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Monday, November 24, 2008

"How to Design a Bank Bailout that Works"

Johm Hempton disagrees with me and others that the problem in financial markets is fundamentally one of solvency, i.e. lack of adequate bank capital. He says it is a matter of trust, trust that was destroyed by lies and deceptive practices among other things. If he is right, bank recapitalization alone will not bring back the trust that is needed - well capitalized banks can still lie - and because of that he believes some sort of "full guarantee of all sorts of bank debt" is needed to get bank credit flowing again from financial wholesalers to financial intermediaries. His preferred solution to provide the necessary trust is bank nationalization - the government won't default on its obligations to provide payment - and this allows taxpayers to fully participate in the upside in return for assuming the risk inherent in guaranteeing debt payments:

The Brad DeLong question - and how to design a bailout that works, Bronte Capital: Brad DeLong asks a question which seems obvious enough to me – but seems to elude him.

Le Citi Toujours Dormer...: Why oh why can't we have a better press corps? Eric Dash and Julie Creswell write that:

• Citigroup had poor risk controls.
• They weren't.










The cause of the crisis







What of course would make the people who provide the funding happy is a plausible government guarantee. ...




A cost effective TARP








We agree that fear is the problem, people will not be willing to provide financing if they are worried about getting their money back, the question is what is driving that fear, insolvency, something else, or both. If it is insolvency alone, then recapitalization ought to work, but if it is a lack of trust that a solvent bank balance sheet means what it says it means, then the problem is harder to fix unless you are willing to inject massive amounts of capital - enough to remove all doubt - or remove uncertainties from the books through a massive toxic asset purchase program (a public relations nightmare).

I believe there are a lot of uncertainties about the causes of the crisis, and hence about the solutions to it, so I have tried to adopt a portfolio approach to policy rather than insisting that all the eggs go into one basket. For example, I saw no reason to just do monetary or fiscal policy, or do as many advocated and wait to see if monetary policy would work before trying fiscal policy, I thought we should do both, and do them early and aggressively, then back off if it looks like the economy is overheating.

And I have the same reaction here. I think John Hempton could be correct in his assessment that solvent balance sheets will not be believed, at least not at the level of capitalization we are willing to provide, and that therefore some sort of guarantee is needed (when I said I disagreed as quoted above, I thought he was saying that Sheila Bair alone caused the preponderance of fear rather than being part of a general mishandling of the policy response to the crisis, e.g. lack of consistency, problems with ratings agencies, accounting standards, saving some banks but not others, etc., etc.). Given the performance of ratings agencies, risk assessment models, deceptive balance sheets, etc. I'd be wary of parting with my life savings right now (such as it is). I also fully agree that compensation for providing that guarantee is for taxpayers to receive a stake in the action, and that the stakes they have received to date for providing guarantees and bailouts have been very inadequate.

So I am not opposed to this line of thinking. Whether the guarantee of 90% beyond attachments is the best way to provide wholesalers with the insurance (trust) they need is an open question, but I'm not so sure the particulars of the guarantee are critical so long as some sort of insurance is in place. It does, however, seem like if you are going to go this route, full nationalization provides better incentives (particularly the moral hazard issues that arise when wholesalers have no incentive to monitor risk, and when the people using the funds realize the downside is government protected giving them an incentive to take on too much risk).

So, what are your reactions? I'm not certain I have this right, so tell me what have I missed in acknowledging that a form of general insurance as described above could be helpful. Have I given in too easily and not worried enough about the incentives this gives to those providing the funding, or missed other big problems?

Update: From The Economist's Forum:

Finally, System-Risk Insurance, by Laurence Kotlikoff and Perry Mehrling, FT: As we advocated two months back (Bagehot plus RFC: The Right Financial Fix), Uncle Sam is finally starting to sell systematic risk insurance on high-grade securities in exchange for preferred stock. This is a critical function for the U.S. government; Uncle Sam is the only player capable of hedging systemic risk because he’s the only player capable of taking actions that keep the overall economic system on the right course.

The real question now is whether the U.S. government will begin selling system-risk insurance on a routine basis and, thereby, help refloat trillions of dollars in high-grade mortgage-related securities owned by banks and other financial institutions - institutions that are in desperate need of more capital to support new lending.

Writing one-off insurance deals with a few large players, like Citigroup, is not the same as standing ready to write system-risk insurance to all players that issue conforming high-grade paper - something that’s needed to support ongoing securitization of such obligations. We stress the word “conforming,” because it’s vital for the government to begin stipulating which securities are “safe” under normal conditions and which are “toxic” and, thus, no longer to be held by financial intermediaries.

Like any insurance underwriter, Uncle Sam needs not only to know and approve what he’s insuring; he also needs to make sure there are appropriate deductibles and co-insurance provisions to limit moral hazard on the part of the insured. The moral hazard in this case is that financial institutions try to pass off low-grade loans as high-grade.

The weekend deal with Citigroup is instructive in clarifying the nature of the insurance the government should sell on an ongoing basis. The deal to support $306bn of Citigroup’s mortgage-related securities puts a floor under the value of the best such securities at about 90 cents on the dollar. This deal represents the first use of the insurance capability authorized by Section 102 of the TARP.

The structure of the deal is convoluted, so it takes some probing to see precisely what insurance is being sold and for what price. We are told that Citigroup itself is on the hook for the first loss of $29bn (plus whatever loss reserves are already on its books) on the cash flows due on the $306bn in mortgages. This amounts to roughly a 10 percent deductible.

Any losses beyond $29bn will be shared by the government (90 per cent) and Citigroup (10 per cent). This is the co-insurance (co-pay) element. This insurance runs for the next 10 years, and Citigroup is paying a one-time $7bn premium for it, using preferred stock. Our article with Alistair Milne (Recapitalizing the Banks is Not Enough) advocated deductibles, but not co-pays. But co-pays seem a good idea.

As predicted, the insurance deal with Citigroup has refloated its assets, with its stock rising by 53 per cent immediately after the deal’s announcement. Citigroup will now be able to use its newly insured assets as collateral for borrowing in the repo and commercial paper markets. ...

At the moment, it is only these specific assets on the balance sheet of one specific institution that are affected, but the structure of the deal could easily be applied to a similar class of assets on any balance sheet. The effect would be to backstop the value of this entire class of existing assets, and so restart secondary markets in these existing assets. ...

Given Citigroup’s heavy involvement with mortgage securities, most notably through the ill-fated Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs), it makes sense to start with Citigroup. But the plan will work to restart capital markets only if it is extended beyond Citigroup.

Furthermore, the insurance structure needs to be made clearer if the markets are to understand its consequences for the valuation of the underlying securities. The government needs to be in the business of selling credit insurance explicitly, not through the back door.

The government should be offering insurance on the highest quality assets regardless of who happens to be holding them. ...

    Posted by on Monday, November 24, 2008 at 02:34 PM in Economics, Financial System, Policy | Permalink  TrackBack (0)  Comments (20)


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