Undermining the Dodd-Frank Act: An Incessant Desire for Profit

In the Dodd-Frank financial reform Act of 2010, financial firms in the U.S. are required to set aside higher reserves to cover losses on trades of securities, including those that “swap” the risk of default of a given security, such as bonds based on subprime mortgages. Almost immediately, the Wall Street bankers set about minimizing the new hindrance.  

The full essay is at "Undermining the Dodd-Frank Act."

Jack Lew at his confirmation hearing for U.S. Treasury Secretary. Lew had been the chief operating officer at units at Citibank.     NPR

ICE Bought NYSE: Profiting from the Rules?

“Tell me what the rules are, and I’ll make money with them.” This statement, made by Jeffrey Sprecher of Intercontinental Exchange, captures well the attitude that business practitioners should have toward government regulation in a republic. That is to say, businesses should be regulation-takers rather than makers. For the regulatees to make regulation to which they themselves would be subject is an oxymoron, or contradiction in terms. At the very least, it involves a conflict of interest. At the macro level, business as “regulation-maker” effectively turns a democracy into a plutocracy. Accordingly, the strategic use of regulation should pertain to the use side, rather than the regulating side. Crafting regulations—essentially dictating them to legislators or regulators—in order to make money from them takes the strategic use of regulation too far.

 The full essay is at "Profiting from the Rules on Wall Street."

The Fed Whitewashes Citibank: Systemic Risk Understated

As reported by Reuters in March 2013, “The newest stress tests for U.S. banks produced scores that are at odds with other measures of lenders' safety, in another sign that some institutions may be too big for regulators to understand and executives to manage. For example, Citigroup Inc, which has been bailed out multiple times by the U.S. government, showed up on the score sheets posted by the Federal Reserve . . . as being clearly safer than JPMorgan Chase & Co. That conclusion is at odds with the views of investors, bond analysts and credit-rating agencies, as well as when measured by a yardstick regulators themselves want to use in the future.” Kathleen Shanley, a bond analyst at GimmeCredit, a research service for institutional investors, said "I wouldn't say that Citi is safer than JPMorgan, for a variety of reasons, including its track record.” Citigroup has lower credit ratings than JPMorgan, and prices for credit default swaps suggest that the market views JPMorgan as safer.

The full essay is at "Fed Whitewashes Citibank."

Justice as Fairness: Writing Down Greek Debt

In 2012, 80% of Greece’s private creditors agreed to “voluntarily” convert their Greek debt into debt of a bit less than half the face-value (plus a lower interest rate). With such a proportion having agreed to the swap without triggering credit default swap insurance payouts, Greece could get the E.U. to agree to force the remaining 20% to involuntary write-downs. That would trigger the credit default swaps, at least in theory.

The full essay is at "Justice as Fairness: Greek Debt."