The thing that annoys me most about Republicans' new-found opposition to the $50bn orderly liquidation fund is that they are, without question, doing Wall Street's bidding on this.
Killing a "pre-funded" resolution fund — which would be used to help pay for resolutions under the new resolution authority — is the Street's #1 issue in financial reform. That might seem a bit strange at first, until you realize that the majority of the $50 billion would come directly out of the major dealer banks' profits over the next few years. (Never underestimate the Street's ability to be short-sighted.) This issue has been at the top of the Street's wish list since last summer, when Barney Frank started suggesting that the House bill might include a pre-funded resolution fund.
The funny thing is, the Street had been having a very hard time getting traction on this issue. They lost the battle over pre-funding in the House, whose financial reform bill did end up including a "Systemic Dissolution Fund" (the size of which was left to the FDIC's discretion, which means it definitely would be larger than $50bn). They were also having a hard time getting any traction in the Senate — Dodd wanted a pre-funded resolution fund, the administration had signed off on pre-funding, and Warner and Corker appeared to have agreed on a $50bn resolution fund as part of their compromise on the resolution authority.
Enter Mitch McConnell. As soon as McConnell started loudly calling the $50bn pre-funded resolution fund a "bailout fund," and made opposition to it a Republican litmus test, everyone started distancing themselves from the idea. And now a pre-funded resolution fund is all but dead. Amazing.
Now, I think it's pretty clear from my record that I'm about as far from being a Wall Street/Washington conspiracy theorist as you can get. But in this case, what I honestly believe happened is that when McConnell and John Cornyn had their infamous meeting with a group of Wall Street executives a couple weeks ago, McConnell and Cornyn asked what their #1 issue in financial reform was, and after being told it was pre-funding the resolution authority, McConnell and Cornyn basically promised to kill it. It was, after all, a fundraising meeting, and McConnell and Cornyn are desperate to raise money for November.
The Street's problem, apparently, was that it had been trying to make the case for a post-funded resolution authority on the merits. McConnell didn't want to deal with all that "logic" hocus-pocus, so he decided to just start straight-up lying about the resolution fund. And it worked. Ah, politics.
(To be fair, there's a reasonable case to be made on both sides of this issue. With a pre-funded resolution fund, you lose the ability to tailor financial institutions' respective contributions to the fund based on how much they benefited from the resolution of a large bank, or how culpable they were in causing the bank to fail. For instance, with a post-funded resolution fund, we could make JP Morgan and Citi pay for a larger share of the cost of Lehman's failure, based on the conclusions in the Examiner's Report. Pre-funding obviously forces the banks to internalize the costs upfront, but it sacrifices the ability to tailor the costs of a bank failure.)
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
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28 comments:
I personally oppose creating a fund. I oppose all funds. They're economically dysfunctional; they enable all sorts of psychotic financial decisions.
If there should be a need to resolve a systemically important entity, the best means of doing it is to do exactly what we just did - borrow it all. That way the people who are actually in the middle of the crisis - those would be the ones best able to make proper decisions; not the dead dinosaurs of some forgotten decade - would be fully in charge of managing their way out of it.
When is it going to dawn on people how spectacularly well the HATED bailout has worked?
Could you "designate" certain funds on bank balance sheets as the funds for quicker resolution of failures? The money could be used for measuring assets and capital strength, but would have to be kept liquid and sequestered.
A few public policy thoughts on the pre- vs. post- liquidation funds.
As to the post-liquidation fund, while I understand the desire to see the people responsible pay for the liquidation, you are just begging for extended litigation if you try to apportion responsibility. Creditors A, B, and C will fight over their portion of the recovery and hire the best lawyers they can find.
The pre-liquidation fund would avoid this sort of litigation by just apportioning the responsibility to all similarly situated market participants in proportion to their share of the market. Putting the entire market on the hook for any loss will serve both a policing function and a collective action function. As to the former, if party c's money is on the line because of the actions of party a and b leading to the failure of party a, party c will remember that and go tit-for-tat with b next time. (Isn't this all sort of an indeterminately repeated prisoner's dilemma anyway?) As to the latter, if market participants know that they will need to replenish the fund following a liquidation, they will have an incentive to work it out amongst themselves if they believe that the cost would be cheaper than if the government were involved.
Hi, maybe someone here can help with this--
To be fair, there's a reasonable case to be made on both sides of [the pre vs post funding] issue
Here is something I have been trying to figure out. When over the weekend the White House responded to Republican attacks on the liquidation fund by suggesting "okay, let's just drop the liquidation fund", I saw many people commenting that the White House (or Tim Geithner, at least?) had been opposed to the liquidation fund all along, but had decided not to press the case when Dodd and Frank disagreed. Many of these people seemed to be implying that it was not the liquidation fund itself that the White House opposed to but rather the pre-funding aspect. However I never saw a cite on whatever these people were describing and was unable to find whatever news article the people describing these events read.
Could anyone explain to me, exactly what was the White House's / Geithner's original objection to the liquidation fund? Is there somewhere I could find Geithner describing this objection in his own words? Thanks.
Pethokoukis summarizes a post by Gelinas that distills out some of the Republican/conservative concerns re: the Dodd bill. See:
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2010/04/20/3-tbtf-loopholes-in-the-dodd-bill/
The way I read this, it's NOT just about disliking a liquidation fund. Opposition is more about accountability of decision makers, an open door to ultimate open-ended taxpayer funding, and about bureaucrats who may be subject to political influence deciding which stakeholders will be saved at whose expense.
Why don't they just tweak the Bankruptcy Code to allow for orderly reorganization (or liquidation) of non-bank financial institutions?
One problem with post- funding is that the interconnections are so complex it could take years to untangle it and assign blame accurately, especially if firms are actively concealing activity.
Pre-fund and let the banks squabble amongst themselves afterward if any feel they've overpaid.
Beezer wrote: "Could you "designate" certain funds on bank balance sheets as the funds for quicker resolution of failures?"
So resolving a failure would extract those funds, reducing another bank's assets, and potentially push a marginally solvent bank over the edge?
That doesn't seem like a good idea.
What I don't see anyone really talking about is...who is ultimately going to be paying this "fund". The consumer...high cost of checks, atm fees, over-draft charges, etc, etc. Furthermore, when the "fund" isn't enough to bail the "too big to fail" banks out, guess who gets stuck holding the bag, AGAIN. All politicians stink...just some more than others.
The taxpayer/consumer is the one who always bears the cost of any systemic repair
And that is the way it has to be. Nobody else can afford it.
EOC: Thank you for tweeting about that buffoon Michael Greenberger. It is amazing to me that the media (I'm looking at you, Ezra Klein) routinely ID this clown mas an "expert" without noting that he is also a hired gun/paid spokesman for the left wing group "Americans for Financial Reform." He does not offer analysis, he offers advocacy. And he is never called on it. He is also one of the few witnesses whose testimony has been rebuked by a Senate Committee:
http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=f6070f1f-f628-4265-ab40-793c5516042c
Of course this is never mentioned. Why can't we have a better press corps?!
It's not a fund, it's a tax. Not a penny of it will be "saved" in any meaningful way. What's one more Gorean "lock box". Democrats will just spend the money.
If the republicans adopt a strong stance then the fund might experience something better.
I truly agree and respect the republicans thought in liquidation fund.
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the best means of doing it is to do exactly what we just did - borrow it all. That way the people who are actually in the middle of the crisis - those would be the ones best able to make proper decisions; not the dead dinosaurs of some forgotten decade
What I aren't seeing any person genuinely dealing with will be...who's Buy Diablo 3 goldultimately going to be paying out this kind of "fund". The client...steeply-priced assessments, cash machine charges, over-draft fees, and so on, and many others. Furthermore, in the event the "fund" just isn't adequate to help bail the "too massive for you to fail" banking companies out there, speculate which will get Billig Gw2 Gold stuck having the carrier, Once again. Most political figures stink...some over others.
Opposition is more about accountability of decision makers, an open door to ultimate open-ended taxpayer funding, and about bureaucrats who may be subject to political influence deciding which stakeholders will be saved at whose expense. The way I read this, it's NOT just about disliking a liquidation fund.
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