President Obama Took Care of Wall Street below a Public Persona of Reform

In April, 2010, President Obama gave a speech in New York City to counter what he called “the furious efforts of industry lobbyists” geared to weakening or stopping the new financial regulations that Obama claimed would be needed to stave off a second Great Depression.[1]  It is telling that the banks that had contributed to the financial crisis of 2008 were trying to diminish or block any new regulation. The very legitimacy of industry calls for deregulation in the wake of a market failure caused in part by the industry flies in the face of the rationale for regulation. In short, the rationale for government regulation has to do with market failures, which includes fraud and over-zealous profit-taking at the expense of the public good. The root of the rationale is the difference between the interests of an organization and society (i.e., the public good). 

After the financial crisis of 2008, the U.S. President wanted more consumer protections, limits on the size of banks and the risks they could take, reforms on executive compensation, and greater transparency for controversial financial securities known as derivatives.  He maintained that each of these safeguards must be in any bill that he would sign. In giving the speech with some of the banking titans in the audience, the President wanted to confront the financial industry more directly through a sharp speech. After having castigated the bankers' “failure of responsibility” in recent years, he called on them to stop resisting tighter regulation through the army of lobbyists staked out then on Capitol Hill. The president’s address at Cooper Union in Lower Manhattan circled back to another speech he had given at the same location in March of 2008 warning of financial manipulation, market bubbles and the concentration of economic power.

Analysis:

At the time of his speech, the President was actually supporting the bills coming out of Congress. These bills would do nothing to forestall or minimize market bubbles and reduce the concentration of economic power.  The bills would not even limit or reduce bank size; instead, higher reserve requirements for the biggest banks was presumed a sufficient incentive for those banks to willing reduce their sizes. Although this approach, which would become law, incorporated the market mechanism (regarding financial disincentives), the assumption that empire-building Wall Street titans would reverse the "business logic" where in the opposite of growth is bankruptcy is very naive. It is remarkable that the president considered this approach as satisfying his requirement that the bill reaching his desk must include something limiting the size of financial institutions (especially when the systemic risk of one big bank failing and taking down the entire financial system had recently been lived through). Paul Volker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Reagan, was urging a decrease in the sizes of the five largest banks. 

I submit that Goldman Sachs' $1 million contribution to Obama's presidential campaign may have had something to do with it, as did Wall Street lobbying in Congress. On the eve of the President’s speech, Obama’s chief of staff had met behind closed doors with representatives of Wall Street firms. Fox News reported that Obama's message was the following: we’ve got to trash you in public, but know that we will take care of you in private.  While Fox News was at the time certainly no friend of the President, the account would explain why the President would eventually sign the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which except for staggered reserve requirements and a consumer-protection bureau is pretty kind to Wall Street.  

 

Recalling President Andrew Jackson, who successfully took on the bank of the U.S. by refusing to fund it in 1832, and Theodore Roosevelt, who supported the Sherman Anti-trust Act in 1911, we could certainly view Obama as not having been willing to take on the guys who not only had contributed to his 2008 campaign, but could be useful again in 2012 for Obama's reelection.  

1.  Peter Baker, "Obama Issues Sharp Call for Reforms on Wall Street," The New York Times, April 22, 2010.

Morgan Stanley: Systemic Mistrust or Bad Financials after the Financial Crisis?

"Morgan Stanley by any measure is a safe and solid investment bank. Except for one: The amount of trust people have in the whole financial and political system. It's just about zero,” according to Jesse Eisinger of The New York Times in October 2011. Even as there is undoubtedly an element of hyperbole in his conclusion—for zero trust in the financial system and governments would occasion far greater problems than the world faced at the time of Eisinger’s report—his broader point that bankers would be held accountable one way or the other for not having learned their lesson on derivatives (and risk more generally) is valid. The subtext is that even though banks like Morgan Stanley were in actuality in solid financial shape, they deserved the negative repercussions from the systemic skepticism that the banks themselves brought about by virtually ignoring risk analysis in preference to a run of profits and (not coincidentally) bonuses.

Eisinger points out that, at least as of October 2011, Morgan Stanley “has almost $60 billion in common equity, compared with $36 billion before September 2008, and its ratios are stronger. Its trading book - which is volatile and where any bank can take sudden, large losses - is smaller than it was. Morgan Stanley has more long-term debt and higher deposits, both of which stabilize its finances. The bank has more cash available in case there's a crunch and a smaller amount of Level III assets, which don't have an independently verifiable value and so must be estimated by the bank. Hedge funds have parked a smaller amount of assets at Morgan Stanley. That's good because in the financial crisis, they pulled them from the bank.” But because all of this could be easily wiped out by a run on the bank occasioned or fueled by a wider mistrust of the financial sector, Eisinger brings up the topic of derivatives as a way of showing that the bankers did not in fact learn their lesson (i.e., all the improved stats may be for naught). Accordingly, the bankers deserved the systemic mistrust even at the expense of any effort having resulted in added financial strength.  

According to the reporter, Morgan Stanley had a face value of $56 trillion in derivatives in October 2011. He notes that JP Morgan Chase had more: a face value of $79 trillion. This is the GNP of some countries. Even though the bankers insisted at the time that they had adequately hedged their long positions, the hedges themselves could fail, especially if the derivatives are positively correlated, as in September 2008 when AIG was completely overwhelmed due to the housing-based derivatives caving in virtually all at once.

In other words, those of us capable of learning lessons know that we should not trust hedges in so far as systemic risk is concerned; the system itself can be overwhelmed by the sheer momentum of a really big wave. So we are back to the issue of trust in the entire financial system, which is and ought to be a drag on even stellar financials until the broader lesson is learned. Unfortunately, that lesson may not be in the immediate financial interest of particular banks due to externalities occasioned by moral hazard (e.g., the possibility of being rescued while another bank, such as Lehman, fails).

Even though governments can step in to protect the broader system (unless captured by the regulated), legislators and regulators cannot force bankers to learn their lesson. A mentality to safeguard even one’s own bank as a going concern cannot be imposed; it must be felt and valued from the inside. All too often, bankers are engaged in “managing” regulations as impediments to be minimized rather than stepping back to ask why the regulations exist in the first place. They might exist for the banks’ own good. If so, the banking lobby trying to water down the Volcker Rule might have been working at odds with those institutions that the lobby ostensibly represents. Be careful what you wish for, Wall Street bankers. You might just get it, especially if you have the gold and therefore can make the rules. It would be ironic if the protesters rather than yourselves had your back, even as you ridicule the masses marching below your towering be-windowed edifices of greed.

Source:

Jesse Eisinger, “Between the Lines, Wall St. Banks Face a Deficit of Trust,” The New York Times, October 12, 2011. 

Undermining the Dodd-Frank Act: An Incessant Desire for Profit

In the Dodd-Frank financial reform Act of 2010, financial firms in the U.S. are required to set aside higher reserves to cover losses on trades of securities, including those that “swap” the risk of default of a given security, such as bonds based on subprime mortgages. Almost immediately, the Wall Street bankers set about minimizing the new hindrance.  
Traders in the banks set about getting around the “margin requirements” by treating the “swaps” as futures, which do not require the higher reserves in Dodd-Frank. Whereas a futures contract for corn to sell at a certain price limits residual risk, swapping the risk of the default of an investment puts a party on the line for the entire investment. Moreover, unlike futures contracts, swaps have significant systemic risk because claims can all be made at once, overwhelming the parties assuming the liability in the swaps (e.g. AIG in September 2008). 
Managers at Wall Street firms have tended to not only minimize safeguards even though they protect the banks (from themselves), but also discount or even dismiss such high-risk, low-probability outcomes as come with risk to a bank as well as the entire financial system (i.e., systemic risk). Meanwhile, less money held in reserve means more money available to be lent or put into high-risk investments such subprime mortgages or bonds based bundles of such high-risk mortgages. 
Accordingly, the gradual trajectory already as of the beginning of 2013 was toward yet another systemic collapse of the financial system should enough housing markets take a down turn. “As the market gravitates to the cheaper platform—and it’s cheaper because it’s unsafe—that creates risk for everyone,” said James Cawley, CEO of trade execution firm Javelin Capital Markets.[1]  Put another way, market participants were operating according to the greatest profit, the greater risk notwithstanding. “In a distress scenario, you basically have what you had from AIG in 2008,” Cawley said; “Then someone has to step in, and we all know who that someone is: the U.S. taxpayer.”[2] So the question at the time was perhaps whether the SEC had the taxpayer’s back or was reflective of, or enabling a cozy revolving door between the federal government and Wall Street firms.
To be sure, the Volcker Rule, part of the Dodd-Frank Act, would, unless weakened, bar banks from short-term proprietary trading (i.e., on their own accounts, except for market-making), and from taking ownership states in private equity funds and hedge funds. U.S. Senator John Hatch speaking at Jack Lew’s confirmation hearing in early 2013 raised the question of whether Lew would act as U.S. Secretary of State to constrain banks’ risky proprietary trading, given that he had headed units at Citigroup that were involved in just such practices that would violate the Volcker Rule. 

Jack Lew at his confirmation hearing for U.S. Treasury Secretary. Lew had been the chief operating officer at units at Citibank.     NPR

Lew had been the COO of Alternative Investments at Citi. MAT and Falcon investment funds were sold as low-risk even though those funds were actually hedge funds with high risk.  As COO, Lew refused to offer the misled customers full refunds.  At least fourteen arbitration panels subsequently gave the customers the full refunds they had sought. Although he had not been involved in selling the funds, he did manage units that engaged in risky proprietary trading. The public would be justified in wondering if they too would be left on the hook as taxpayers rather than protected should Lew favor Wall Street's incessant desire for profit over the government's role to place that desire in check for the good of the system/whole.
After Lew, during President Trump's first term, the Federal Reserve Bank voted unanimously in late May, 2018 to weaken the Volcker Rule. The move was consistent with the president's desire to deregulate Wall Street. The flip side of the move that would enhance Wall Street profits was that the government would be doing less to protect the financial system as a whole even though the systemic risk of the largest five banks had increased with their growth. As Senator Dick Durbin had said after the financial crisis when people were looking to Congress to protect even the banks from themselves, “Congress is owned by the banking lobby.” So looking to the legislative branch should the executive be in sync with Wall Street's financial interests may not play well. Even after semi-stringent regulatory constraints have been passed, Wall Street can still have the edge in circumventing or mollifying the speed-bumps even though they are in the bank's own long-term interest, which can come to roust even in the short term as in 2008.

See Essays on the Financial Crisis, available at Amazon.

1. Eleazar Melendez, “Wall Street Setting Itself Up For Next Derivatives Crisis, Market Participants Warn,” The Huffington Post, February 14, 2013.
2. Ibid.

Larry Summers Bowed Out of the Race for Fed Chair: “Advise and Consent” Triumphant

On September 15, 2013, the White House announced that Larry Summers, Barak Obama’s prior chief economic advisor and a Secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Clinton administration, no longer wanted to be considered to fill the upcoming vacancy as chairman of the Federal Reserve. In the announcement, Obama (or an advisor) wrote, “Larry was a critical member of my team as we faced down the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it was in no small part because of his expertise, wisdom and leadership that we wrestled the economy back to growth and made the kind of progress we are seeing today.”[1] Unfortunately, this statement suffers from a sin of omission, which admittedly had been minimized by the media as well. Accordingly, the Democrats in the U.S. Senate who had just come out against a Summers nomination can be regarded as done the nation a vital service. Moreover, the “check” of the “check-and-balance” feature of the U.S. Senate’s confirmation power worked.
With all its open points of access, democracy can have a splintering effect on a point worthy of public debate. The media dutifully plays its “scattering” role before any reasoned train of thought can gain traction in the public domain. For example, at the time of Summers’ retraction, the New York Times reported that a “reputation for being brusque, his past comments about women’s natural aptitude in mathematics and science, and his decisions on financial regulatory matters in the Clinton and Obama administrations had made [Summers] a controversial choice.”[2] A reader could be forgiven for concluding that personal vendettas, public gossip, and single-issue (not even monetary policy!) political activists have points just as important as the matter of Summers’ past decisions on financial regulation.
Any political interest having succeeded in getting its point to a microphone is deemed just as relevant or decisive as any other. Democracy is the great relativiser. The great equalizer. Is rule by "members of the club" the only practical alterative, or is it American democracy merely its front, only superficially relativising and equalizing the relevant and the less-than-relevant?

       Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, and Robert Rubin. In the late 1990s, they pressed Congress to keep financial derivatives unregulated. A case of government doing Wall Street's bidding?   Image Source: pbs.org


Obviating the scattering effect, we can zero in on Obama’s attribution of “expertise, wisdom and leadership” and ask whether they apply to Summers when he joined Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin in the late 1990s to lobby Congress to remove the CFTC’s authority to regulate financial derivatives. At the time, Brooksley Born, chairwoman of the CFTC, was recommending to Congress that mortgage-backed derivatives be regulated. That the unholy triumvirate, blessed by Clinton and supported by Wall Street, succeeded with the help of Sen. Phil Gramm in discrediting Born kept the financial system vulnerable to being blind-sided by a collapse in any of the securitized derivatives markets.
It is difficult to fathom how financial regulatory expertise, wisdom, or leadership could possibly pertain to Summers in his lobbying capacity during the Clinton administration, even if he did go on to help Obama mop up the fiscal thaw after Lehman's bankruptcy. Yet, sadly, Summers’ down-right discraceful bullying of Born, and being wrong on top of that on whether financial derivatives should be regulated were barely mentioned in the public discourse leading up to Summers’ decision to withdraw his name from the president's consideration.
Fortunately, the public can rely on the informed advise and consent power of the U.S. Senate. Is it just a coincidence, however, that bullish financial markets answered Summers' decision? Or was it the other way around: Summers' decision being the answer to a message he had received from Wall Street?
To be sure, Summers was "generally considered to be in the pocket of Wall Street."[3] Citibank had been paying him for what the Federal Reserve refers to as "participation" in "Citi events."[4] Additionally, his efforts to keep financial derivatives, including CDOs, unregulated enabled Wall Street banks to make "kazillions of dollars."[5] However, bankers have short memories, given the inertia of the financial interest of the moment. Traders and bankers tended to favor Yellen, according to a poll conducted by CNBC; whereas Yellen got 50 percent, Summers came in at a mere 2.5 percent.[6] Besides sporting an abrasive (Harvard?) manner, Summers had given vocal hints that he might tighten monetary policy, even reduce the Fed's bond-purchase program sooner than Yellen would.
Particularly given Summers' nature, I have trouble believing that he woke up one nice fall morning and decided to cave in to anticipated "political obstacles" to his getting confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Put another way, more was likely behind his loss of support among Democrats on the Senate committee than even concerns the senators might have had about Summers' prior participation in turning Congress against Born's plea to regulate derivatives. Could it be that Wall Street CEOs were pulling the strings, reaching from Boston to Capitol Hill without even leaving finger-prints?    

---

1. Annie Lowrey and Michael D. Shear, “Summers Pulls Name from Consideration for Fed Chief,” The New York Times, September 15, 2013.
2. Ibid.
3. Mark Gongloff, "Larry Summers' Withdrawal from Fed Race Is Good News for Wall Street and the Economy," The Huffington Post, September 16, 2013.
4. Reuters, "Fed Contender Larry Summers Cancels Citigroup Events," CNBC, September 14, 2013.
5. Gongloff, "Larry Summers."
6. Mark Gongloff, "Wall Street Overwhelmingly Favors Yellen Over Summers for Fed Chair: CNBC Poll," The Huffington Post, July 26, 2013.

ICE Bought NYSE: Profiting from the Rules?

Tell me what the rules are, and I’ll make money with them.” This statement, made by Jeffrey Sprecher of Intercontinental Exchange, captures well the attitude that business practitioners should have toward government regulation in a republic. That is to say, businesses should be regulation-takers rather than makers. For the regulatees to make regulation to which they themselves would be subject is an oxymoron, or contradiction in terms. At the very least, it involves a conflict of interest. At the macro level, business as “regulation-maker” effectively turns a democracy into a plutocracy. Accordingly, the strategic use of regulation should pertain to the use side, rather than the regulating side. Crafting regulations—essentially dictating them to legislators or regulators—in order to make money from them takes the strategic use of regulation too far.

 Jeffrey Sprecher of ICE.  Making money playing by the rules.  (nypost)

Sprecher began by working at electric companies. He picked up on the need of those companies to hedge energy contracts so he bought a small exchange and built it up around derivative trading. Eventually, he did away with the exchange’s trading floor—preferring 24 hour computer trading. In 2010, the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act of financial reform requires that derivative trading be done through a clearinghouse. Sprecher’s company stood in a position to take advantage of the new rule. In fact, the intent of the new regulation being that regulators could have a better idea of the volume of derivatives “out there,” Sprecher created a derivatives database in his company. In other words, he anticipated in a way that meant more profits, and he did so without trying to manipulate legislators or regulators with a huge lobbying effort. Rather, he anticipated weaknesses in the market and devised company-based solutions that would be profitable. It is no surprise that the Dodd-Frank Act essentially adopted his business model regarding derivatives—effectively forcing it on the industry as a whole.

In fact, observing the heightened scrutiny of swap contracts under Dodd-Frank, Sprecher decided to convert them to futures contracts. Here again, profit was also in the mix. “The reality is that there are incentives to convert swaps into futures, where there’s less competition,” according to Richard McVey of MarketAxess. “There’s no requirement for [Sprecher’s company] to open [its] futures clearinghouse to other exchanges.” This restriction of competition to increase profit is ironic for ICE because in late 2012 came the announcement that the company would purchase the New York Stock Exchange, which had capitalized on monopolizing the trades of its members. Ironically, Sprecher’s actions had undercut this monopolization and here he was exacting his own version in turning “insurance” swaps into garden-variety futures contracts. Business skill can be regarded as the art of knowing when to ride a wave—and which wave to ride.

It should be noted that both the computer-trading and derivative-trading trends furthered by Sprecher’s very company enabled it to buy the vaunted New York Stock Exchange for $8.2 billion rather than something much higher. According to the New York Times in late 2012, the “transformation of the New York Stock Exchange from its position at the apex of the world financial system to an asset to be bought and sold like any other—and one that is not deemed to be worth as much as it would be if it traded more modern derivative securities rather than old-fashioned stocks—has been going on for decades, but has accelerated in recent years.” Essentially, Sprecher took advantage of this trend by making the purchase, and he would capitalize on owning the “temple of commerce” through intra-company synergies even while committing to keep the NYSE floor up and running.

In short, business acumen has no need of being sidetracked into manipulating lawmakers and regulators into formulating rules favorable to one’s particular company. The strategic use of regulation is most profitably accomplished over the long run on the use side. Take the rules as given and make money with them. This is entirely consistent with business in a viable republic. An implication of this thesis is that it’s the bad—both in terms of business intuition and moral disapprobation concerning manipulating public policy for private gain—manager who represents the plutocric threat to a republic.  The business practitioners knocking on Congressional doors are not the brightest guys in the room as regards innate business skill, and they are not the most forthright concerning getting what they want, whether by money or even information. Unfortunately, turning opportunities into profit is instinctive only for some practitioners, while it is forced or contrived in many others, who therefore feel compelled to circumnavigate business by pressuring public officials. It is significant—and telling—that ICE did not have a substantial lobbying presence in Washington, as Sprecher and his subordinates undoubtedly “kept to the knitting,” being good at it, and thus they did well in profiting from gaps in the market and the related regulatory changes.

Sources:

Ben Protess and Nathaniel Popper, “Exchange Sale Reflects New Realities of Trading,” The New York Times, December 21, 2012.

Floyd Norris, “A Temple of Commerce that Failedto Keep Up with Change,” The New York Times, December 21, 2012.

Michael J.de la Merced, “At the Big Board, Seeking Rejuvenation in Consolidation,” The New York Times, December 21, 2012.

The Financial Crisis of 2008: On the Role of Negligence Breaching Fiduciary Obligation

Roger Lowenstein laments that “New York Times columnist Joe Nocera lamented that ‘Wall Street bigwigs whose firms took unconscionable risks … aren't even on Justice's radar screen.’ A news story in the Times about a mortgage executive who was convicted of criminal fraud observed, ‘The Justice Dept. has yet to bring charges against an executive who ran a major Wall Street firm leading up to the disaster.’ In the same dispassionate tone, National Public Radio's All Things Considered chimed in, ‘Some of the most publicly reviled figures in the mortgage mess won't face any public accounting.’ New York magazine saw fit to print the estimable opinion of Bernie Madoff, who observed that the dearth of criminal convictions is ‘unbelievable.’ Rolling Stone, which has been beating this drum the longest and with the heaviest hand, reductively asked, ‘Why isn't Wall Street in jail?’”

Lowenstein interprets these sentiments as implying “that the financial crisis was caused by fraud; that people who take big risks should be subject to a criminal investigation; that executives of large financial firms should be criminal suspects after a crash; that public revulsion indicates likely culpability; that it is inconceivable (to Madoff, anyway) that people could lose so much money absent a conspiracy; and that Wall Street bears collective guilt for which a large part of it should be incarcerated.”

Lowenstein argues that “(t)hese assumptions do violence to our system of justice and hinder our understanding of the crisis. The claim that it was ‘caused by financial fraud’ is debatable, but the weight of the evidence is strongly against it. The financial crisis was accompanied by fraud, on the part of mortgage applicants as well as banks. It was caused, more nearly, by a speculative bubble in mortgages, in which bankers, applicants, investors, and regulators were all blind to risk. More broadly, the crash was the result of a tendency in our financial culture, especially after a period of buoyancy, to push leverage and risk-taking to the extreme.”

Lowenstein also ticks off a loose monetary policy (i.e., extremely low interest rates), unaccountability at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, weak financial regulation, and an overconfidence in “risk management” methods in arguing that we should not be reductionist in ascribing the crisis to fraud alone or even primarily.  

Analysis:

Lowenstein is undoubtedly on firm ground in labeling the crisis a “multi-causal” affair. In a general sense, the positive feedback loop wherein everyone benefitted from a rising housing market turned to a negative feedback loop once that market decided to take a hard landing. However, even though he makes a good point that criminal fraud was probably not pervasive on Wall Street, he downplays the litigation that is still possible in going after senior managers at Wall Street banks for negligently breaching their fiduciary obligations to stockholders—the negligence being in the sheer recklessness (which I suspect is a function of individual personalities).

For example, Richard Fuld essentially ignored his risk committee at Lehman Brothers as he added leverage up to forty times value in order to continue buying CDO’s and commercial real estate by the bucketful—his ultimate objective most likely being to bring the bank up to the big league (e.g., with banks such as Goldman Sachs). Would not such recklessness based on egotism constitute fiduciary negligence? It is as though Fuld were under the illusion that the stockholders’ wealth in the bank was his own because of how much of the stock he himself held.

As another example, even Alan Greenberg over at Bear Stearns may have been negligent in not alerting the board as Jim Cayne, the CEO at the time, became “more aloof and full of himself” even as two of the bank’s hedge funds were going down in July 2007 (Greenberg, p. 145). Incredibly, Cayne was playing in a card-game tournament in Nashville for over a week as the executive committee labored daily over whether to liquidate the two hedge funds at the bank that were losing money from their mortgage-related securities and the ensuing redemption calls from nervous investors. Virtually everyone in the senior management of Bear Stearns should have informed the board of Cayne's conduct (i.e., his priorities, which evinced immaturity befitting the man's pot-smoking at the tournaments and even at work). If the directors would have failed to act (e.g., being too cozy with Cayne), the board too should be held by stockholders as woefully negligent.

Furthermore, being on the risk committee, Greenberg may have been negligent in deferring to Warren Spector on the risk issuing from the fixed-income area (e.g., mortgage-backed securities). Claiming that Spector was “imperious” in that area is no excuse for Greenberg failing to exercise diligence given the amount of business the bank was doing in CDOs. Greenberg recounts that “multiple variables contributed to an extremely complex dynamic, yielding consequences that I hadn’t previously encountered” (Greenberg, p. 156). However, he admits to have told Warren a few years earlier to unload CDO’s within 90 days because of the risk involved. Greenberg simply gave up in pushing back from the financial pressure of the large profits being made. Accordingly, he gave up on due diligence on the risk committee and should be held accountable by Stearns stockholders. 

Incidentally, I admire Greenberg for his straightforward recounting of the events leading up to the collapse of his bank, even though I do not buy his account of his role on the risk committee. Perhaps the lesson is that even an ethically solid and competent person is fallable, and may even inadvertantly fall into a negligent pattern of complacency in the midst of momentary profit. The depth of the causes leading to the financial crisis may be evinced, moreover, in that a person such as Greenberg became unintentionally complicit. As Greenberg himself observes, Jamie Diamond at Morgan had urged his bank out of the mortgage-related securities business altogether as far back as 2006 as the housing market was peaking. From this vantage-point, Greenberg himself must surely know in hindsight that he had fellen short.

Whereas Lowenstein claims that one of the causes of the crisis was that risk management methods were followed, I contend that they were relegated or ignored even by the risk averse because the standards stood in the way of large profits. To be sure, Greenberg and others on risk committees relied on the AAA ratings from Moody’s and S & P (though Greenberg had been sufficiently worried to urge quick sales of the bonds). Even so, it should have been prime facie evident that a mortgage-based bond is not a Treasury bond. Furthermore, the rating agencies’ managements should not be held blameless, as they did the bidding of Bear Stearns and Lehman in exchange for lucrative fees;  there was undoubtedly fraud or at least negligence in this conflict of interest.  

Whereas fraud may have been limited largely to salesmen at mortgage brokerage firms and the rating agencies, breaches in fiduciary obligation were, I suspect, running rampant on Wall Street. In other words, money being easy and regulation being light (or non-existent in the case of the CDOs) did not give the banks’ managements a pass on their fiduciary obligation to exercise a duty of care over stockholder’s equity in the banks. Whereas cheap leverage and lack of oversight are context, recklessness with others’ wealth may constitute the principal cause—the lack of concern for risk being part of it.

Generally speaking, boards allowed senior managements—as evinced in the persons of Dick Fuld and Jim Cayne—far too much rope with which to hang themselves. It is astounding to me that people like Fuld and Cayne were able to get anywhere near the authority of a CEO. Their glaring immaturity and incompetence may point to a systemic problem in corporate governance going far beyond what even institutional stockholders realize. It would seem that the boards of Lehman and Stearns were either asleep or in somebody’s pocket (which involves at the very lease a stark conflict of interest). Although holding the managers accountable for their recklessness leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 would be a step in the right direction, stockholder interest warrants systemic reforms to corporate governance itself such that “upper” managements are given much shorter leashes (and stature).  

Sources:

Roger Lowenstein, “Why No Wall St. Bigwig Has Been Prosecuted,” MSNBC.com, May 16, 2011.

Alan Greenberg, The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2010).

On the Strategic Use of Regulation: Financial Reform at the Bequest of Wall Street

According to The New York Times, Wall Street bankers were busy working on how to weaken the regulations or otherwise profit from them before the ink was dry on the financial reform law of 2010 . First, regarding trying to profit from the new regulations, BOA, Wells Fargo and other big banks that were faced with new limits on fees associated with debit cards were imposing fees on checking accounts. Compelled to trade derivatives in the daylight of closely regulated clearinghouses rather than in murky over-the-counter markets, titans like J.P. Morgan Investment Bank and Goldman Sachs were building up their derivatives brokerage operations. Their goal was to make up any lost profits — and perhaps make even more money than before — by becoming matchmakers in the vast market for these instruments. That critics were pointing to them as a principal cause of the financial crisis made no difference to those bankers. Even when it comes to what is perhaps the biggest new rule — barring banks from making bets with their own money — banks found what they thought was a solution: allowing some traders to continue making those wagers as long as they also work with clients.

Lest one conclude from the banks’ stretegic responses that the new law passed in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 goes strongly against their interests, it is important to remember that the reform is more geared to giving government officials adequate power to mop up a future mess than to enabling them to prevent one in the first place by clamping down on the banks. The devil is in the details. This in itself can be an opportunity for banking lobbyists to work over regulators who depend on information from the industry and can be swayed by legislators who have received campaign contributions and fund-raisers from the bankers. Regulators are tasked under the new law with writing the specific rules of the road governing limits on risk-taking by financial firms and previously unregulated trading. By leaving so much to the discretion of existing regulators, the new law is “a boon to Wall Street lobbyists, who will now be working behind the scenes to influence the regulators,” according to John Taylor, president & CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. Furthermore, in enforcement, there is evidence that regulators are apt to look the other way. The wave of predatory lending that sank the housing market, for example, could have been largely prevented if the Federal Reserve had enforced existing rules on mortgage lending, according to Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University.

Under the financial reform law of 2010, banks and other financial institutions are overseen by a council of  regulators. That group is charged with identifying the kinds of “systemic” risks that spun out of control in the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. in the financial panic of September 2008. But there’s little to be gained by entrusting that task to the same regulators who failed to spot the causes of the panic the first time, said Isaac, the former FDIC head. “If a bank went to the regulators and said, ‘We’ve got a good idea: we’re going to put our lending officers in charge of risk management,’ that bank would be put out of its misery immediately,” said Isaac. “That’s what the government just did. It put the regulators in charge of assessing their own performance. It’s a very bad system.” While the law creates a separate agency with a single consumer mandate, even it remains beholden to those regulators, who retain the power to veto its regulations and enforcement actions. That setup, said Taylor, could seriously hamper the board’s effectiveness. “That club of regulators is very insular, and usually in agreement,” he said. “They can kill serious reform, and the financial lobby remains much more influential with regulators than consumer advocates.”

The problem can be broadened by considering that President Obama brought to head his economic team people like Larry Summers, who while in the Clinton Administration lobbied against regulating derivatives, and Tim Geithner, who had been appointed as President of the New York Federal Reserve at the urging of Citigroup and its major stockholder. In other words, it is not just a matter of relying on the same regulators; the construction of the law involved the same advisors.  Indeed, that members of Congress listened to the banking lobby at all even as the banks were complicit in the financial crisis of 2008 can be viewed as going back to the same. At a fundamental level, the banking industry may have too much leverage over top government offiicals, whether legislators or regulators.

Sadly, according to Newsweek, “the bill does more to help regulators detect and defuse the next financial crisis than to actually stop it from happening. In that way, it’s like the difference between improving public health and improving medicine: The bill focuses on helping the doctors who figure out when you’re sick and how to get you better rather than on the conditions (sewer systems and air quality and hygiene standards and so on) that contribute to whether you get sick in the first place.” This might be because it is in the big bankers’ interest that the government come in and clean up, but not restrict them in the meantime.  In the 1980s, the financial sector’s share of total corporate profits ranged from about 10 to 20 percent. By 2004, it was about 35 percent. According to Newsweek, “What you get for that money is favors. The last financial crisis fades from memory and the public begins to focus on other things. Then the finance guys begin nudging. They hold some fundraisers for politicians, make some friends, explain how the regulations they’re under are onerous and unfair. And slowly, surely, those regulations come undone.”

In the wake of the financial crisis, the American people had a chance to brake up the banks too big for our republics, but even then the bankers were able to quietly get this option off the airwaves. I contend that the too big to fail systemic risk is actually greater with respect to the viability of the US than to the financial system. That is to say, the ability of Wall Street to dodge the bullet even when it was culpable for a near melt-down of the financial markets may mean that we are living in a plutocracy rather than a democracy—the latter being mere window-dressing. Even when Wall Street is “bad,” it owns Congress, according to Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois.  This ought to tell us that the game is over, yet with regard to the regulators I suspect the games will go on for some time.

Sources:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38266914/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/ 

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/15/five-problems-financial-reform-doesn-t-fix.html  http://www.cnbc.com/id/38272518

On the Influence of Wall Street in Congress: The Proposal to Distinguish Financial and Commercial Derivatives

In the process whereby financial reform legislation made its way through Congress after the financial crisis of 2008, the U.S. House and Senate had different approaches concerning who would be required to go through a clearing house to buy or sell deriviative securities. According to Michael Masters, "The clearing house would stand in the middle of the transaction and guarantee both sides of the trade. If one counterparty to the transaction fails, then the central counterparty absorbs those losses, protecting the system as a whole from collapse."  Masters claims that "Wall Street firms hate this idea because their prodigious profits will dwindle when derivatives are traded in the light of day, letting their counterparties see the true costs. So Wall Street is pushing hard to exempt as many transactions as possible."  Given the culpability of Wall Street in the financial crisis, they were in no position to "push hard." That they did nonetheless is a telling sign of the underlying character, or lack thereof, "on the street."  Furthermore, that the representatives and senators were listening to them ought to cause the voters some concern.  Yet because of the reality of the banks' muscle on the hill, the power of the banks to exploit any loopholes in the final legislation should have been salient as the legislation made its way through Congress. This can be seen in whether to favor the House or Senate version.

According to Masters, "The Senate version of the clearing house requirement, which is currently the base text for the bill, includes a narrow, well-defined exemption that allows commercial end-users a complete exemption from clearing, while denying this exemption to financial players. The House language, however, would exempt anyone hedging "balance sheet risk." Since every financial player has a balance sheet, it is estimated that more than 50% of the outstanding derivatives would go uncleared under the House plan, compared to just 10% under the Senate version."  One might say: Ah, 50% is a pretty wide door--better go with the Senate version (assuming it could resist threats and favors from the banking lobby).

Masters explains the rationale for the Senate's version. There "is a critical policy distinction that must be made between commercial end-users like airlines, and financial entities like hedge funds. For a commercial end-user, risk arises naturally out of the ordinary conduct of business. For a financial entity, pricing and managing risk is their core business. As an example, an airline cannot fly without incurring the risk of wildly gyrating jet fuel prices. Allowing them to hedge their jet fuel exposure without a clearing requirement would provide stability for the airline, confidence for airline investors and ensure that the broad U.S. economy benefits from reliable airline service. A hedge fund, however, starts with no inherent risk. Its mission is to evaluate investment options, balancing risk and reward. If a hedge fund enters into a jet fuel derivatives contract on a bet that prices will increase, then it's nonsense to say that they are "hedging" when they subsequently enter into an offsetting deal to reduce the risk they voluntarily took on in the first place. These semantic charades can easily be carried to such extremes that every transaction a hedge fund enters is "hedging" something. An exemption for hedge funds serves no social purpose and, in fact, it puts our entire financial system at risk."  In other words, there are good business reasons for non-financial companies to be able to use derivatives to hedge for risk related to price volitility even if the companies cannot meet the clearing requirements. Of course, it could be asked what proportion of commercial use should but would not occur were such use subject to the clearing house requirements.  I don't know the answer to this question. I contend, however, that even if it is significant, the danger that the loophole would be exploited such that the financial system would once again be at risk outweighs any such inconvenience.  In other words, in reaching too far for perfect efficiency, we could unwittingly be inviting the irrational exuberance of the market to destroy the market mechanism itself.  We ought not fly too close to the sun or we might get burnt and fall to the ground. Masters concludes that the Senate language is "superior to the House's simply because it forces far more derivatives into the open." This may be so, but what would prevent a financial player from using a commercial user as a front to bypass the clearing requirements? Furthermore, there might be legislative language in the exemption that allows financial firms to obviate the clearing houses without even needing such a front.

In short, I contend that having any loopholes, or exeptions, is an unwise practice when we know (as Sen. Dick Durbin said) that the banking lobby owns Congress. We also know that managers and their lawyers are oriented to exploiting loopholes.  To expect otherwise is to tell a shark that it should not be a feeding machine.  That is, we must accept the nature of business for what it is, and not do what can reasonably be assumed to be taken advantage of.  It is like saying to sharks: those of you who do not eat any swimmers can go through the hole in the net and into the shore area.  It is just too dangerous to have a hole in the first place, even if there are some benefits to having it.

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/23/news/economy/congress_derivatives/index.htm

On the Arrogance of Power: Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers in the Clinton Administration

Over two years after the financial crisis of 2008, a commentator on Fox News said that the banks should not stop the foreclosure process because that would not be good for the free market. He said that people who cannot afford their houses should lose them. Another commentator remarked that there was still too much government in the financial sector. This, according to the commentator, is “the problem.” It is particularly striking that Alan Greenspan’s stark admission to a U.S. House committee in 2008 that the deregulated laissez faire market paradigm contains a fundamental flaw was lost on the two commentators. In May 2011, House Speaker Boehner charged that business is over-regulated. This comment too is remarkable given Greenspan’s realization. If a people disowns its own lessons, history is destined to repeat itself.

The full essay is at Essays on the Financial Crisis.

Rating Moody’s and S & P: A Structural Conflict of Interest

For years, banks and other issuers have paid rating agencies to rate their securities. This is a bit like restaurants paying food critics to write on their food.  In the wake of the SEC’s charge that  people at Goldman Sachs built the Abacus investment to fall apart so a hedge fund manager, John A. Paulson, could bet against it, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations questioned representatives from Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s about how they rate risky securities. Carl M. Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Senate panel, said in a statement: “A conveyor belt of high-risk securities, backed by toxic mortgages, got AAA ratings that turned out not to be worth the paper they were printed on.” Throughout the testimony, the institutional conflict of interest was salient whereby credit-rating agencies put market-share considerations foremost in rating securities presented by the banks that are paying the agencies.

The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available at Amazon. 

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."