Author Archive
Out of the TARP, But Still on the Dole
While banks such as Goldman and J.P. Morgan have managed to find a way to re-pay the capital injections made under the TARP bailout, their reliance on public subsidies is far from over. The federal government, via a debt guarantee program run by the FDIC, is still putting considerable taxpayer funds at risk on behalf of the banking industry. The Wall Street Journal estimates that banks participating in the FDIC debt guarantee program will save about $24 billion in reduced borrowing costs of the next three years. The Journal estimates that Goldman alone will save over $2 billion on its borrowing costs due to the FDIC’s guarantees.
One of the conditions imposed by the Treasury department for allowing banks to leave the TARP was that such banks be able to issue debt not guaranteed by the government. Apparently this requirement did not apply to all of a firm’s debt issues. These banks should be expected to issue all their debt without a government guarantee and be required to pay back any currently outstanding government guaranteed debt.
To add insult to injury, not only are banks reaping huge subsidies from the FDIC debt guarantee program, but the program itself is likely illegal. The FDIC’s authority to take special actions on behalf of a failing ”systemically” important bank is limited to a bank-by-bank review. The FDIC’s actions over the last several months to declare the entire banking system as systemically important is at best a fanciful reading of the law.
The FDIC should immediately terminate this illegal program and end the continuing string of subsidies going to Wall Street banks, many of which are reporting enormous profits.
Would Summers Be Any Worse than Bernanke?
As I have argued elsewhere, Bernanke’s record as both a Fed governor and Chair suggest we be better off with a new Fed Chair come January 2010, when Bernanke’s term as Chair expires. Outside of those who believe the bailouts have saved capitalism, two very reasonable arguments are put forth for keeping Bernanke at the helm: 1) in a time of crisis, the markets need certainty and dislike change; and 2) the alternatives, such as Larry Summers, would be worse. Both these points have real merit, however I believe in both cases the pros of change outweigh the cons of staying the course with Bernanke. I will save the “certainty” debate for another time, for now, let’s ask ourselves: Would Summers really be any worse than Bernanke?
Before I make the case for Summers, I do want to make clear, President Obama, and the country, would best be served by a “Carter picks Volcker” type moment. Go outside the Administration, go beyond the usual circle of easy-money, new Keynesians. The Fed lacks creditability in two (at least two) important areas: bailouts and inflation. And one doesn’t even need to go outside of the Federal Reserve System to find candidates. Topping my list would be Jeff Lacker (Richmond Fed), Gary Stern (Minn Fed) and Charles Plosser (Philly Fed). Any of these three know the workings of the Fed, have the respect of the Fed staff, and have taken strong positions on both “too big to fail” and easy money. In the case of Gary Stern, it would seem especially appropriate, as his early warnings (see his 2004 book on bank bailouts) were largely ignored and dismissed. If we want to reward and promote those who got it right, these guys are at the top of the list.
But let’s reasonably suppose that Obama wants someone close, someone he personally knows and will stick with tradition by picking a member of his own administration. Without going into any detail, picking Romer would offer little substantial difference with keeping Bernanke. The case for Summers is essentially that here is one instance where his enormous ego would be an asset. One easily gets the sense that when Summers sits next to President Obama, Summers is thinking to himself just how lucky the President is to be sitting next to Larry Summers. One can call Summers lots of things, starstruck is not one of them. Given what we now need most in a Fed Chair is true independence, from especially the Administration but also from Congress, Summers is the only qualified economist close to the President who displays even the slightest streak of independent thinking. Bernanke, in contrast, has endlessly pandered to the Administration and to Congressional Democrats. Summers has been willing on occasion to actually defend the sanctity of contract (remember the debates over the AIG bonuses), a rarity on the Left, and more than Bernanke was willing to say.
So forced to choose between Bernanke and Summers, the need for an independent Fed Chair willing to take on the Administration and Congress, when appropriate, makes Summers a far better choice. That said, here’s to encouraging Obama go outside his comfort zone and pick someone who has the will to remove excess liquidity from the system before the next bubble gets going.
For Financial Stability, Fix the Tax Code
There seems to be near universal agreement that the excessive use of debt among both corporations, particularly banks, and households contributed to the severity of the financial crisis. However, other than the occasional refrain that banks should hold more capital, there has been little discussion over why corporations choose to be so highly leveraged in the first place. But then such a discussion might lead us to the all too obvious answer — the federal government, via the tax code, encourages, even heavily subsidizes corporate leverage.
Cato scholar and banking analyst Bert Ely has estimated that the subsides for debt have historically resulted in an after tax cost of debt of 3 to 5 percent, compared to an after tax cost of equity of 12 to 15 percent. With differences of this magnitude, it should not be surprising that financial companies and corporations in general become highly leveraged.
For corporations, this massive difference in cost between debt and equity financing results primary from the ability to deduct interest expenses on debt, while punishing equity due to the double-taxation of dividends along with taxing capital gains.
If we are going to use the tax code to subsidize debt and tax equity, we shouldn’t act surprised when firms load up on the debt and reduce their use of equity — making financial crises all too frequent and severe.
Why Mortgage Modifications Aren’t Working
As covered in both today’s Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, the Obama administration has called 25 of the largest mortgage servicing companies to Washington to try to figure out why the Obama efforts to stem foreclosures has been a failure.
The reason such efforts, as well as those of the Bush Administration and the FDIC, have been a failure is that such efforts have grossly misdiagnosed the causes of mortgage defaults. An implicit assumption behind former Treasury Secretary Paulson’s HOPE NOW, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair’s IndyMac model, and the Obama Administration’s current foreclosure efforts is that the current wave of foreclosures is almost exclusively the result of predatory lending practices and “exploding” adjustable rate mortgages, where large payment shocks upon the rate re-set cause mortgage payment to become “unaffordable.”
The simple truth is that the vast majority of mortgage defaults are being driven by the same factors that have always driven mortgage defaults: generally a negative equity position on the part of the homeowner coupled with a life event that results in a substantial shock to their income, most often a job loss or reduction in earnings. Until both of these components, negative equity and a negative income shock are addressed, foreclosures will remain at highly elevated levels.
Sadly the Obama Administration is likely to use today’s meeting as simply an excuse to deflect blame from themselves onto “greedy” lenders. Instead the Administration should be focusing on avenues for increasing employment and getting our economy growing again. Then of course, this Administration has from the start been more focused on re-distributing wealth rather than creating it, which explains why it views mortgage modifications as simply a game of taking from lenders (in reality investors – like pension funds) and giving to delinquent homeowners.
Gallup Poll: Federal Reserve Makes the IRS Look Good
A recent Gallup Poll surveyed the public’s impression of how various federal agencies were doing their job. Of the agencies evaluated, on the bottom was the Federal Reserve Board. Only 30 percent of the respondents rated the Fed’s performance as either excellent or good. I can understand now why Chairman Bernanke felt the need to take his act on the road. Even the IRS managed to get 40 percent of respondents to see its job performance as excellent or good. A majority of the public, 57 percent, sees the Fed’s current performance as either poor or fair.
The result is not just driven by a general public disdain for federal agencies; over a majority of respondents thought such agencies as the Center for Disease Control, NASA and the FBI were doing an excellent or good job.
Nor is the result driven by public ignorance or indifference to the Fed; only a few years ago, back in 2003, 53 percent of Americans said the Federal Reserve was doing an excellent or good job and only 5% called its job performance poor. But then, the Fed was also giving us negative real interest rates at that time as well. Perhaps there’s a good reason to insulate the Fed from short-term public and political pressures. Let’s hope Chairman Bernanke does not read these results as an excuse for repeating the Fed’s 2003 monetary policies.
Does the Left Know We Had a Housing Bubble?
Over the last week, speaking at a variety of events, I heard three different representatives of the Left; first a Democrat US Senator, then a senior member of the Obama Administration, and finally a “consumer” advocate, all repeat the same narrative: all was fine in the housing market until predatory lenders forced hard-working honest families into foreclosure, which reduced house prices, bringing the economy to a crash. That’s correct, apparently the Left believes we all would still be seeing double-digit home price appreciation if it wasn’t for those evil lenders.
Undoubtedly foreclosures, especially those that result in houses that remain vacant for a considerable amount of time, have an adverse impact on surrounding property values. Many constitute a serious eye-sore and provide a haven for criminal activity. But did foreclosures really drive down prices, or were foreclosures first driven by price declines resulting from a bursting housing bubble? While causality is always difficult to establish with certainty, we do know that the rate of house price appreciation peaked and started declining about 18 months before the dramatic up-turn in mortgage delinquencies. If one prefers a more rigorous test, economists at the Boston Fed have directly tested if prices first drove foreclosures or whether foreclosures drove prices. Their results conclude that its was declining prices that matter, and that the price effect of foreclosures is minimal.
Why does any of this ultimately matter? Because if we craft policies to avoid the adverse impacts of the next property bubble based upon a narrative of “consumer protection” — as is being pushed by the Obama Administration, we will do little to avoid the creation of the next housing bubble and its damaging aftermath. Instead we should be focusing attention on those policies that contributed to the creation of the housing bubble: expansionary monetary policy and the Federal government’s blind pursuit of ever-expanding home-ownership rates at any cost.
Don’t Bail Out Bernanke
Here is the message members of Congress should send to Ben Bernanke during the Fed chief’s annual Capitol Hill testimony this week: He is fighting for his job. With his term up in January of next year, Bernanke needs to be called to account for the Fed’s many questionable actions during the financial turmoil of the past year.
Even while correctly identifying the “global savings glut,” Bernanke sat by and did nothing about the unsustainable build-up of leverage in the housing market—the “bubble” which famously burst in late 2008. Bernanke also used Fed financing to bail out Bear Stearns and AIG—hotly political moves which should rightfully have been left to Congress—and oversaw the massive expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet from about $900 billion to over $2 trillion. Under Bernanke, the Fed has transcended monetary policy and bank supervision into the world of fiscal policy.
While thus politicizing the Fed on one hand, Bernanke has sought to insulate the bank from congressional pressures by appeasing majority Democrats with various new credit regulations. Both the recently proposed credit card and mortgage rules unnecessarily restrict credit and increase the litigation risk facing banks, while doing nothing to roll back some of the irresponsible lending policies that exacerbated the housing bubble.
Bernanke’s pandering to the Left on misguided “consumer protections,” and the absence of any debate over the Fed’s role in the housing bubble, raise serious questions as to whether Bernanke understands the causes of the current financial crisis. We cannot hope to avoid the next financial crisis without a Fed chairman who understands the current one.
End the Credit Rating Monopoly
Earlier this week, SEC Chair Mary Shapiro appeared before Congress to suggest ways to fix the failings in our credit rating agencies. Sadly her proposals miss the market, although that shouldn’t be so surprising as her suggestions appear to rest upon a misunderstanding of the problem.
The thrust of the SEC’s current approach is more disclosure, such as releasing “pre-ratings” that debt issuers may get before final issuance. Additional disclosure of ratings methodology and assumptions is likely to be useless. Almost all that information was available during the building housing bubble. The problem is that the rating agencies had little incentive to go beyond the consensus forecasts of increasing to at most modest declines in home prices. These same assumptions were the foundation of almost all government economic forecasting as well, yet few believe that forcing CBO or OMB to disclosure more of their forecasts will cure our budget imbalances. What is needed is a change in incentives.
Bernanke’s Part in the Housing Bubble
Recent weeks have seen a swirl of speculation over whether President Obama will or will not re-appoint Ben Bernanke to the Chairmanship of the Federal Reserve Board, when his current term as Chair expires in January 2010. Almost all of the debate has centered on his actions as Chairman. This narrow focus misses an important piece: his actions, and words, as a Fed governor during the build-up of the housing bubble.
What should have been Bernanke’s greatest strength as a Fed governor and later chair, his understanding of monetary theory and his knowledge of the Great Depression, has ended up being a weakness. While correct in his analysis of the role of “debt deflation” — where the deflation increases the real burden of debts and correspondingly weakens the balance sheet of both households and businesses — in the deepening of the Great Depression; his obsession with slaying the Great White Whale of Deflation provided intellectual cover for the Fed’s ignoring and contributing to the housing bubble. Like the proverbial general, he was fighting yesterday’s battle, rather than today’s.
While core inflation was moderate and increasing at a decreasing rate between 2001 and 2005, this measure ignores the dramatic up-tick in house prices during those years. First, housing makes up the single largest expense for most households, ignoring housing, especially after one subtracts out energy and food from the definition of inflation, gives a narrow and distorted picture of inflation. Even if one were to focus solely on rents, the 2000s were an era of increasing housing costs.
Separate from the impact of housing prices on inflation is the role which housing plays as the collateral for the primary piece of household debt: a mortgage. Even were the US to suffer a bout of mild deflation and the real burden of their mortgages increased, this would likely have little impact on household balance sheets in an environment of increasing home prices.
Admittedly Bernanke was then only a “governor” and not yet Chair of the Fed, but he was the Fed’s loudest voice when it came to combating deflation and arguing for lower rates. Additionally there have been zero public acknowledgements by either Bernanke or the Fed that its policy earlier this decade contributed to the housing bubble and financial crisis. Without admitting to the occasional mistake, we have no way of judging whether Bernanke has learned from any of his mistakes, and hence less likely to repeat them.
In weighing Bernanke’s record at the Fed, judgement should not solely consider his actions as Chair, but also consider his words and deeds while the housing bubble was inflating. How one responds to a impending disaster is as important as to how one helps to clean up after the disaster has struck.
SEC Favors Special Interests in New Corporate Elections Rule
Yesterday, the SEC repealed a long-standing rule which allowed brokers to vote shares on behalf of their investors, unless they obtained written directions from each individual investors. While investors have long been able to direct the voting of their shares, many do not take the time to. In these cases, the brokers vote those shares, after all they are the agents of the investors and are hired to act on their behalf.
The direct effect of the rule will be to reduce the voting weight of retail investors, as represented by their brokers. In voting against the rule, SEC Commissioner Kathy Casey raised the point that the rule would skew voting toward large institutional investors and away from little retail investors.
What did the large institutions investors have to say? As reported in today’s Financial Times, Ann Yerger, who represents large pension funds claimed that “counting uninstructed broker votes is akin to stuffing the ballot box for management.” One has to wonder whether the pension funds, which Ms. Yerger represents should have to get written instructions from all the pensioners whose pensions are managed by these funds? Of course not, treating all agents of investors equally would make too much sense for the SEC.
Then one should not be too surprised to see pension funds be allowed to cast their “uninstructed” votes while brokers cannot. The largest pension funds manage the retirement of unionized state and local employees, often with the fund management itself representing the interests of the unions. We witnessed this same favoring of union interests over the common good in the auto bailouts.
The rule once again illustrates that the new bosses in Washington are busy rewarding their allies at the expense of everyone else.
Washington Push on Executive Pay Has Unintended Consequences
Regulators at the SEC and politicians on Capitol Hill seem to have short memories when it comes to executive compensation. When the SEC years ago decided to make the compensation of top executives public information, it had the all too predictable result of actually increasing average compensation levels. Once a top CEO knew what other CEOs were making, he could argue for a pay hike based upon being “underpaid”. Of course regulators were “shocked” by the resulting “race to the top.”
Similarly Congress was shocked when after deciding to heavily tax salaries over $1 million, that companies shifted away from direct cash pay and toward options and increased bonuses in the form of shares.
And soon Washington will also pretend to be shocked and outraged that the current anger over Wall Street bonuses is leading firms to reduce bonuses, but increase base pay. As illustrated in today’s Wall Street Journal, companies like Morgan Stanley have increased their base pay from $300,000 to $400,000. Even Citibank, essentially a ward of the US government, is increasing its base pay to $300,000 for employees that were previously eligible for bonuses.
The real harm in this is not that Wall Street employees are getting paid more in cash, but that less of their compensation will be tied to their performance, and the performance of their firm. A flat salary, regardless of how hard you work, will encourage shirking. Perhaps even worse, is that more upfront cash, and less long-term stock options, will shift Wall Street’s focus even more toward today, rather than tomorrow. So much for Washington fixing the short term focus of Wall Street, but then one shouldn’t be too surprised given the even more short term focus of Washington.
Support for Federal Reserve Audit Increasing
Last week Cato hosted a policy forum on “Bringing Transparency to the Federal Reserve,” featuring Congressman Ron Paul. As mentioned in CQ Politics, Rep. Paul’s bill, HR 1207, has been gaining considerable momentum in the House, with currently 244 co-sponsors, ranging from John Boehner to John Conyers Jr. In fact, the Senate companion bill was introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke discussed the very topic of Federal Reserve Transparency at Cato’s annual monetary conference in the Fall of 2007.
After praising moves toward greater transparency at the Fed, Bernanke argued that “monetary policy makers are public servants whose decisions affect the life of every citizen; consequently, in a democratic society, they have a responsibility to give the people and their elected representatives a full and compelling rationale for the decisions they make.”
Chairman Bernanke also goes on to argue that “improving the public’s understanding of the central bank’s objectives and policy strategies reduces economic and financial uncertainty and thereby allows businesses and households to make more-informed decisions.” Bernanke’s full remarks can be found in the Spring 2008 issue of the Cato Journal.
Over the last two years, we have seen an almost tripling of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet to $2.3 trillion, resulting from the bailouts of AIG and Bear Stearns and the creation of 14 new lending programs.
Our recent forum, and Rep. Paul’s bill, bring much needed debate and focus to the issue of Fed’s inner-workings.
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