A Fifty-Percent Write-Down: Discounting Debt Insurance?

In “Europe’s Rescue Plan,” The Economist (October 29, 2011) opines on the “fixes” that had been announced just days before by E.U. leaders on the public debt crisis. I find three points of note that are particularly worth elaboration. 

The full essay is at "Essays on the E.U. Political Economy," available at Amazon.

Britain at a Crossroads?

The prime minister of the state of Britain faced a “rebellion” in his own party on October 24, 2011 as eighty conservatives backed a nonbinding referendum on whether the state should secede from the union. “I don’t vote against the government lightly, but I think when there is a matter of principle then that must come first,” Nick de Bois said. “We have a considerably changing dynamic [in the E.U.] and given that . . . and the fact that anybody under 54 has not had a chance to vote on [whether Britain should secede from the E.U.], it is appropriate to set in motion that opportunity,” he said.[1] De Bois’ sentiment mirrors that of Thomas Jefferson, who argued that each generation should have the opportunity to affirm or cancel the social contract of the generation before.

The full essay is at "Essays on the E.U. Political Economy," available at Amazon.

1. Alistair MacDonald, “Tories Split on Role in Europe,” The Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2011.

Hedge Fund Lobby: Breaching Ethics

In a rule adopted by the SEC on October 26, 2011, hedge funds over a certain size must report information—the amounts required depending on the fund’s size. The devil, as it were, is in the details. In this case, they reflect the intense lobbying of hedge funds and their advocates. As a result of the lobbying, according to The New York Times, the “changes call for only the largest funds to report the most detailed information, eliminate any penalty of perjury for misleading reports and delay for six months the initial reports for all but the largest funds.”[1] Whereas the matter of the amount (and type) of information required involves or potentially puts at risk the funds’ secret strategic competitive advantages and the matter of a start date involves technical points such as how much effort is needed to cull the required information, the elimination of any penalty for perjury does not correspond to any legitimate business concern. Indeed, it makes on sense to require information if it can be misleading with impunity. It is as if the SEC regulators had told the hedge funds, You will have to submit information to us but it can be misleading. The fund managers would be apt to reply, Oh, ok.


The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.com.  

1. Edward Wyatt, “Rule Allows Regulators a Look at Hedge Funds,” The New York Times, October 27, 2011.

Deloitte: A Culture of Least Resistance

On October 17, 2011, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued a statement saying audits should protect investors. “The board therefore takes very seriously the importance of firms making sufficient progress on quality control issues identified in an inspection report in the 12 months following the report,” the statement said. Not having seen such progress at Deloitte, the board made its 2008 report on the firm public. The report “cited problems in 27 of the 61 Deloitte audits it reviewed, including three where the issuing company was forced to restate its financial statements.” This was “an unprecedented rebuke to a major accounting firm. In too many instances,” the report stated, inspectors from the board “observed that the engagements team’s support for significant areas of the audit consisted of management’s views or the results of inquiries of management.” In some cases, “Deloitte auditors did not bother to even consider whether accounting decisions made by companies were consistent with accounting rules. Instead, auditors accepted management assertions that the accounting was proper, the board’s report said.”[1] As a very young auditor at that firm, I was told to do just that.  

The full essay is at "Deloitte: A Culture of Least Resistance" in Institutional Conflicts of Interest, which is available at Amazon.

1. I took the quotes for this paragraph from: Floyd Norris, “Accounting Board Criticizes Deloitte’s AuditingSystem,” The New York Times, October 17, 2011;  and Floyd Norris, “Audit Flaws Revealed, AtLong Last,” The New York Times, October 21, 2011

Limited Tenure For CPA Firms?

Arthur Levitt, who headed the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1993 to 2001, “sought to root out conflicts of interest at audit firms in 2000, and urged Congress to adopt auditor term limits in 2002 after the Enron and WorldCom scandals.”[1]  Levitt did not buy the argument made by companies that it would cost them a lot of money to change audit firms. To be sure, he acknowledged that some added cost would be entailed in a system of mandatory auditor “term limits,” but a long auditor relationship “raises the perception,” he maintained, “that the auditor is very much beholden to the company and not totally independent. An environment of skepticism should trump the fraternal environment that tends to occur after a relationship has developed over a period of years.”[2] Indeed, Arthur Andersen’s people were well ensconced at Enron by the time the energy giant went bust. In fact, the auditors even approved the questionable “partnership” accounting (used to hide debt).  Nor did the auditors communicate any misgivings to the audit committee of the company’s board of directors. The auditors were “in” with a rancid management. 


The full essay has been incorporated into "A Proposal: Limited Tenures for CPA Firms"  at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.  

1. Emily Chasan, “Keeping Auditors on Their Toes,” The Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2011.
2. Ibid.

Conflicts of Interest at the Federal Reserve

In 2011, “(m)ore than a dozen members of the regional Federal Reserve boards have had ties to banks or companies that received emergency funds during the [2008 financial] crisis, according to [a GAO report]. The report highlights a close relationship between the Fed's regional banks and many of the institutions they were lending to, adding credence to concerns that the financial sector enjoyed a largely consequence-free rescue in the wake of the crisis, thanks to its connections with the federal government.”[1] Meanwhile, mortgage borrowers with houses “under water” got hammered. From the crisis to the release of the GAO report in October 2011, there were millions foreclosures in the United States, with very little in the way of mortgage modifications or refinancing for those homeowners who needed relief. In other words, the bankers had connections in the banking regulatory agency while Congress left the troubled homeowners—constituents—at the mercy of the bankers. Their agency having their backs, the bankers could afford to take a hard line on the mortgages. The playing field, in other words, is not at all level. 


Material from this essay has been incorporated into "The Federal Reserve" in  Institutional Conflicts of Interest, which is available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.  

1. Alexander Eichler, “Conflicts of Interest Abound at the Federal Reserve, Report Finds,” The Huffington Post, October 19, 2011.

The E.U. Agenda: Taming Bloated Greek Patronage

As E.U. leaders wrestled in the fall of 2011 with how to bail out those state governments that had been amassing relatively large semi-sovereign debt loads, residents in relatively solvent states such as Germany were frustrated with what they perceived as profligate over-spending in Greece. It is possible that even the Germans did not realize how engrained the excessive politically-based Greek bureaucracy had become. I suspect that for many Greeks, news of their living beyond their means was met more with denial and utter disbelief than an attitude-adjustment. In other words, a vast disparity in perspective exists on the ground as the E.U. struggled to come to grips with the debt crisis. The “ever closer union” necessary for the E.U. to rise to the occasion has as its foremost obstacle the disparate perceptions existing within the union (and enforceable by state governments).

The full essay is at Essays on the E.U. Political Economy: Federalism and the Debt Crisis, available at Amazon.

Slovakia Stands Up, Caves to the E.U.

On October 11, 2011, Slovakia’s Parliament failed to approve the expansion of the euro rescue fund, a development, The New York Times reports, that “brought down the government.”[1] Although the vote makes good copy, it was not at all as dire as the headline suggests. The state’s “leading opposition party said after the government fell that it would be willing to discuss support for the fund, pointing to the eventual approval of the deal. European officials in Brussels were counting on a political solution, but also weighing the possibility of some kind of messy workaround if Slovakia failed to pass the measure.”[2] In other words, the vote had to do with state politics as well as resistance to bailing out a richer state. Once the state government fell, pressure from the E.U. and the new politics in the state government quickly coalesced by the next day to produce a deal in support of expanding the bailout fund. According to The Washington Post, "opposition leader Robert Fico, head of the Smer-Social Democracy party, announced he had struck a deal with the remnants of Radicova’s coalition, promising to back the fund in exchange for early elections that analysts say Fico’s party is well positioned to win."[3] Doubtless that pressure from the E.U. was also in the mix, as E.U. officials were already hinting that the bailout fund could be expanded over the tiny state's objection. “We call upon all parties in the Slovak parliament to rise above the positioning of short-term politics and seize the next occasion to ensure a swift adoption of the new agreement,” European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a joint statement.[4] In other words, hey guys, get your act together over there in Slovakia or else.

The full essay is at "Essays on the E.U. Political Economy," available at Amazon.

1. Nicholas Kulish and Stephen Castle, “Slovakia Rejects Euro Bailout,” The New York Times, October 11, 2011.
2. Ibid.
3. Anthony Fiana, "Slovakia Reaches Agreementon European Bailout Fund," The Washington Post, October 12, 2011.
4. Ibid.

The Debt Crisis: A Conflict of Interest Hampers the E.U.’s Response

“As the European Union enters a financial crisis in slow motion,” a Huffington Post reporter avers, “the fragile American economic recovery hangs in the balance. With Greece almost certain to default on its debt, European political leaders need to take decisive action to prevent a resultant string of bank runs and government defaults, which could precipitate double-dip recessions in Europe and the United States.”[1] If Greece suddenly defaults, Kavoussi reasons, other E.U. states “could leave the European Union to flee higher interest rates and to enable themselves to pay down their debt more easily by devaluing their currencies.”[2] Such an outcome, she claims, “would almost certainly plunge Europe into a recession.”[3] She observes, moreover, that “European politicians may lack the political will necessary to prevent the sovereign debt crisis from mushrooming into a global economic slowdown.”[4]

 

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.

1. Bonnie Kavoussi, “European Sovereign Debt CrisisThreatens American Economy,” The Huffington Post, September 27, 2011.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

Foreclosing on Freddie and Fannie

Three years after the financial crisis of 2008, nearly half of the people in Arizona with mortgages owed more than their homes were worth; those people were “underwater.” Only three homeowners had been approved for debt reduction since the debt-reduction program in Arizona began in September 2010. “It is extremely difficult for the principal reduction program to be successful” when Fannie and Freddie opt out, according to Shaun Rieve of the Arizona Department of Housing.[1] Even though Arizona would pay up to half of the principal reduction, up to $50,000 of a $100,000 principal reduction, the two housing entities that were taken over by the U.S. Government have been obstructing taxpayers from re-emerging from “underwater.”

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

1. Shaila Dewan, “Freddie and Fannie Reject Debt Relief,” The New York Times, October 6, 2011.