An Early Stress Test For The Financial Stability Oversight Council

By Simon Johnson

How much damage to the financial system should we expect from what is now commonly called the foreclosure morass, the still-developing scandal involving document robo-signing (and robo-dockets), completely messed up mortgage paperwork and high-profile inquiries into accusations of systematic and deliberate misbehavior by banks?

The damage to banks’ reputation is immeasurable. They have undermined property rights – the ability to establish clear title is a founding idea of the American republic. They have mistreated customers in a completely unacceptable manner. If anyone doubted the need for a new consumer protection agency dealing with financial products – and the importance of having a clear-thinking reformer like Elizabeth Warren at its head – they are presumably silenced by recent events. (If you need to get up to speed on the basics of this issue, see this series of posts by Mike Konczal.)

But what is the cost in terms of additional likely losses to big banks? The likely size and nature of these are leading to exactly the kind of systemic risks that the Financial Stability Oversight Council was recently established to anticipate and deal with. Continue reading “An Early Stress Test For The Financial Stability Oversight Council” →

Finance and the Housing Bubble

By James Kwak

Adam Levitin and Susan Wachter have written an excellent paper on the housing bubble with the somewhat immodest title, “Explaining the Housing Bubble” (which has been sitting in my inbox for a month). My main complaint with it is that it’s eighty-one pages long (single-spaced), which is most likely a function of law review traditions; had it been written for economics journals, it could have been one-third the length. I also have some quibbles with the seemingly obligatory paean to the importance of homeownership, which I think is an assumption that deserves to be contested. But overall it presents both a readable overview of the history and the issues, and a core argument I have a lot of sympathy for.

The argument is that the motive force behind the credit bubble was an oversupply of housing finance—in other words, the big, bad, banking industry. Levitin and Wachter’s key evidence is that the price of residential mortgage debt was falling in 2004-06 even as the volume of such debt was rising. As Brad DeLong’s parrot would say, that can only happen if the supply curve is shifting outward, not if the demand curve is shifting outward (which is what would happen if it were all the fault of greedy borrowers who wanted to flip houses).

Continue reading “Finance and the Housing Bubble” →

Once More into the Breach . . .

By James Kwak

I’ve been largely sitting out the foreclosure scandal/crisis. Partly I’ve just been too busy, and partly the coverage on other blogs has been great. Mike Konczal in particular has been providing the “beginners” posts–here’s part one of five–that were my niche during the earlier part of the financial crisis, basically putting me out of a job, and Yves Smith has also been all over the issue.

I want to ask one question, but for those who are not economics blogs junkies, let me get you up to speed. It first turned out that in their haste to foreclose on houses, the law firms filing for the foreclosures (in many states, you have to get a judgment from a court in order to foreclose) were cutting corners and sometimes filing fake documents. Then it turned out that sometimes they were filing fake documents because the real ones didn’t exist. In particular, it is possible that many of the trusts that issue mortgage-backed securities never had properly-endorsed copies of the notes that underlay those mortgages. (See this Yves Smith post. Highlight quote, from the CEO of a mortgage originator: “We never transferred the paper. No one in the industry transferred the paper.”)

The question is this: Why, just weeks from an election in which Democrats are probably going to get clobbered, is the Obama administration sitting on its hands, writing this off as a bunch of technicalities, and opposing a foreclosure moratorium?

Continue reading “Once More into the Breach . . .” →

Free Books and Board Seats

By James Kwak

Here in the blogging world, some of us are very sensitive to the potential appearance of impropriety. A year ago, the FTC published new rules requiring bloggers to disclose cash and in-kind payments they receive for reviewing products. The upshot, for most of us, is simply that now, when we discuss a book, we say if we got a free copy of the book from the publisher. (Although it’s not clear that that disclosure is required, since getting a free copy is something that readers should expect; I don’t think the New York Times Book Review bothers pointing out that, for every book they review, they got a free copy, although they almost certainly did.)

All the more relevant, then, is Gerald Epstein’s post about conflicts of interest in the economics profession.

“Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth and I did a study of 19 prominent academic financial economists who were members of two influential groups that have played a key role in the financial reform and regulation debate in the U.S. Of the 19 academic economists in these groups, 70% advised, owned significant stock in or were on the board of private financial institutions. But you wouldn’t know by looking at their self-identification in media appearances, policy work or academic papers.”

There are certainly economists who were talking up the housing market in the summer of 2008 without disclosing their financial ties to banks–who were desperately hoping that housing prices would not collapse.

C’mon, guys. I don’t even get very many free books (maybe one per month on average–I decline most of them), and I always disclose that. I know it’s not feasible to list every company that ever paid you to give a speech. But really, if you’re a paid director of a bank and you write about the banking industry, can’t you at least point that out?

Nice Economy You’ve Got There . . .

By James Kwak

That, I believe, was a line from Nemo in a comment long ago, on how the megabanks were holding the federal government hostage by threatening to collapse and take the financial system with them.

The coal industry seems to have learned something. Now that the EPA is recommending revoking a mountaintop mining permit (mountaintop mining is when, instead of drilling holes to get at coal underground, you simply blow the top off the mountain), the coal company in question has this to say:

“If the E.P.A. proceeds with its unlawful veto of the Spruce permit — as it appears determined to do — West Virginia’s economy and future tax base will suffer a serious blow.

“Beyond that, every business in the nation would be put on notice that any lawfully issued permit — Clean Water Act 404 or otherwise — can be revoked at any time according to the whims of the federal government. Clearly, such a development would have a chilling impact on future investment and job creation.”

Continue reading “Nice Economy You’ve Got There . . .” →

There Are No Fiscal Conservatives In The United States

By Simon Johnson

In most industrialized countries, attention now shifts to some form of “fiscal austerity” – meaning the need to bring budget deficits under control.  In the UK, for example, there is an active debate between those on the right of the political spectrum (who want more cuts sooner) and those to the left (who would rather delay cuts as much as possible).  There is a similar discussion across the European continent – although the precise terms of the debate depend on exactly which party was most profligate during the long boom of the 2000s.

The United States stands out as quite different.  No one is yet seriously proposing to address our underlying budget issues.  There are certainly people who claim to be “fiscal conservatives” – some of the right and some on the left – but none can yet be taken seriously.  The implications are very bad for our fiscal future. Continue reading “There Are No Fiscal Conservatives In The United States” →

What Has Microsoft Come To?

By James Kwak

From The New York Times:

“Consumers will be able to integrate the new phones with a number of Microsoft products, including Zune music and video content, the Bing search engine, business products like Microsoft’s OneNote software and the Xbox gaming platform.”

Apart from possibly the Xbox, who cares? How can it be that the master of bundling now has nothing that anyone wants as part of a bundle?

Will The Volcker Rule Really Be Enforced?

By Simon Johnson

The Financial Stability Oversight Council has put out a request for comments on the Volcker Rule – if you write to them soon, they may actually listen.

One big issue is whether there will be high frequency monitoring of trades by big banks – potentially enabling regulators to know if the “no proprietary trading” rule is being violated. The default approach is probably to have a hands-off, light touch – pretty much continuing our recent and not-so-distinguished traditions with regard to supervising banks.

I go through the issues in more detail – including who seems to be on what side within the government – in a Bloomberg column that appeared this evening.

Thoughts On The Macroeconomic Impact of Goldman Sachs

By Peter Boone and Simon Johnson

The influential Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius has a new research note out (with Sven Jari Stehn), “Thoughts on the Macroeconomic Impact of Basel III,” arguing that the move to raise capital standards for banks will put a serious crimp in growth in the United States – knocking 1.5 to 2 percent off gross domestic product in the next few years. Their findings are questionable, but in any case we should broaden the discussion to consider exactly how banks like Goldman Sachs affect our macroeconomic dynamics going forward – particularly if they are able to effectively lobby against higher capital. Growth based on risky banking has a tendency to prove illusory.

There are three issues. First, what is the short-term impact of raising capital requirements? Second, how should capital be increased? And third, and perhaps most important, do we really need global banks like Goldman Sachs to operate in their recent “high risk – highly variable returns” mode?

In their note, which is not in the public domain, Mr. Hatzius and Mr. Stehn are willing to acknowledge that raising capital standards can help make banks safer and that this is good for sustained growth over a sufficiently long period of time (think a decade or more), as the Bank for International Settlements suggests. But they make the case that raising capital – at least in the form that this is likely to take place – can slow growth over the next several years. Continue reading “Thoughts On The Macroeconomic Impact of Goldman Sachs” →

The Government Does Have Something To Do with It

This guest post on the relationship of business and government comes to us from Lawrence B. Glickman, chair of the History Department at the University of South Carolina; the author, most recently, of Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America; and an occasional contributor to this blog.

One of the most telling statements of our political era, –made ten years ago this week by Dick Cheney during his Vice Presidential debate with Joe Lieberman on October 5, 2000, –was actually a misstatement that went largely unnoticed. And therein lies an important lesson about the place of government in our political culture.

In response to the Democratic nominee Lieberman’’s jibe that Cheney had profited handsomely from the job he had recently departed as CEO of the Haliburton Corporation, the Republican nominee replied, “”I can tell you, Joe, the government had absolutely nothing to do with it.”” Amid the laughter and applause of the audience, Leiberman chuckled good-naturedly and joked about joining the private sector himself.

Following the debate, media analysts focused on what the New York Times called Cheney’s “avuncular self-confidence” but, like his opponent, they largely passed over the fact that his statement was a whopping lie.  Despite his denial and his antigovernment rhetoric, the company Cheney ran depended on billions of dollars of government contracts and loan guarantees. It would not be an exaggeration to say that government was Haliburton’’s primary source of support.

Continue reading “The Government Does Have Something To Do with It” →

Why China Is Unwilling to Revalue the Yuan

The following guest post was contributed by Ian Lamont, an MIT Sloan Fellow. He was previously the managing editor of the Industry Standard, and has also researched China’s state-run media and communications policies.

For years, China has been subject to enormous external pressure to increase the value of its currency, or let it float on the open market. While doing so might relieve pressure on foreign economies by boosting their exports and reducing trade deficits, it runs counter to Beijing’s domestic priorities, which involve doing everything it can to preserve economic growth and domestic stability, and by extension, its hold on political power.

All countries exploit the dynamics between their political and economic systems. But China’s situation is exceptional. For three decades, the government of the People’s Republic of China has perpetuated a grand political dream, claiming a single-party political mandate from the Communist ideals espoused by Mao Zedong, while simultaneously drawing power from the capitalist canon. Beijing has been able to pull it off, largely through the promise of spreading wealth and opportunities to even the poorest of villages and maintaining benefits for cadres and workers in state-owned enterprises which cannot easily be absorbed into the capitalist system. A high rate of GDP growth is required year after year to maintain this state of affairs.

A sudden change in the value of the Yuan could have the effect of throwing a wrench into the works, potentially setting off a chain reaction of factory closures and layoffs across the interconnected networks that drive China’s export-oriented economy. In the short term, China might be able manipulate legislation, the banking sector, and welfare levers to prop up key industries or regions. But in the long term, it is uncertain if these steps would be enough to preserve social stability or continued loyalty to the Communist Party.  Continue reading “Why China Is Unwilling to Revalue the Yuan” →

TARP Is Gone – But May Soon Be Back

The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, is over – more specifically, its legal authority expires on Sunday, so it cannot be used for new “bailout” activities (although legacy programs, with money already disbursed, could last 5 to 10 years.)

The first draft of its history, looking back over the past two years, may be this: TARP was an essential piece of a necessary evil – that is, it saved the American financial system from collapse — but it was implemented in a way that was excessively favorable to the very bankers who had presided over the collapse. And this sets up exactly the wrong incentives as we head into the next credit cycle. Continue reading “TARP Is Gone – But May Soon Be Back” →