent to quote well. But if you are familiar with Stuart Staniford body of work you know that just about anything he writes is worth reading.

This from R-Squared…..

Gasoline imports were strong while prices were at record highs. Looks like prices may need to head back that direction to attract more imports. That gasoline import number is pretty weak, considering gasoline imports have been running at well over a million barrels per day. I suspect today’s report means gasoline prices will continue their recent climb, after bottoming out a couple of weeks ago. That refinery utilization number is another big story. We have yet to see 92% utilization this summer. You have to go all the way back to 1991 to see summer utilization numbers in this range. Last year’s June number was 93%, and it was over 97% in June of 2004 and 2005.

As long as refinery utilization rates stay low, we are going to be dependent on imports. And as long as we are dependent on imports we are going to have to pay more then the wholesale price in Europe plus shipping costs for our gas. That will never be cheap.

This from Bloomberg…

The Bush administration is urging China’s central bank to buy more government-backed mortgage bonds in an effort to sustain financing for U.S. home loans.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson is in Beijing to persuade the Chinese central bank to buy more securities from Ginnie Mae, a corporation under HUD that guarantees $417 billion in federally insured, fixed-rate mortgages.

What more is there to say? (Hat tip: Macro Man).

It seems that there is a trend sweeping the world. People want to see how many historical accepted economical principles can be broken before you have a disaster. China and the US are the trend setters in this regards, but Zimbawe is in a class all by itself.

This is how Mugabe is fighting inflation (this from Letters)…..

Dear Family and Friends,

Zimbabwe has been engulfed in a macabre and tragic frenzy this week and frankly, it beggars belief. Across the country what has been called a “Taskforce” has been unleashed by the government to force shop owners and businesses to cut their prices by 50%. The price cut enforcers are army men in camouflage clothes, police in uniform and large numbers of youth militia.They go from shop to shop and simply pick on items they want reduced : SLASH THAT PRICE, is the phrase we are hearing again and again and then products have to be sold for less than they were purchased for. Shop owners who refuse to cut the prices face arrest and having their goods seized. Some have been assaulted, others had their premises trashed and windows smashed.

The result of it all, inevitably, is rapid collapse and many goods and foods have now become completely unavailable including all the staples which were already difficult to find such as flour, oil, sugar, salt and maize meal. Joining the list now are most other normal household products in daily use such as soap, candles, matches, milk, eggs, margarine, rice, bread and the list grows longer by the hour and day. As the prices are ordered down hordes of people with bagfuls of money swarm behind and buy up all the stocks. Shops are displaying signs announcing that only one of each item may be purchased but entire gangs are moving around in dozens and just cleaning everything out.

I feel sorry for the people of Zimbabwe. But I can’t help find Mugabe’s rule to be an interesting experiment in how many stupid things it is possible to do before you lose power.

I hope the farm regulations in this country never become like those in Europe. To be required to keep a passport on every cow would be horrible. To be required to argue with some stupid bureaucrat about whether a particular cow was alive or dead would be unbearable. This from The Economist’s Correspondent Diary….

On top, for Mr Webb, come the grain-dryer for the contractors’ wheat and barley, (“no rapeseed this year, thank God—in a dry spring it bolts like lettuce”) and bringing in the big bales of straw. And the computer. And the ever-mounting documentation—including a 14-page passport for every beast in the herd—required by DEFRA, the former Ministry of Agriculture. Not to say its bureaucracy:

“Send us details of cow X.”

“It died years ago, we sent you its passport.”

“Still alive in our records.”

Mr Webb e-mailed them a picture of a cow being carried off by a UFO.