The following guest post was contributed by Jennifer S. Taub, a Lecturer and Coordinator of the Business Law Program within the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (SSRN page here). Previously, she was an Associate General Counsel for Fidelity Investments in Boston and Assistant Vice President for the Fidelity Fixed Income Funds.
Considering that much of the disastrous deregulation of the U.S. financial system occurred on President Bill Clinton’s watch, I was encouraged by his televised confessional Sunday. He admitted to Jake Tapper that he was led astray by two of his secretaries of the treasury, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.
What an important and timely revelation. Admitting we have a problem is the first step to recovery. With financial rehab next up on the Senate’s agenda, it’s useful that someone is discrediting those who persist in promoting failed ideas. What to do about the $450 trillion (notional) over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market will be at the top of the agenda. This is about big money. Really big. Industry began lobbying last year to protect the annual $35 billion haul that just five US banks bring in trading derivative contracts.
Reform ideas range from the most sensible recommendation by Professor Lynn Stout (return to a regime where naked credit default swaps are not enforceable), to Senator Blanche Lincoln’s very strong amendment (prohibiting the banks that have access to the Fed’s discount window from trading derivatives), to the necessary but insufficient (mandating all standard derivatives be cleared on exchanges and requiring collateral to be posted), to the weak (the current Senate bill, rife with exceptions).
Remember, this market includes potent credit default swaps, a key ingredient to the crisis. The existence of this $60 trillion (now $45 trillion) notional value market, protecting and connecting counterparties across the system, led to a $180 billion taxpapayer-funded bailout of AIG. And, as we have just learned, CDS played a central role inside the synthetic Abacus 2007-AC1 vehicle, a device that helped Goldman Sachs rob purchasers to pay Paulson.
Yet, in spite of the power of Clinton’s admission, or perhaps because of it, just after the interview with Tapper, Clinton counselor Doug Band swiftly dispatched a disclaimer. In a moment of blatant grade inflation, Band said that Clinton believed Rubin and Summers provided “excellent advice on the economy and the financial system.”
Continue reading “Clinton Confesses: Rubin and Summers Gave Bad (strike that) Excellent Advice on Derivatives” →