Goldman Sachs' Revolving Door: Regulatory Capture

In July 2012, Andrew Williams, a former spokesman for U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, announced plans to head over to Goldman Sachs at the end of that month.[1] Williams was the second of the Secretary’s spokesmen to head to theWall Street bank. Such moves may reflect a standing policy at the bank to have a revolving door. The previous U.S. Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, had been the CEO at Goldman. This suggests that the revolving door was to include populating high offices in government, presumably not out of a sense of civic duty, but, rather, to see that Goldman's interests would be protected and even promoted through public policy. Hence President Obama was said to have had a Wall Street government with respect to positions bearing on Wall Street. I submit that deconstructing such a revolving door would be very difficult. 

The full essay is at "Goldman Sachs' Revolving Door."

1. Bonnie Kavoussi, “Andrew Williams, Ex-Treasury Spokesman,Headed to Goldman Sachs,” The Huffington Post, July 12, 2012. 

Members of Congress Secretly Lobbied the Fed

As of late September 2012, more than one hundred members of Congress had lobbied the Federal Reserve and other regulatory agencies on the Volcker Rule, the part of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act of 2010 that prohibits banks from operating like casinos (e.g., trading with proprietary funds, rather than those of customers).[1] The rule stems from the importance of banks in our financial system. In September 2008, the world nearly witnessed the collapse of that system when banks stopped trusting each other (e.g., via commercial paper market) because of the risks that some of the big ones had been taking with mortgage-backed derivative securities and the related insurance swap securities. Awash in healthy-seeming fees, the banks purchased risky subprime mortgages and bundled them into bond-like securities that could be sold to investors.

The full essay is at "Congress Secretly Lobbied the Fed."

1. Ben Protess, “Behind the Scenes, a Lawmaker Pushes to Curb the Volcker Rule,” The New York Times, September 21, 2012.

Is the U.S. Congress Too Beholden to the Financial Industry?

That financial deregulation had any traction at all following the financial crisis of 2008 in the U.S. is stunning, for the implication is that Wall Street money has tremendous influence in the U.S. Governent even after Wall Street banks have screwed up (even in triggering a financial crisis!). 

CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler staring down the big banks  

The full essay is at "Is Congress Owned by the Banks?"

The U.S. Department of Justice: Big Banks May Legitimately Be above the Law

The Financial Times reported in 2013 that lawmakers in the U.S. Congress were claiming that the Department of Justice had been “too soft on big banks and their executives by failing to bring criminal cases related to the financial crisis.”[1] In the five years following the financial crisis of 2008, no Wall Street executive was criminally charged with fraud. The U.S. Justice Department chose not to go after the bankers for their lack of due diligence regarding their purchases of sub-prime mortgages from mortgage originators. This in spite of the fact that at Citibank, for example, a manager in the bank’s due diligence department estimated that 50% to 80% of the approved mortgages did not meet the bank’s credit policy, and yet Robert Rubin, the CEO at the time, did not act on the manager’s email. This suggests that a criminal complaint could have been lodged against the bank itself, but then what would be the implications for the financial system should Citibank had gone under after being found criminally guilty? Does it even hold that a guilty verdict would mean bankruptcy? Simply stated, a company can be so large that its failure due to a guilty verdict could harm innocent third parties, including stockholders, employees, suppliers, and even the general public if the bankruptcy triggers a systemic collapse of the financial system. Such concerns are called collateral consequences. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, systemic risk became a particularly salient concern for criminal prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice. Swayed by a desire to minimize the potential disproportionate harm to innocent parties from a verdict-triggered major bankruptcy, the prosecutors believed they were obligated to consider collateral consequences even if that meant that the really big banks would be immune from criminal prosecution. To such banks, this could be used as a competitive advantage because keeping within the constraints of law in making money would not apply. I contend, therefore, that the U.S. Government should not have taken collateral consequences into consideration. 

The full essay is "Big Banks above the Law."

 Mythili Raman testifying before Congress. mainjustice.com

1. Shahien Nasiripour and Kara Schannell, “Holder Says Some Banks Are ‘Too Large’,” The Financial Times, March 7, 2013.

Morgan Stanley: Systemic Mistrust or Bad Financials after the Financial Crisis?

"Morgan Stanley by any measure is a safe and solid investment bank. Except for one: The amount of trust people have in the whole financial and political system. It's just about zero,” according to Jesse Eisinger of The New York Times in October 2011.[1] Even as there is undoubtedly an element of hyperbole in his conclusion—for zero trust in the financial system and governments would occasion far greater problems than the world faced at the time of Eisinger’s report—his broader point that bankers would be held accountable one way or the other for not having learned their lesson on derivatives (and risk more generally) is valid. The subtext is that even though banks like Morgan Stanley were in actuality in solid financial shape, they deserved the negative repercussions from the systemic skepticism that the banks themselves brought about by virtually ignoring risk analysis in preference to a run of profits and (not coincidentally) bonuses.

The full essay is at "Morgan Stanley after the Financial Crisis."

1. Jesse Eisinger, “Between the Lines, Wall St. Banks Face a Deficit of Trust,” The New York Times, October 12, 2011. 

Decreasing Bank Size by Increasing Capital-Reserve Requirements: Plutocracy in Action?

Although the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act was passed in 2010 with some reforms, such as liquidity standards, stress tests, a consumer-protection bureau, and resolution plans, the emphasis on additional capital requirements (i.e., the SIFI surcharges) could be considered as weak because they may not be sufficient should another financial crisis trigger a shutdown in the commercial paperr market (i.e., banks lending to each other). A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that even the additional capital requirements in Dodd-Frank would not have been enough for eight of the 26 banks with the largest capital loss during the financial crisis of 2008. As overvalued assets, such as subprime mortgage-backed derivatives, plummet in value, banks can burn through their capital reserves very quickly. A frenzy of short-sellers can quicken the downward cycle even more. This raises the question of whether additional capital resources would quickly be "burnt through" rather than being able to stand for long as a bulwark. The financial crisis showed the cascading effect that can quickly run through a banking sector as fear even between banks widens as one damaged bank impacts another, and another. 

The full essay is at "Manipulating Bank Size by Reserves."

Addressing Systemic Risk: Beyond the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010

After the financial crisis in September 2008 in the U.S., the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, admitted to a Congressional committee that his free-market notion that a market will automatically self-correct itself had a major flaw. He had come to this realization because the financial market for mortgage-backed bonds had failed to correct in terms of price for the dramatic increase in risk. Instead, that market, and that of overnight commercial paper, had seized up rather than simply adjust price to the decreased demand. Fear had paralyzed what had hitherto been thought to be a self-correcting market. The failures of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers introduced us to the concept of systemic risk, wherein the failure of a bank (or company) causes a market to collapse. Such a bank is thus too big to fail. If actualized, such risk interferes with even the basic operation of a market, not to mention its self-correcting feature. One question is whether banks that are too big to fail should merely be more adequately regulated or broken up, as the U.S. Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil in 1911.

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank

   The full essay is at "Addressing Systemic Risk: Alan Greenspan."

Was Goldman Sachs Really Politically Impotent amid Public Scrutiny in the Wake of the Financial Crisis?

If the American financial houses on Wall Street are among the most powerful forces in American politics-- powers, as it were, behind the throne--does it make sense that the strongest bank would be politically impotent?  In other words, can a public blemish nullify the power of all that capital?

The full essay is at "Goldman Sachs: Politically Impotent?"

See also "Essays on the Financial Crisis," available at Amazon. 

Can the Federal Reserve Handle Banks Too Big To Fail?

The biggest banks operating in the U.S. reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Federal Reserve’s below-market rate of .001% on $7.7 trillion in emergency loans in the wake of the credit freeze in September 2008. Rather than using the additional funds to increase lending, the banks fortified reserves and paid bonuses out to executives. Had member of Congress had been able to anticipate all this, it is possible that they would have prescribed stronger medicine, perhaps even including breaking up the banks with over $1 trillion in assets.

The full essay is at "Can the Fed Handle Banks Too Big to Fail?"

Market or Government: Which Should Reduce Systemic Risk in the Banking Industry?

If the five largest banks—JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—are too big to fail and yet substandard operationally on account of their respective complexities (e.g., investment banking added to commercial banking), might it be that the market-based decisions of investors will relegate the giants, which by the way had price-to-book value ratios of between .37 to .77 in May 2012, thereby solving the problem of systemic risk?

The full essay is at "Reducing Systemic Risk: The Market or Government?"

The U.S. Federal Reserve as a Regulatory Agency

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Reserve “has operated almost entirely behind closed doors as it rewrites the rule book governing the U.S. financial system.” The paper notes that this has been in sharp contrast to the trend at the Fed toward greater transparency in its interest-rate policies and emergency-lending programs. The complaint of a dearth of public meetings misses, however, not only the scripted nature of such displays, but also the more fundamental question of whether a central bank buffered from political pressure should play such a salient role as regulator. At the very least, the democratic deficit and a lack of accountability may be exacerbated by the Fed’s greater role as a regulator of banks—particularly after the major investment banks become commercial banks, and thus subject to the Fed’s regulations.

The full essay is at "The Federal Reserve as a Regulator of Banks: An Institutional Conflict of Interest."

Related books: 

Essays on the Financial Crisis

Institutional Conflicts of Interest

On the Presumptuousness of Power: Does Wall Street Own Congress?

At the end of April, 2009, U.S. Senator Richard Durbin blamed the powerful banking lobby for the defeat of legislation that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to modify some troubled mortgages.  Even as mortgage servers were claiming to be overwhelmed with requests from distressed borrowers for readjustments to the adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM), the banks and mortgage companies felt the need to stop the US Senate from enabling judges to relieve the backlog. Durban later said in an interview, “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place,” he said on WJJG 1530 AM radio's  “Mornings with Ray Hanania.” On October 30, 2009,  James K. Galbraith spoke on the Bill Moyers Journal on the bank lobby changing the financial system regulation reforms now being discussed in Congress.  That that lobby feels itself to be in a position to advise the Congress on a matter in which the banks were part of the problem is something that blows Galbraith away.   They should realize among themselves, or at the very least BE TOLD that their involvement is not helpful or appropriate.   Galbraith pointed out that we have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done governmentally to stave off another financial crisis—such as separating the commerical banking and investment trading (on the bank’s equity even!) functions and reducing the scale of the banks too big to fail.  However, there are a hundred reasons why the governing class will not follow through. 

The full essay is at "Does Wall Street Own Congress?"

See related: Essays on the Financial Crisis

Wealth as a Societal Value in the E.U. and U.S.: The Case of Financial Reform

The E.U. and U.S differ markedly in the degree to which the interests of big business are etched in the respective societies and polities. That is to say, the difference goes beyond the question of the relative influences of the lobbyists. I contend that the relative proclivity societally in favor of business in the U.S. tilts the political playing-field excessively in the direction of the financial interests at the expense of the public good, which I take to be well represented generally by a full, equally-weighted spectrum of views. I further contend that influence is easier for financial-sector lobbyists in the United States than in the European  Union because the societal values in the former lean more in their favor. By analogy,  it is easier to run downhill than even on a flat surface.

The full essay is at "Wealth as a Societal Value."

The Banking Lobby Amid Goldman Sachs' Culpability: A Danger to the Republic?

To simplify how Goldman Sachs got into trouble with the SEC: According to Annie Lowrey, the hedge fund Paulson & Co. handpicked mortgage-backed securities that were doomed to stop performing, being backed with subprime mortgages, and Goldman packaged them into a kind of bond. Paulson & Co. bet against the bond by buying short-sales, with Goldman acting as the broker. At the same time, Goldman sold the bond to other clients without disclosing that Paulson had engineered the bond to fail. The SEC filing notes that those other clients lost $1 billion. Goldman had no direct stake in the success or failure of the CDO. It made money either way. “This litigation exposes the cynical, savage culture of Wall Street that allows a dealer to commit fraud on one customer to benefit another,” Chris Whalen, a bank analyst at Institutional Risk Analytics, said in a note to clients on April 16, 2010. Someone at Goldman said on the same day that “the SEC’s charges are completely unfounded in law and fact.” If the SEC charges hold up (and it is doubtful that the agency would bring such charges without supporting documentation; it is more apt to miss something than go overboard), I am astonished that the people at Goldman simply dismissed the matter out of hand. It might make sense as their legal defense, but if the bankers are convicted, those lying ought to be fired even if they were not a party to the scheme. It also appears that the bankers lied about whether they made money in betting against the housing market. “The 2009 Goldman Sachs annual report stated that the firm ‘did not generate enormous net revenues by betting against residential related products,’ ” Senator Levin, chairman of the US Senate’s committee on investigations, said in a statement in April, 2010. “These e-mails show that, in fact, Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market.” When a spokesperson for the bank says something in the future, a rational person will be wont not to trust him or her. Lying has (or ought to have) consequences rather than being dismissed as harmless PR or a legal defense. The bank’s credibility is at issue here. The SEC has accused Goldman of outright lying to customers in order to make money both ways on a deal. Even though this ought to reflect negatively on Goldman’s future business, bigger issues involved that ought to consume more of our attention than how Goldman fares.

The full essay is at "The Banking Lobby and Goldman Sachs."

The Volcker Rule: Taking in Water on Proprietary Trading

Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law of 2010, Goldman Sachs had to break up its principal strategies group, the trading unit that had been very profitable. Goldman was considering several options, including moving the traders to another division or shutting the unit altogether. Morgan Stanley was considering ceding control of its $7 billion hedge fund firm, FrontPoint Partners. At Citigroup, executives had sold hedge fund and private equity businesses and were discussing reducing proprietary trading, which relies on a bank’s own capital to make bets in the financial markets. JPMorgan Chase had already begun dismantling its stand-alone proprietary trading desk and was modifying the structure of some investments of One Equity Partners, its internal private equity business. “This is the real stuff,” said Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “It shows that if you squeeze Wall Street, like a balloon it will come out somewhere else, and we really are squeezing Wall Street. Their business models are changing.”

The complete essay is at "The Volcker Rule."

Executive Compensation (Part I): Systemic Risk

In the wake of the financial crisis, according to the Huffington Post, “a number of the nation's largest banks were excused from the government's rescue program before they had returned to a position of complete financial security -- in part because they wanted to avoid restrictions on how much their executives would get paid, according to a new report from the program's government overseer. Citigroup, Wells Fargo, PNC and Bank of America successfully lobbied to leave the federal bailout program early in 2009, even though the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation had recommended they take additional steps to shore up their assets, according to a new report from the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Relief Asset Program, a government watchdog office. Regulators, including the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board, eventually ‘relaxed’ their criteria for letting the banks out of the program, the report says, leaving questions about whether the banks had strengthened their holdings enough to be able to withstand another systemic crisis.”[1]

The full essay is at "Executive Compensation: Systemic Risk."

1. Alexander Eichler, “BofA, Wells Fargo, Citigroup Left TARP Early to Avoid Restrictions on Executive Pay,” The Huffington Post, September 30, 2011. 

Banking on Buffett’s Bank

Beyond wondering what could Ken Lewis have been thinking when he ok’d Bank of America’s purchase of Countrywide, it might be worth pondering why the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Law of 2010 did not mandate splitting up banks such as Bank of America, which with over $1 trillion in assets are too big to fail. In other words, is simply increasing their reserve requirements tantamount to gambling with the financial system in a reckless manner? Should the elected representatives of the people and the states in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, respectively, have displayed more fortitude in resisting the banking lobbyists even when that industry was known to have been culpable in the 2008 credit crisis?

The full essay is at "Banking on Buffett."

TARP Paid Off: But What about the Foreclosures?

TARP, the "bailout" for banks rather than mortgage borrowers, was the first big issue facing the Obama administration before the roughly $800 billion stimulus plan and the health insurance overhaul that stoked the rise of the Tea Party movement. After supporting TARP, several Republicans lost in the elections of 2010 largely because of their votes. For many Americans, TARP is a symbol of big government at its worst, intervening in private markets with taxpayers’ billions to save Wall Street plutocrats while average Americans continued to struggle to make mortgage payments or lost their houses outright.  “This is the best federal program of any real size to be despised by the public like this,” said Douglas J. Elliott, a former investment banker now associated with the Brookings Institution. “It was probably the only effective method available to us to keep from having a financial meltdown much worse than we actually had. Had that happened, unemployment would be substantially higher than it is now, the deficit would have gone up even more than it has,” Mr. Elliott added. “But it really cuts against the grain for a public that is so angry at banks to think that something that so plainly helped the banks could also be good for the public.” TARP was good for the public not in that the funds enabled Wall Street bonuses; rather, the good was solely on the macro level, as the frozen credit markets eventually thawed such that the financial system meltdown was averted.  However, this does not mean that it was "the only effective method available."

The full essay is at "TARP and Foreclosures."

Obama Standing Up to Wall St.: Fact or Fiction?

From the time of the Obama Administration, a major newspaper concluded: “What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these.”

For analysis, see "Obama Standing Up to Wall Street: Fact or Fiction?"

The Tail Wagging the Dog: Congress under the Influence

Congress may be like a drunk, unaware that it is being handed one drink after another by vested interests oriented to legislation with specific financial objectives. On February 28, 2010 on CNN’s State of the Union, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker at the time of the U.S. House of Representatives, said that the health insurance companies didn’t want a government-financed and operated "public option" for American citizens, so it was off the table. Her statement resonates with the earlier one by U.S. Senator Richard Durbin just after his forclosure-assistance amendment failed: "The banking lobby owns Congress." That the health insurance companies and Wall Street banks were generally viewed as at least partially culpable even as they still had Congress in their pockets points to a serious corruption in American government.

The full essay is at "Congress Under the Influence."