Federal Reserve as Cash Cow
Scheduled for consideration before the House Financial Services Committee this week is a draft bill creating a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
While there is a lot wrong with the bill — after all it is based on the premise that somehow consumers were tricked into not making a downpayment or re-financing thousands out of their homes, and then walking away — perhaps the most important provision, and the least discussed, is funding the agency by a transfer of cash from the Federal Reserve. Section 119 of the bill requires the Federal Reserve to transfer an amount equal to 10 percent of its expenses to the new agency’s Director.
This I believe is the first time in history that Congress is using the Federal Reserve to simply fund another agency. Why stop there, how about have the Fed just prints trillions of dollars to pay for the rest of the government? If Congress believes this agency will benefit the public, then the agency should be funded by the public, by a direct appropriations raised by taxes.
Of course after watching Ben Bernanke turn the Fed’s balance sheet into a slush fund for Wall Street, it was only going to be a matter of time before someone in Congress decided to use that slush fund for their own purposes. So much for transparency in government.
Fixing Fannie Is Essential
This past week witnessed continued debate in congressional committees over changes to our financial regulatory system. Perhaps catching the most attention was Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s appearance before House Financial Services.
Sadly missing from all the noise this week was any discussion over reforming those entities at the center of the housing bubble and mortgage meltdown: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
While many, including Bernanke, have identified the “global savings glut” as a prime force behind the historically low interest rates that drove the housing bubble, often missed in this analysis is the critical role played by Fannie and Freddie as channels of that savings glut. After all, the Chinese Central Bank was not plowing its reserves into Countrywide stock; it was putting hundreds of billions of its dollar reserves into Fannie and Freddie debt. Fannie and Freddie were the vehicle that carried excess world savings into the United States.
Had this massive flow of global capital been invested in productive activities, or even just prime mortgages, it is unlikely tha we would have seen such a large housing bubble. Instead, what did Fannie and Freddie do with its Chinese funds? It invested those funds in the subprime mortgage market. At the height of the bubble, Fannie and Freddie purchased over 40 percent of private-label subprime mortgage-backed securities. Fannie and Freddie also used those funds to lower the underwriting standards of the “prime” whole mortgages it purchased, turning much of the Alt-A and subprime market into what looked to the world like prime mortgages.
Given the massive leverage (at one point Freddie was leveraged 200 to 1) and shoddy credit quality of mortgages on their books, why were the Chinese and other investors so willing to trust their money to Fannie and Freddie? Because they were continually told by U.S. officials that their losses would be covered. At the end of the day, Fannie and Freddie were not bailed out in order to save our housing market; they were bailed out in order to protect the Chinese Central Bank from taking any losses on its Fannie/Freddie investments. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the Chinese accumulated these large dollar holdings in order to suppress the value of their currency, enabling Chinese products to be more competitive with American-made products.
While foreign investors have been willing to put considerable money into Wall Street, without the implied guarantees of Fannie and Freddie, trillions of dollars of global capital flows would not have been funneled into the U.S. subprime mortgage market. As Washington seems intent on continuing to mortgage America’s future to the Chinese, that at minimum it seems that fixing Fannie and Freddie might help insure that something more productive is done with that borrowing.
Weekend Links
- Nat Hentoff has a few tough questions for doctors who aided CIA torture.
- Is public option a private insurer killer? Larry McNeely and Michael Cannon debate.
- Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says the recession is probably over. But was he the man who saved the economy?
- Podcast: Should the government have the power to punish you for speaking your mind? Many Americans think it should…so long as it’s people with whom they don’t agree.
Reform Needed, but Obama Plan Would Result in More Financial Crises, not Less
Today President Obama took his financial reform plan to the airwaves. While there is no doubt our financial system is in need of financial reform, the President’s plan would make bailouts a permanent feature of the regulatory landscape. Rather than ending “too big to fail” — the President wants us to believe that with additional discretion and power, the same Federal Reserve that missed the boat last time will save us next time.
The truth is that the President’s plan will result in a small number of companies being viewed by debtholders as “too big to fail”. These companies would see their funding costs decline, allowing them to gain market-share at the expense of their rivals, making these firms even larger. Greater concentration in our financial services industry is the last thing we need, yet the Obama plan all but guarantees it.
Obama also chooses myth’s over facts. The President claims that de-regulation and competition among regulators caused the crisis. The facts could not be more different. Those institutions at the center of the crisis — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Lehman –could not choose their regulator.
The President’s plan chooses convenient targets and protects entrenched interests, rather than address the true underlying causes of the crisis. At no time have we heard the President discuss the expansionary monetary policies that helped fuel the bubble. Nor has the President talked about the global imbalances — the global savings glut that poured surplus savings from the rest of the world into the US. But then the President appears to hope that loose monetary policy and continued American consumption funded by China will get him out of his own political problems with the economy. It is especially striking that the President makes little mention of the housing bubble, as if it was only the bust that was the problem.
The President continues to say he inherited this crisis. While true, he did not inherit the same individuals — Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke — who were at the center of creating the crisis. All Obama needs to do is find a position for Hank Paulson and he will have completely re-assembled the Bush financial team.
Without real reform — fixing Fannie and Freddie, scaling back the massive subsidies for leverage in our tax code, loose monetary policy – it will only be a matter of time before the next crisis hits. If we implement the President’s plan, we will, however, guarantee that the next crisis will be even larger and severe than the current one.
Filed under: Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy; Regulatory Studies
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.
Bernanke Rules?
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has outlined “The Fed’s Exit Strategy.” He tells the reader how the central bank will avoid an inflation of historic proportions resulting from all the money and credit it has injected into the economy. All of the strategies he outlines are technically feasible ways for the Fed to implement monetary restraint.
The op-ed has an air of a classroom exercise, however, rather than a practical central-bank strategy. Much of the article is devoted to explaining how the Fed can now pay interest on reserves, and how it could raise that interest rate so as to dissuade commercial banks from lending the reserves out. It could do that, but what would that rate need to be in order to meet a private bank’s threshold rate of return in normal economic times?
More importantly, the Fed has never lacked the technical tools to combat inflation. What it has so often lacked is the will to make tough decisions. And, quite frankly, it does not possess the information needed to fine-tune the economy in the way Chairman Bernanke imagines (a point made by Milton Friedman many years ago). Lack of will and lack of information combine to keep the Fed behind the curve. Its policy was too easy after 2001, and so it fueled the housing boom. It was late to recognize the turn in housing and the economy, and its policy was then too tight. If past is prologue, it will be late to implement its exit strategy.
The Fed Chairman has presented a laundry list of policy tools. What investors need is some assurance that the right tools will be used at the right moment. The mere promise of a policymaker to do the right thing has little credibility. There is no monetary rule in place, only the rule of a man.
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.
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.
Filed under: Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy; Government and Politics
Beginning of the End for Bernanke
Fed Chairman Bernanke’s term as Chair ends in January 2010. So far President Obama has offered Bernanke praise for his performance, but little else. After last week’s House Oversight Committee hearing focusing on Bernanke’s role in Bank of America’s purchase of Merrill Lynch, it is now readily apparent that the Chairman has few supporters on Capitol Hill. While his nomination will not be subject to the approval of the House of Representatives, or any of its Committees, the Senate Banking Committee’s reaction to Treasury Secretary Geithner’s plan to extend the Fed’s power serves as a useful proxy in gauging that Committee’s view of the Fed’s recent performance.
Several recent polls show President Obama to be broadly popular with the American public, while the public holds some concern over the scope and cost of his policies. His policy that garners the least support has been his bailout and support for the auto industry. It is no secret that the American public was not enthusiastic about the bailouts at the time, and is even less so now. With Hank Paulson having left the stage, Bernanke is now the public face of corporate bailouts. While having Bernanke around may offer President Obama a convenient target for the public’s anger over bailouts, re-appointing Bernanke would finally force Obama’s hand — so far he’s managed to support the bailouts with little fallout, as Bush and others have taken the blame. Re-appointing Bernanke makes him Obama’s pick.
In addition to political risk to President Obama, one can assume that many Senate Democrats are not looking forward to having to vote for the man who bailed out AIG. It is a fair bet that many Republican Senators would not vote for Bernanke’s re-appointment, leaving it up to the Democrats to secure his re-appointment.
Whatever the merits, or flaws, in his performance as Federal Reserve Chair, support for Bernanke’s re-appointment is becoming a proxy for one’s support, or opposition, to corporate bailouts.
Why Bank Stocks Rose on Bernanke’s Remarks
In a CNBC spot with Steve Liesman & Erin Burnett, I tried to explain why investors in bank stocks had good reason to be pleased with part of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s speech. Judging by the response of Steve and Erin, and others on CNBC over the following day, I must not have been persuasive.
For clarification, I am quoting the exact language from Bernanke’s talk, with my emphasis added.
My main point is that Bernanke admitted that when it comes to the “financial crisis” of some big banks, this is largely an artifact of unduly harsh regulation being applied at the worst possible time:
There is some evidence that capital standards, accounting rules, and other regulations have made the financial sector excessively procyclical–that is, they lead financial institutions to ease credit in booms and tighten credit in downturns more than is justified by changes in the creditworthiness of borrowers, thereby intensifying cyclical changes.
For example, capital regulations require that banks’ capital ratios meet or exceed fixed minimum standards for the bank to be considered safe and sound by regulators. Because banks typically find raising capital to be difficult in economic downturns or periods of financial stress, their best means of boosting their regulatory capital ratios during difficult periods may be to reduce new lending, perhaps more so than is justified by the credit environment. We should review capital regulations to ensure that they are appropriately forward-looking. . .
Bernanke emphasized the regulators’ dangerous habit of raising capital requirements and loan loss reserves simply because of a strict mark-to-market misinterpretation of the “fair value” of mortgage-backed securities.
He noted that:
Determining appropriate valuation methods for illiquid or idiosyncratic assets can be very difficult, to put it mildly. Similarly, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the appropriate levels of loan loss reserves over the cycle. As a result, further review of accounting standards governing valuation and loss provisioning would be useful, and might result in modifications to the accounting rules that reduce their procyclical effects without compromising the goals of disclosure and transparency.
The key here is Bernanke’s criticism of the rigid use of Basel capital standards, not mark-to-market information per se (which would be harmless if it did not trigger foolish regulations). When combined with Barney Frank’s similar comments on the same day, it begins to look as though sensible economics might finally take priority over dubious bookkeeping.
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