On the Influence of Wall Street in Congress: The Proposal to Distinguish Financial and Commercial Derivatives

In the process whereby financial reform legislation made its way through Congress after the financial crisis of 2008, the U.S. House and Senate had different approaches concerning who would be required to go through a clearing house to buy or sell derivative securities. According to Michael Masters, "The clearing house would stand in the middle of the transaction and guarantee both sides of the trade. If one counterparty to the transaction fails, then the central counterparty absorbs those losses, protecting the system as a whole from collapse."  Masters claims that "Wall Street firms hate this idea because their prodigious profits will dwindle when derivatives are traded in the light of day, letting their counter-parties see the true costs. So Wall Street is pushing hard to exempt as many transactions as possible."  Given the culpability of Wall Street in the financial crisis, they were in no position to "push hard." That they did nonetheless is a telling sign of the underlying character, or lack thereof, "on the street."  Furthermore, that the representatives and senators were listening to them ought to cause the voters some concern.  Yet because of the reality of the banks' muscle on the hill, the power of the banks to exploit any loopholes in the final legislation should have been salient as the legislation made its way through Congress. This can be seen in whether to favor the House or Senate version.

The full essay is at "Wall Street's Influence in Congress."

Making Too Big To Fail Costlier: A Check on Empire-Building

Testifying before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on September 2, 2010, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, observed, “As of 2003 and 2004, there really was quite a bit of disagreement among economists about whether there was a bubble, how big it was, whether it was a local or a national bubble. We certainly were aware it was a risk factor, but frankly by the time it was clear it was a bubble” it was too late to address it through monetary policy. The NYT also reported that he spoke favorably of forcing huge banks to hold much more capital, particularly if they were systemically important — so much capital, indeed, that being big would be costly. He advocated that the increased capital requirements should include capital that is more aligned with risk and able to absorb losses more effectively, and that works in a countercyclical manner, so that banks have more of it during times of stress. Does his position make sense? Does it go far enough? 

The answer is at "Making Too Big to Fail Costly."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/business/03commission.html?_r=1&ref=business

Financial Sector Lobbyists Put the Republic at Risk: The Case of the U.S. Senate Bill on Financial Reform in 2010

Considering the gravity of the risk in Wall Street banks being too big to fail, the financial reform bill passed by the US Senate in 2010 may have been influenced too much by the financial interests. It can thus serve as a good case study for how a republic can be subject to too much influence from the moneyed interests. It could be asked, moreover, whether there is an inevitable trajectory that a polity undergoes from being a republic to becoming a plutocracy (ruled by the wealthy).

The full essay is at "Anti-regulatory Wall Street Lobbyists After the Financial Crisis."

Sources:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/us/politics/23lobby.html?scp=2&sq=financial%20lobbying&st=cse ; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/business/24reform.html?hp ; WSJ (May 26, 2010).