• 846 days Will The ECB Continue To Hike Rates?
  • 846 days Forbes: Aramco Remains Largest Company In The Middle East
  • 848 days Caltech Scientists Succesfully Beam Back Solar Power From Space
  • 1,248 days Could Crypto Overtake Traditional Investment?
  • 1,253 days Americans Still Quitting Jobs At Record Pace
  • 1,255 days FinTech Startups Tapping VC Money for ‘Immigrant Banking’
  • 1,258 days Is The Dollar Too Strong?
  • 1,258 days Big Tech Disappoints Investors on Earnings Calls
  • 1,259 days Fear And Celebration On Twitter as Musk Takes The Reins
  • 1,261 days China Is Quietly Trying To Distance Itself From Russia
  • 1,261 days Tech and Internet Giants’ Earnings In Focus After Netflix’s Stinker
  • 1,265 days Crypto Investors Won Big In 2021
  • 1,265 days The ‘Metaverse’ Economy Could be Worth $13 Trillion By 2030
  • 1,266 days Food Prices Are Skyrocketing As Putin’s War Persists
  • 1,268 days Pentagon Resignations Illustrate Our ‘Commercial’ Defense Dilemma
  • 1,269 days US Banks Shrug off Nearly $15 Billion In Russian Write-Offs
  • 1,272 days Cannabis Stocks in Holding Pattern Despite Positive Momentum
  • 1,273 days Is Musk A Bastion Of Free Speech Or Will His Absolutist Stance Backfire?
  • 1,273 days Two ETFs That Could Hedge Against Extreme Market Volatility
  • 1,275 days Are NFTs About To Take Over Gaming?
What's Behind The Global EV Sales Slowdown?

What's Behind The Global EV Sales Slowdown?

An economic slowdown in many…

How The Ultra-Wealthy Are Using Art To Dodge Taxes

How The Ultra-Wealthy Are Using Art To Dodge Taxes

More freeports open around the…

  1. Home
  2. Markets
  3. Other

I Say, Let 'Em Crash

John Mauldin wrote a piece last week about Brown-Vitter, a piece of legislation making its way through Congress that has a "simple" approach to getting the government out of the bank-rescue business: for big banks (basically defined in the legislation as banks who use derivatives to structure customer deals), a massive capital buffer is demanded, which would effectively take big US banks out of the derivative business and greatly increase costs and decrease variety of derivative and other solutions (many bonds issued by corporate entities are coupled with a swap to the dealer, which would now be subject to a massive capital charge).

The appeal of the legislation is its simplicity. It simply destroys the business model of the largest banks.

Moreover, it doesn't solve the "too big to fail" problem. It merely changes the hurdle of how much bad stuff needs to happen, in order to cause a bank to fail in the first place and to require saving. It wouldn't cause the government to exit the position of writing puts on banks: it would merely move the strike prices of those puts.

I will say that in my interactions with Wall Street banks, I have not run across anyone who is concerned, at least not yet, that Brown-Vitter will actually become law. It is simply too blunt of an approach - akin to burning a town down in order to keep it from being flooded.

The cynic in me says that all of this legislation is designed mainly to produce big contributions from banks to the reelection campaigns of public officials. There is a much simpler way to get the government out of the too-big-to-fail business, which furthermore does not involve causing massive side effects in the derivatives and other markets. Congress could simply pass a rule that prohibits the government (including the Fed) from bailing out a private enterprise. Problem solved, subsidy ended.

The Fed already has the power to close down and wind down insolvent banks. Of all of the Fed's powers, this is the one that has been used most successfully over the years. It isn't the failure of a bank that is the problem, but the chaotic failure of a bank that is the problem. Task the Fed with reducing the chaos inherent in large bank failures, and let the chips otherwise fall where they may.

 

Back to homepage

Leave a comment

Leave a comment