By Simon Johnson

On January 7, 2015, Day 2 of the new Congress, the House Republicans put their cards on the table with regard to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reforms. The Republicans will chip away along all possible dimensions, using a combination of legislation and pressure on regulators – with the ultimate goal of relaxing the restrictions that have been placed on the activities of very large banks (such as Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase).

The initial target is the Volcker Rule, which limits the ability of megabanks to place very large proprietary bets – and their ability to incur massive losses, with big negative consequences for the rest of us. But we should expect the House Republican strategy to be applied more broadly, including all kinds of measures that will reduce capital requirements (i.e., make it easier for the largest banks to fund themselves with relatively more debt and less equity, taking more risk while remaining Too Big To Fail and thus benefiting from larger implicit government subsidies.)

The repeal of Dodd-Frank will not come in one fell swoop. Rather House Republicans are moving in several stages to reduce the scope of the Volcker Rule and to gut its effectiveness.

The first step in this direction came on Wednesday, with a bill brought to the floor of the House supposedly to “make technical corrections” to Dodd-Frank. This legislation was not considered in the House Financial Services Committee, and was rushed to the House floor without allowing the usual debate or potential for amendments (formally, there was a “suspension” of House rules). Continue reading “The Republican Strategy To Repeal Dodd-Frank” →

By James Kwak

I recently wrote two more articles for the Bull Market collection at Medium. The first was my explanation of the Second Circuit’s decision in United States v. Newman and Chiasson, which said that insider trading is only a crime if the original tipper gained a personal benefit from leaking confidential information, and if the eventual trader knew of that personal benefit. If you don’t like this outcome, the original problem is a poorly written Supreme Court opinion (isn’t that redundant?) from the 1980s, Dirks v. SEC.

The second article was a response to a column by James Stewart and a post by Felix Salmon about soaring prices in the art market—which, almost by definition, constitute a bubble.

By Simon Johnson

Section 716 of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act requires that some derivative transactions be “pushed-out” from those part of banks that have deposit insurance (run by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) and other forms of backstop (provided by the Federal Reserve). This is a sensible provision that, if properly implemented, would help keep our financial system safer, protect taxpayers and reduce the likely need for bailouts.

Now, at the behest of the biggest Too Big To Fail banks and as part of the House’s spending bill (to be voted on tomorrow or in coming days), this “push out” requirement is on the verge of being repealed. Democrats and Republicans should refuse to vote for the spending bill as long as it contains this requirement.

This is not a left vs. right issue. It is a fundamental systemic risk issue, on which people across the political spectrum who want to lower those risks can agree – Section 716 should not be repealed. In fact, some of the sharpest voices on this issue come from the right. Continue reading “Don’t Repeal Swaps Push-Out Requirements (Section 716 of Dodd-Frank)” →

By James Kwak

This week I posted two things on Medium. The first was a commentary on changes in the markets for law students and lawyers. In short, if you are thinking of going to law school, the case is significantly stronger than it was four years ago. Whether it’s strong enough to pull the trigger depends on too many factors for me to say anything about your particular situation.

The second was about Serial, the new podcast from the This American Life people. Longtime blog readers know that I love love love TAL. I was really looking forward to Serial, and it had its moments. But I finally gave up on it when it framed one too many unreliable recollections with pregnant pauses and ominous music. I just don’t think there’s enough there there, at least not for me.

By James Kwak

Over at Medium, I just posted a new article about the Jonathan Gruber-Obamacare “scandal.” Republicans are highlighting Gruber’s remarks as proof that the individual mandate really is a tax, and that the administration hid that fact in order to put one over on the public. But this whole argument flows from a faulty premise: that whether something is a tax or not is a question that has a knowable answer.

Last week I wrote a post complaining about my dismal experiences on United Airlines, which I chalk up to two things. The first is miserable computer systems. (It’s remarkable when you can see a computer system failing, and you know exactly what’s going wrong.) The second is the oligopolistic/near-monopolistic structure of the industry, especially when combined with a do-nothing Antitrust Division over at DOJ. It’s not just me: Tim Wu thinks so, too.

Finally, before that I wrote a post about Amazon’s extraordinary dominance in online retailing of physical goods. Who cares if no one will buy your phone when people are happy using other people’s phones to buy toilet paper and diapers from you?

Enjoy.

By Simon Johnson

It is hard to move around in Washington these days without bumping into a conference on the future of finance. But most of these are either closed to the public, or run on behalf of large banks as part of their lobbying efforts.

Next week, there will be a conference open to everyone at George Washington University to discuss where we really are on financial reform, and what still needs to be done. You should register in advance through the web page (link given above), but there is no cost to attend.

Featured speakers include Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, and Thomas Hoenig, vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. We also have a wide range of other technical experts – on issues from resolution to “shadow banking” – who are willing to speak frankly and engage in honest discussion.

GW Center for Law, Economics and Finance (C-LEAF), Stanford Graduate School of Business, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, and Better Markets generously made this event possible.

If you want to understand what has really happened to finance, show up.

By James Kwak

I’m in the United Club at SFO waiting for a flight, and the bar is closed until 8. So much for business travel.

I just published a post over at Medium that is really about two things: how both airline marketers and on-campus recruiters perpetuate the idea that air travel is glamorous, even when all of us know that it isn’t. It’s sort of a sequel to one of my favorite posts of those I’ve written, “Why Do Harvard Kids Head to Wall Street?” which I think is the one Paul Tough mentioned in his book about grit. Now that it’s recruiting season in the Ivy League, I thought it might be useful.

Also, last week I wrote a post about the HP breakup and what it implies about corporate management.

By James Kwak

A few years ago, while still in law school, I was invited to write a chapter for a Tobin Project book on regulatory capture. It was a bit intimidating, being part of a project that included luminaries like David Moss, Dan Carpenter, Luigi Zingales, Richard Posner, Tino Cuellar, and the deans of two of the best law schools in the country. I was asked to write something about an idea that I had slipped into 13 Bankers, almost in passing, about the cultural prestige of the financial industry and the political and regulatory benefits the industry derived from that prestige. My chapter turned into a discussion of the various mechanisms by which status and social networks can influence regulators, creating the equivalent of regulatory capture even without traditional materialist incentives (cash under the table, promises of future jobs, etc.).

Two weeks ago, an investigation by ProPublica and This American Life illustrated the culture of deference, risk aversion, and general sucking-upitude among New York Fed bank examiners that effectively resulted in the capture of regulators by the banks they were supposed to be regulating. As David Beim wrote in a confidential report about the New York Fed, the core problem was “what the culture expected of people and what the culture induced people to do.”

I wrote about the story for the Atlantic and referred to my book chapter, but at the time the chapter was not available for free on the Internet (at least not legally). The good people at the Tobin Project have since put it up on the book’s website, from which you can download it (legally!). Note that they are only allowed to put up one chapter at a time and they rotate them, so this is a limited-time offer.

By James Kwak

I wrote a column that went up this morning at The Atlantic about the ProPublica/This American Life story about the New York Fed. The gist of the argument is that we all knew the New York Fed was captured; for people like Tim Geithner, that’s a feature, not a bug.

There was a paragraph in my original draft that I really liked, but I can completely understand why the editors didn’t want it:

“When Tyrion Lannister wants his son killed, he sentences him to death in public. When Avon Barksdale wants potential incriminating witnesses killed, he obliquely lets his lieutenant know that he’s worried about loose ends—because he doesn’t want his fingerprints (voiceprints, actually) visible. When senior New York Fed officials want their staff to go easy on Goldman Sachs—well, they don’t need to lift a finger. The institutional culture takes care of it for them.”

This is similar to the idea at the core of “The Quiet Coup,” the Atlantic article that had a million page views back in 2009. In a less well developed political system, rich businessmen buy favorable policy by passing money under the table (or hiring politicians’ relatives, or giving them loans and then letting them default, and so on). In the United States, for the most part, you don’t have to do anything illegal: the system takes care of it for you, whether it’s bailout money from the Treasury Department or regulatory forbearance from the New York Fed. That system is a combination of personal incentives, cultural capture, and institutional sclerosis.

In short, buying politicians (or regulators) is good. Not having to buy them in the first place is even better.

By James Kwak

I’ve joined a new collection on Medium devoted to business and finance writing. It’s called “Bull Market,” after an intense lobbying campaign (including alleged vote-buying, although I haven’t tried to collect) by Felix Salmon, and includes Felix, Mark Buchanan, Dan Davies, Alexis Goldstein, Francine McKenna, Evan Soltas, and Mark Stein. The goal is to write thoughtful articles that don’t just respond to the latest story on the wire (although there will be some of that, too).

My contribution for today is a post about the no-poaching lawsuit in Silicon Valley and what it says about class consciousness in America today.

I hope you enjoy the collection.

By Simon Johnson

These days, almost everyone likes to complain about institutional corruption – and various forms of intellectual capture of government orchestrated by big corporate interests. But very few people are willing to do anything meaningful about it.

Zephyr Teachout is an exception. Not only has she written about the history of political corruption in the United States, both in long form (her recent book) and in many shorter versions (e.g., see this paper), she is competing for the Democratic nomination to become governor of New York.

In many countries, Ms. Teachout would sweep to victory. She has smart ideas about many dimensions of public policy (here are her economic policies), she has assembled a strong team, and – most of all – she represents exactly the kind of responsible reform that we need at this stage of our republic.

Elizabeth Warren offered exactly the same sort of promise to the people of Massachusetts in 2012 – real reform through pragmatic and effective politics. She has delivered on this promise and there is every indication that her influence will only grow in the years to come. Continue reading “An Elizabeth Warren for New York” →

By James Kwak

That’s one of the subplots of Big Money, by Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel, a book that I reviewed for yesterday’s issue of the New York Times Book Review. You can read that review, so I won’t re-review it here, except to say that if you were wondering how political operatives get rich people to part with their money, you’ll find out here.