Author: Simon Johnson

Should We Trust Paid Experts On The Volcker Rule?

By Simon Johnson

On Wednesday morning, two subcommittees of the House Financial Services Committee held a joint hearing on the Volcker Rule. The Rule, named for former Fed chair Paul Volcker, is aimed at restricting certain kinds of “proprietary trading” activities by big banks – with the goal of making it harder for these institutions to blow themselves up and inflict another deep recession on the rest of us.

The Volcker Rule was passed as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation (it is Section 619) and regulators are currently in the process of requesting comments on their proposed draft rules to implement. Part of the issue currently is claims made by some members of the financial services industry that the Volcker Rule will restrict liquidity in markets, pushing up interest rates on corporate debt in particular and therefore slowing economic growth.

This argument rests in part on a report produced by Oliver Wyman, a financial consulting company. Oliver Wyman has a strong technical reputation and is most definitely capable of producing high quality work. But their work on this issue is not convincing. (The points below are adapted from my written testimony and verbal exchanges at the hearing; the testimony is available here.) Continue reading “Should We Trust Paid Experts On The Volcker Rule?” →

Refusing To Take Yes For An Answer On Bank Reform

By Simon Johnson

The debate over megabanks and – in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis – how to deal with all the problems associated with “too big to fail” in the financial sector has not been easy for many politicians. The problems and potential real solutions do not map readily into the standard left vs. right divide in American politics.

The left generally wants the state to do more, and these days most of the right usually wants the state to do much less. But in this space regulators are “captured”, meaning that too many of them are effectively working to promote the interests of the big banks rather than to limit the dangers to the rest of us – so “more regulation” does not make much sense. And these big banks have a strong incentive to get even bigger – it’s their size that gives them economic and political power. If you leave these banks to their own devices, they will become even bigger and blow themselves up at greater cost to ordinary citizens (see Western Europe for details). So “no regulation” is also not an appealing proposition.

As a matter of presidential year politics, there is a remarkable convergence between President Obama and Mitt Romney, the Republican frontrunner. Both think that we can tweak the rules to keep the banks from becoming dangerous. The Obama administration calls their approach “smart regulation”, while Mr. Romney has spoken of repealing the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation (although his website is devoid of any further specifics). But as far as anyone can see, their proposed approaches for the next four years are very similar – relying on the state to play a particular oversight role that has not gone well in recent decades. They are both “statist” in this very particular sense. Continue reading “Refusing To Take Yes For An Answer On Bank Reform” →

Ron Paul And The Banks

By Simon Johnson

We should take Ron Paul seriously. The Texas Congressman had an impressive showing in the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday and his poll numbers elsewhere are resilient – he is running a strong third nationally, but looks like to come in second in New Hampshire. He may well become the Republican politician with populist momentum and energy in the weeks ahead.

Mr. Paul also has a clearly articulated view on the American banking system, laid out forcefully in his 2009 book, End the Fed. This book and its bottom line recommendation that we should return to the gold standard – and abolish the Federal Reserve system – tends to be dismissed out of hand by many. That’s a mistake, because Mr. Paul makes many sensible and well-informed points.

But there is a curious disconnect between his diagnosis and his proposed cure. This disconnect tells us a great deal about why this version of populism from the right is unlikely to make much progress in its current form. Continue reading “Ron Paul And The Banks” →

No One Is Above The Law

By Simon Johnson

The American ideal of “equal and impartial justice under law” has repeatedly been undermined by attempts to concentrate power. Our political system has many advantages, but it also provides motive and opportunity for resourceful people to become so strong they can elude the legal constraints that bind others. The most obvious example is the oil and railroad trusts at the end of the nineteenth century. A version of the same process is happening again today but what has become concentrated is not a vital energy source or the nation’s transport arteries but rather something much more abstract: financial sector risk.

In early 2009, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner reportedly said to President Obama and senior members of the new administration, with regard to the financial system:

“The confidence in the system is so fragile still. The trust is gone. One poor earnings report, a disclosure of a fraud, or a loss of faith in the dealings between one large bank and another—a withdrawal of funds or refusal to clear trades—and it could result in a run, just like Lehman.” (from Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men, p.202)

Now three years later, the megabanks are even bigger, as is the risk they concentrate (see my recent testimony to the Financial Institutions subcommittee of the Senate Banking Committee for details.) Curiously, their precariousness, as much as their power, is shielding these behemoths from the enforcement of financial fraud laws. Continue reading “No One Is Above The Law” →

Where Is The Volcker Rule?

By Simon Johnson

Three years ago, a financial crisis threatened to bring down the United States economy – and to spread economic disaster around the world. How far have we come in preventing any kind of recurrence? And will the much-discussed Volcker Rule – attempting to limit the risks that big banks can take – play a positive role as we move forward?

Bad loans were the primary cause of the 2007-8 financial debacle. When the full extent of the problems with those loans became apparent, there was a sharp fall in the values of all securities that had been constructed based on the underlying mortgages – and a collapse in the value of related bets that had been made using derivatives.

The damage to the economy became huge because these losses were not dispersed throughout the economy or around the world. Rather, many of the so-called “toxic assets” were held by the country’s largest banks. Financial institutions that used to lend to consumers and businesses had instead become drawn into various forms of gambling on the booming mortgage market (as well as on commodities, equities and all kinds of derivatives). “Wall Street gets the upside, and society gets the downside” was the operating principle. Continue reading “Where Is The Volcker Rule?” →

Karl Rove’s Latest Attack On Elizabeth Warren

By Simon Johnson

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS has another ad out attacking Elizabeth Warren (video here). This is beyond ludicrous – the ad attempts to blame Ms. Warren for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and for bank bailouts. The principle here seems to be that when the truth cannot be slanted in a way you want, just ignore the facts and go all out for disinformation.

I count at least five misrepresentations in the ad, and I suggest the following corrections: Continue reading “Karl Rove’s Latest Attack On Elizabeth Warren” →

The Huntsman Alternative

By Simon Johnson

The eurozone financial situation continues to worsen. The latest idea from the eurogroup of finance ministers is apparently to have the European Central Bank make a massive loan to the International Monetary Fund, which would then turn around and lend to countries like Italy. This is a bizarre notion. If the IMF takes the credit risk of a mega-loan to Italy – e.g., an amount around the $600 billion mark, greater than the fund’s current lending capacity – this would represent an unprecedented and unacceptable risk to the IMF’s shareholders, including U.S. taxpayers. If the IMF does not take this credit risk, what’s the point? The ECB should provide financial support directly to Italy, if that is the goal.

But that goal increasingly seems both to be the only idea of officials and the last failed notion of a fading era. More bailouts and the reinforcement of moral hazard – protecting bankers and other creditors against the downside of their mistakes – is the last thing that the world’s financial system needs. Yet this is also the main idea of the Obama administration. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told the Fiscal Times this week that European leaders “are going to have to move more quickly to put in place a strong firewall to help protect countries that are undertaking reforms,” meaning more bailouts. And this week we learned more about the underhand and undemocratic ways in which the Federal Reserve saved big banks last time around. (You should read Ron Suskind’s book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President, to understand Mr. Geithner’s philosophy of unconditional bailouts; remember that he was president of the New York Fed before become treasury secretary.)

Is there really no alternative to pouring good money after bad?

In a policy statement released this week, Governor Jon Huntsman articulates a coherent alternative approach to the financial sector, which begins with a diagnosis of our current problem: Too Big To Fail banks, Continue reading “The Huntsman Alternative” →

The End Of The Euro

By Peter Boone and Simon Johnson – this post is the first two paragraphs of a column that appears this morning on Bloomberg.com

Investors sent Europe’s politicians a painful message last week when Germany had a seriously disappointing government bond auction. It was unable to sell more than a third of the benchmark 10-year bonds it had sought to auction off on Nov. 23, and interest rates on 30-year German debt rose from 2.61 percent to 2.83 percent. The message? Germany is no longer a safe haven.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, investors have focused on credit risk and rewarded Germany with low interest rates for its perceived frugality. But now markets will focus on currency risk. Inflation will accelerate and the euro may break up in a way that calls into question all euro-denominated obligations. This is the beginning of the end for the euro zone.

To read the rest of this column, please use this link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/the-euro-area-is-coming-to-an-end-peter-boone-and-simon-johnson.html

Why Not Break-Up Citigroup?

By Simon Johnson

Earlier this week, Richard Fisher – President of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank – captured the growing political mood with regard to very large banks: “I believe that too-big-to-fail banks are too-dangerous-to-permit.” Market-forces don’t work with the biggest banks at their current sizes; they have great political power and receive almost unlimited implicit subsidies in the form of protection against downside risks – particularly in situations like now, with the European financial situation looking precarious.

“Downsizing the behemoths over time into institutions that can be prudently managed and regulated across borders is the appropriate policy response. Then, creative destruction can work its wonders in the financial sector, just as it does elsewhere in our economy.”

Mr. Fisher is an experienced public official – and also someone with a great deal of experience in financial markets, including running his own funds-management firm. I increasingly meet leading figures in the financial sector who share Mr. Fisher’s views, at least in private.

What then is the case in favor of keeping mega-banks at their current scale? Vague claims are sometimes made, but there is very little hard evidence and often a lack of candor on that side of the argument. So it is refreshing to see Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, go on the record with The Banker magazine to at least explain how his bank will generate shareholder value. (The interview is behind a paywall, unfortunately). Continue reading “Why Not Break-Up Citigroup?” →

Wall Street v. Elizabeth Warren

By Simon Johnson

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS group has launched the first attack ad against Elizabeth Warren, presumably because she is now running hard for the Senate in Massachusetts. This ad is not a big surprise, but the line that Mr. Rove takes could well backfire.

The ad states, “we need jobs, not radical theories and protests,” so we can break the argument down into three separate parts.

First, who destroyed more than 8 million jobs in the United States – and plunged us into the deepest and longest lasting recession since the 1930s? Surely this was not Ms. Warren, who was just a law school professor, in the run-up to 2008.

Mr. Rove is opening the blame game and this is going to go badly for his presumed supporters – the largest banks on Wall Street that took excessive risks, paid their top people well, and then blew themselves up at great cost to the American taxpayer. By all means, let us have a conversation about jobs and the history of job losses in the United States; “too big to fail” banks do not look good in this context. Continue reading “Wall Street v. Elizabeth Warren” →

Is Europe On The Verge Of Another Great Depression – Or A Great Inflation?

By Simon Johnson

The news from Europe, particularly from within the eurozone, seems all bad. Interest rates on Italian government debt continue to rise. Attempts to put together a “rescue package” at the pan-European level repeatedly fall behind events. And the lack of leadership from Germany and France is palpable – where is the vision or the clarity of thought we would have had from Charles de Gaulle or Konrad Adenauer?

In addition, the pessimists argue, because the troubled countries are locked into the euro, there are no good options. Gentle or even dramatic depreciation of the exchange rate for Greece or Portugal or Italy is not in the cards. As a result, it is hard to lower real wages so as to restore competitiveness and boost trade. This means that the debt burdens for these countries are likely to seem insurmountable for a long time. Hence there will likely be default and resulting global financial chaos.

According to the September 2011 edition of the IMF’s Fiscal Monitor, 44.4 percent of Italian general government debt is held by nonresidents, i.e., presumably foreigners (Statistical Table 9). The equivalent number for Greece is 57.4 percent, while for Portugal it is 60.5 percent. And if you want to get really negative and think the problems could spread from Italy to France, keep in mind that 62.5 percent of French government debt is held by nonresidents. If Europe has a serious meltdown of sovereign debt values, there is no way that the problems will be confined just to that continent.

All of this is a serious possibility – and the lack of understanding at top European levels is a serious concern. No one has listened to the warnings of the past three years. Almost all the time since the collapse of Lehman Brothers has been wasted, in the sense that nothing was done to put government finances on a more sustainable footing.

But perhaps the pendulum of sentiment has swung too far, for one simple and perhaps not very comfortable reason. Continue reading “Is Europe On The Verge Of Another Great Depression – Or A Great Inflation?” →

What Could the US Achieve at the G20 in Cannes?

By Simon Johnson

The April 2009 London summit of the G20 is widely regarded as having been a great success. The world’s largest economies agreed on an immediate coordinated approach to the global financial crisis then raging and promised to work together on banking reforms that would support growth. At the time, President Obama got high marks for his constructive engagement.

The G20 heads of government have met twice a year since London and in Cannes this week they meet again (November 3-4). Could this summit also help stabilize the world economy? And can President Obama again play a leading role? The answer to both questions is likely the same: No. Continue reading “What Could the US Achieve at the G20 in Cannes?” →

Mr. Hoenig Goes to Washington

By Simon Johnson

To fix a broken financial system – and to oversee its proper functioning in the future – you need experts. Finance is complex and the people in charge need to know what they are doing. One common problem, which is also manifest in the United States today, is that many of the leading experts still believe in some version of business-as-usual.

At the height of the Great Depression, Marriner S. Eccles was summoned to Washington from Utah – where he was a regional banker. He helped remodel the Federal Reserve through the Banking Act of 1935 and then became its first independent chairman – the Fed board had previously been chaired by the Treasury Secretary. Eccles was not a fan of big Wall Street firms and their speculative stock market operations; rather he understood and identified with smaller banks that lent to real businesses. Eccles was the right kind of expert for the moment. Who has the expertise to play this kind of role in our immediate future?

Tom Hoenig, formerly president of the Kansas City Fed, has long been a strong voice for financial sector reform along sensible lines. Within the official sector, he has spoken loudest and clearest on the most important defining issue: Too Big To Fail is simply too big. And last week he took a major step towards a more prominent role, when he was announced as the administration’s nominee to become vice-chair at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Continue reading “Mr. Hoenig Goes to Washington” →

European Debt: The Big Picture

By Simon Johnson

For everyone struggling to get their arms around the debt crisis in Europe, Bill Marsh in today’s New York Times offers literally a compelling picture, with graphic illustration for the key issues.

The picture is big, 18×21 inches. Either you need a very large computer screen or a hard copy of the paper (pp. 6-7 in the SundayReview section, “It’s All Connected: A Spectator’s Guide to the Euro Crisis).

The main debt linkages across borders for which we have data are all here – and the graphic pulls your eye appropriately to the centrality of Italy in whatever happens next. (On why eurozone policy towards Italy now matters so much – and what are the options – see my recent paper with Peter Boone, “Europe on the Brink”.)

But you might think also about what is not in the NYT graphic because we lack reliable information. For example, what is the exposure of US financial institutions to European debt, directly or indirectly, through derivatives transactions of any kind?

The opaqueness of derivative markets means that most investors can only guess at what could happen. Most of the relevant regulators and supervisors with whom I have talked seem also to be largely in the dark – remember the experience of AIG in 2008.

Cross-border bank exposures through loans and other holdings are publicly disclosed – data from the Bank for International Settlements are represented by the arrows in the NYT graphic. These data are surely not perfect, but they do convey the main points and they tell you where to focus attention.

Why do we not require publication of similar data, preferably by financial institution, for all derivative transactions – including both gross and supposedly net exposures across borders?

Jon Huntsman: Too Big To Fail Is Too Big

By Simon Johnson

The idea that big banks damage the broader economy has considerable resonance on the intellectual right. Tom Hoenig, recently retired president of the Kansas City Fed, has been our clearest official voice on this topic. And Gene Fama, father of the efficient markets view of finance, said on CNBC last year, that having banks that are too big to fail is “perverting activities and incentives” in financial markets – giving big financial firms, “a license to increase risk; where the taxpayers will bear the downside and firms will bear the upside.”

The mainstream political right, however, has been reluctant to take on the issue. This changed on Wednesday, with a very clear statement by Jon Huntsman in the Wall Street Journal on regulatory capture and its consequences. Before the 2008 financial crisis: “The largest banks were pushing hard to take more risk at taxpayers’ expense.” And now,

“More than three years after the crisis and the accompanying bailouts, the six largest American financial institutions are significantly bigger than they were before the crisis, having been encouraged to snap up Bear Stearns and other competitors at bargain prices. These banks now have assets worth over 66% of gross domestic product—at least $9.4 trillion, up from 20% of GDP in the 1990s. There is no evidence that institutions of this size add sufficient value to offset the systemic risk they pose.”

This message could work politically, for five reasons. Continue reading “Jon Huntsman: Too Big To Fail Is Too Big” →