TARP and Foreclosures: A Matter of Misplaced Priorities

Neil Kashkari wrote up the U.S. Treasury department’s Break the Glass Bank Recapitalization Plan in April, 2008—months before the financial crisis—as a “just in case.” It was essentially the TARP program.  Karshkari states in his plan that governmental purchases of toxic mortgage-based assets would do “nothing to help homeowners without [there being] a complimentary program.” He notes that should there be a crisis, “there would be enormous political pressure” for relief going to homeowners in trouble.  Considering the noted downside to his plan, he may have viewed any such pressure from “the masses” as a problem to be ignored rather than even assuaged.  He also admits in his plan that it would provide “no guarantee banks [would] resume lending.”  It is odd that his was made explicit yet not dealt with.  He does gloss an alternative option (C) that would involve refinancing the troubled mortgages, though he assumes a (needlessly cumbersome) case by case basis and that the servicers would determine which loans to put into the program.  The culprits could opt out to insist on the higher payments. In other words, Kashkari was assuming that the government shouldn’t or couldn’t force the banks to take write-downs.  As a former Goldman Sachs man himself (like his boss at the time, Henry Paulson), Kashkari probably didn’t want to propose anything that the bankers wouldn’t view as being in their interest.

The full essay is at "Essays on the Financial Crisis."

Bankers Writing Financial Reform Law: A Case of the Wolves Designing the Chicken Coop

The financial reform bill approved in December, 2009 by the US House of Representatives proposed to regulate the financial industry and keep firms from growing “too big to fail.” The bill can be likened to a ship made of Swiss cheeze, yet seemingly seaworthy. A key intention of the bill was to gain control over the vast market in “over the counter” derivatives by forcing trading onto open exchanges, where regulators can monitor it. Unregulated derivatives were behind much of the havoc that nearly brought down the financial system in 2008, including the subprime-mortgage-backed securities that put many firms underwater and the credit default swaps sold by AIG, the giant insurance company that sucked up about $180 billion in bailout money. The $592 trillion global market in these mostly unmonitored derivatives remained in 2009 among the most profitable businesses for the biggest banks—Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley—and Wall Street doesn’t want Washington tampering with it. Early versions of Frank’s bill allowed many derivatives to continue trading off exchanges. The bill, Frank wrote, “could be subject to manipulation” by “clever financial firms” seeking to evade a requirement that they trade derivatives on open exchanges.

The story of how those loopholes got into the derivatives bill, even with Frank at the helm and the wind of public outrage at his back, shows just how powerful the Wall Street banking lobby remained nonetheless—and just how complex Wall Street’s financial instruments had become. Many of the key lobbyists were in 2009 in the same gang that helped get us into this mess before, and they were spending huge sums a year after the near meltdown. In the first three quarters of 2009, financial-industry interests  spent $344 million on lobbying efforts, putting them on pace to break all records. This did not include political donations and issue ads. Even more impressive was the lobbying strategy that money was buying. The banks sought to stay in the background and put their corporate customers—a who’s who of American business, including Apple, Whirlpool, and John Deere—out in front of the campaign. “This is an orchestrated, well-funded effort by the banks to manipulate our legislation and leave no fingerprints,” says a congressional staffer involved in drafting the legislation. The financial industry argued that curbs on derivatives do hurt just Wall Street, but also the corporations in Main Street America—the “end users” —that need them to hedge risks.  However, the more custom-made and out of public sight a derivative is, the harder it is for investors—and regulators—to assess its fair value and real risk. This makes it easier for the banks to charge a large “spread” and earn big profits. Frank heatedly denied that he'd been fooled, though he conceded he was catching up on some of the details of the bills he was pushing through. “I’ve become responsible for dealing with a lot of things that are new to me. I didn’t have a great deal of knowledge. I’ve been relying on a whole lot of people,” Frank said. In allowing some exemptions from exchange trading, Frank said he was merely accommodating the corporate end users—not Wall Street—who want to continue doing these private trades in derivatives.  The Wall Street lobby didn’t give up. After Frank had toughened up his stance on derivatives, the lobby tried to redefine what certain kinds of exchanges do.

The money that the industry can use to mollify congressional critics and bolster allies was not the only problem. The problem was even more intractable. Both Frank and his staff (and the corresponding committee in the US Senate) relied on the expertise of the banking industry in the fashioning of regulation for the industry.  Frank admitted that he didn’t know enough to keep on top of the drafts submitted by the industry (and end-users).  Additionally, it was difficult for him and his staff to assess where the industry’s “recommendations” were more “convenient” (meaning self-serving for the banks) than informational.   The financial instruments (e.g., derivatives based on mortgages) were at the time so complicated that congressional staffers who wrote the legislation depended on drafts submitted by the industry itself without being able to adequately screen them for bias.  There is an inherent conflict of interest in an industry even providing information. Therefore, I wonder whether the practice was worth its benefits to congressional staffers. 

The case seems to me like that of having a wolf provide the sketches for the design of the chicken koop, as if the design were an objective plan without any holes.   Even so, without the information from the industry with the vested interest, legislative staffs often do not feel competent to legislate on the complex markets of modern finance.  Indeed, they may not be, given the complexity out there.  But that is not a given.  We miss this point. To reduce the informational asymetry, Congress could direct that the markets be simplified to what they and the regulatory agencies could understand and thus regulate effectively. Opponents of the House bill claimed that the changes ensuing from the bill would limit consumer choice and stunt financial market innovation. Shortly after the House bill passed, President Obama suggested these risks are worth taking.

While applauding House passage of overhaul legislation, the President expressed frustration with banks that were helped by a taxpayer bailout and even as they were “fighting tooth and nail with their lobbyists” against new government controls.  The bank lobbyists spent more than $300 million in 2009 trying to scuttle the bill.  This alone should be enough to shut every congressional office to the lobbyists.  How widespread is the fecklessness!  As the wake of the bill’s passage, Obama said the economy was only then beginning to recover from the “irresponsibility” of Wall Street institutions that “gambled on risky loans and complex financial products” in pursuit of short-term profits and big bonuses with little regard for long-term consequences. “Americans don’t choose to be victimized by mysterious fees, changing terms and pages and pages of fine print. And while innovation should be encouraged, risky schemes that threaten our entire economy should not,” he said. “We can’t afford to let the same phony arguments and bad habits of Washington kill financial reform and leave American consumers and our economy vulnerable to another meltdown.”

So where were our legislators on this point?  Missing in action, most of them.  However much Obama's remarks can serve as a palliative, it must be admitted that the President could have gotten on the banks and refuse to sign a final bill containing deflating loopholes gained by the efforts of the lobby with a vested interest in the legislation.   I don’t believe the President would have risked his re-election contributions from Wall Street by telling Congress to be firmer in resisting the banker taskmasters.  Hence, the U.S. Government is unlikely to take on the very existence of the banks too big to fail even as the most profitable of them quickly returned to risky trading on their own accounts.

Too often, congressional legislators (and the President) wince when it counts, ignoring the inherent conflict of interest in the industry’s warning of the end of the world.  We need to accept the fact that ery reform has a cost, and that “reform” does not mean “catastrophe.”  If we capitulate to the wolves because there might be a cost otherwise, we miss the greater cost in capitulating.  That cost is not only economic, for it includes the selling of ourselves and our government to the highest bidder and the loudest bully.  When I look around the world, I see fecklessness at home.

By comparison, the British and French states of the E.U. set a 50% windfall tax on ALL banker bonuses within their respective states.   Throughout the U.S., it has been difficult simply dealing with the bonuses of the bankers at the banks that were bailed out; we were so afraid that the credit markets would collapse from a tax or that we shouldn’t touch the other bonuses.  Treasury limited the cash compensation for executives at companies that received the largest taxpayer bailouts to $500,000 and delayed some other payouts. The 25th through the 100th top earners at Citigroup, GMAC, American International Group and General Motors had to take more than half their compensation in stock, and at least half had to be delayed for three or more years. About 12 executives were granted exemptions to the $500,000 cash cap because they were necessary for the companies to “thrive, be able to compete, and not lose key people.”  The European industry-wide approach was stronger, and less apt to result in “talent poaching” that was likely to occur where only TARP reciprients are targeted.

Why is that we were convinced that we couldn't or shouldn’t go beyond the TARP reciprients in limiting exorbitant executive compensation?  Is imposing compensation (in all its forms) limits to protect the market from firms too big to fail really beyond the pale?  Is it really so much a threat to economic freedom? Certainly, it is a legitimate role of a government to protect the viability of the market.  The lack of any enacted windfall tax on bank bonuses (or compensation) in the Congress in 2009 or 2010 intimates the subterranean power of Wall Street in Washington.  Indeed, according to The New York Times, “heeding complaints from banks, the House rejected an effort to allow bankruptcy judges to restructure mortgage payments, a plan that has passed the House before but not the Senate.”  When the same thing happened in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Dick Durbin said publically that the banking lobby owns Congress.  House members also agreed to relax some of the proposed new controls on trading in derivatives. Rather than subject all over-the-counter derivatives to open trading, the bill would have subjected such derivatives only if they were traded between Wall Street firms, or with a major player like AIG. But the transactions between dealers and customers will remain largely hidden, so customers will not be able to compare the prices they are being charged with the prices charged to other customers.  That’s nice for the banks.  We miss this point, paying attention instead to speeches.  Words.

We are not keeping our eyes on the ball, folks; rather, we all too easily allow ourselves to get distracted.  In watering down financial reform, we agree to construct fake walls  on what reform is viable and constructive.  We convince ourselves that we must play inside the pen because insiders have told us that we should. We take harsh words against the pen on our behalf as tantamount to tearing it down.   In actuality, the words are a subterfuge meant to assuage us so we don’t vote differently in the future.  The wolves know that mere words can’t tear down the walls they have directed our representatives to observe.  We have become like herd animals, and our leaders like subterfuges.  It is no wonder that “real change” contrary to the vested interests has been restrained at best.  If a new consumer protection agency is the high-water mark of reform (i.e., banks too big to fail being allowed to go on…even as they have returned to risky trades for much of their 2009 income), we really do deserve the next financial crisis.  …or can a speech going after the financial industry obviate such a thing from happening again?

Some of the Sources: 

Michael Hirsh, "Why Barney Frank Is Furious about Financial Reform," Newsweek, December 9, 2009.

Stephen Castle, Katrin Bennhold, and Steven Erlanger, "France Joins Britain in Move to Curb Big Bank Bonuses," The New York Times, December 10, 2009.

Carl Hulse, "House Approves Tougher Rules on Wall Street," The New York Times, December 11, 2009.

Private Financial Interests in the Public Square: Crowding Out by Design

Is the typical American self-centered and greedy, or is there a civic-mindedness that yearns to bracket one's own interests?  In other words, is there more to American society than being the sum of the parts? Is there something more than the aggregate?  I don’t mean to criticize individualism here; creativity and liberty, for example, are individualistic traits that highlight a person's character and virtue. Nor do I mean to point to one of the two major parties. One could point to the democrats protecting unions at the expense of a free market for labor just as one could point to rich republicans holding tax cuts hostage unless they are included even though they could afford higher taxes.  If there is something more to American politics than asserting one's own interests, who is to represent the civic component?

The American Founding Fathers assumed that a given republic requires a certain level of disinterestedness or impartiality among the citizenry. The Founders thought that gentlemen freed up from the pressures to make money were obliged to serve in government precisely because selfish monetary pressures would be less pressing among the already rich. So the Founders were startled when common folk began winning more state legislative seats.  The concern was that the immediate economic interests of the folks would carry the day over what would be needed legislatively for the public good.  Reading this, a modern American is apt to be surprised that the Founding Fathers might not have been so populist as the American mythos might have suggested. The Founders might also be critiqued for being blind to the possibility that moneyed gentlemen might legislate in the interest of their class at the expense of the folks. In short, American populism may not have been an ideal at the inception of the union of states. The question here is less historical, however, than on how and by whom the pubic good might be asserted.

Lest one look to the presidency, the sheer amount in financial backing renders the occupant captive to the financial elite, which in turn has a vested interest in its own interest and the status quo in which it has done so well.  Real change in the public good at odds with the status quo is not likely to come from the White House. Lest one look to the U.S. Supreme Court in protecting individual rights, the fact that justices are nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, which among other things represents wealth, suggests that the high court will stamp rather than impede extensions in Congressional and presidential power, which in turn has a strong financial-interest backing.

The question of standing up for the public good where the financial elite such as Wall Street has a direct financial interest in perpetuating systemic risk was at the fore in the wake of the financial near-meltdown in September of 2008.  The subsequent banking regulation reform was highly watered down by Wall Street's involvement in the very writing of the law. For example, the existence of investment and commercial banks that are too big to fail was not seriously questioned, not to mention confronted. Instead, "incentives" not to increase further in size were included. Whereas in history monoliths such as Standard Oil and ATT were broken up by the high court, Congress could not bring itself to break up the still risk-prone banks even in the wake of the banks' self-induced crisis.

So the question remains: what of the public or common good--the public square that goes beyond the sum of the parts?  Who, if anyone, is to stand up to the vested interests to push through real change that is necessary to the survival of the United States as a going concern?  I suspect that the usual suspects have the American public debating secondary issues so such primary questions are kept off the radar screen of public discourse. Lest it be forgotten, the American media companies are interwoven into corporate America. There may be a vicious self-perpetuating feedback cycle wherein the public is kept from raising a movement that would question the matrix on which the financial elite has thrived. The question may thus be whether this cycle can even be broken.

Federalism Facilitating Self-Preservation

The rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of property (Locke) or happiness (Jefferson) can all fit within a federal system that enables its two systems of government—that of the federation itself and the republics  or (member) states—to check and balance each other. The alternative, at least for a federal empire, may be a return to the state of nature.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.