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How to cut megabanks down to size

nytimes.com

71–80 of 107 posts

Re: How to cut megabanks down to size

#71
post #29
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit unions don't participate in FDIC insurance, they have arranged their own private insurance. So it is not a necessary evil.

Credit unions participate in the NCUA, which is decidedly not private. http://www.ncua.gov/Pages/default.aspx

Sorry, you are right, I didn't realize it was a federal agency, I thought it was something they had arranged amongst themselves.

Re: How to cut megabanks down to size

#72
post #67

The criminal actions[1] of Wachovia, Lloyds, Credit Suisse, Barclays, HSBC, et al have shown that the megabanks cannot be trusted to follow existing laws. The robo-signing debacle[2] has demonstrated amply that the financial sector can't be bothered to verify their data before destroying the lives of thousands of people. The LIBOR manipulation scandal[3] proves that even the industry's own measuring rods are bent and…

I always remember what Milton Friedman used to say, he was amazed be people who see failure of regulation and propose a fix by seeking to introduce even more regulation. "well this time it will surely work!" "if only we had the right kind of regulation/people in charge!" they say. That's never gonna happen. Breaking the system in chunks artificially will not work, because it will consolidate again and buy up the regu…

I used to be an Austrian but it's been almost a century now and it's become clear to me that the Keynesians are actually correct. Even after the GFC things bounced back very quickly. The power to inflate away old debt is too useful to sacrifice.

Re: How to cut megabanks down to size

#73
post #67

The criminal actions[1] of Wachovia, Lloyds, Credit Suisse, Barclays, HSBC, et al have shown that the megabanks cannot be trusted to follow existing laws. The robo-signing debacle[2] has demonstrated amply that the financial sector can't be bothered to verify their data before destroying the lives of thousands of people. The LIBOR manipulation scandal[3] proves that even the industry's own measuring rods are bent and…

I always remember what Milton Friedman used to say, he was amazed be people who see failure of regulation and propose a fix by seeking to introduce even more regulation. "well this time it will surely work!" "if only we had the right kind of regulation/people in charge!" they say. That's never gonna happen. Breaking the system in chunks artificially will not work, because it will consolidate again and buy up the regu…

You see this as a "failure of regulation"? I see it as a failure of deregulation. We passed laws and made interpretations which reduced the effect of structural safeguards in the financial system. We didn't pass laws which strengthened those safeguards or improved oversight.

As for "manageable chunks", vs. "artificial" chunks, I point you to this comment by Alan Greenspan, in http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Brookings-Papers-Ec..., that the current size is too large, and not manageable.

> For years the Federal Reserve was concerned about the ever-growing size of our largest financial institutions. Federal Reserve research had been unable to find economies of scale in banking beyond a modest size (Berger and Humphrey 1994, p. 7; see also Berger 1994). A decade ago, citing such evidence, I noted that "megabanks being formed by growth and consolidation are increasingly complex entities that create the potential for unusually large systemic risks in the national and international economy should they fail" (Greenspan 1999). Regrettably, we did little to address the problem.

> ... However, should contingent capital bonds prove insufficient, we should allow large institutions to fail and, if assessed by regulators as too interconnected to liquidate quickly, be taken into a special bankruptcy facility, whereupon the regulator would be granted access to taxpayer funds for "debtor-in-possession financing" of the failed institution. Its creditors (when equity is wholly wiped out) would be subject to statutorily defined principles of discounts from par ("haircuts"), and the institution would then be required to split up into separate units, none of which should be of a size that is too big to fail. The whole process would be administered by a panel of judges expert in finance.

This is based on issuing contingent capital bonds, which funds a "living will" "in which financial intermediaries are required to offer their own plans to wind themselves down in the event they fail."

Re: How to cut megabanks down to size

#74
post #72
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always remember what Milton Friedman used to say, he was amazed be people who see failure of regulation and propose a fix by seeking to introduce even more regulation. "well this time it will surely work!" "if only we had the right kind of regulation/people in charge!" they say. That's never gonna happen. Breaking the system in chunks artificially will not work, because it will consolidate again and buy up the regu…

I used to be an Austrian but it's been almost a century now and it's become clear to me that the Keynesians are actually correct. Even after the GFC things bounced back very quickly. The power to inflate away old debt is too useful to sacrifice.

Hm, it's interesting, would you care to elaborate: what do you mean by "too useful"? Too useful for whom?

Re: How to cut megabanks down to size

#75
If we call for BitCoin as the solution, The Federal Reserve will fight us, using our money, to make it the villan in the narrative. If we call the division of banks as the solution, the federal reserve will support it, because gigantic entities have clout in resisting the parasitic nature of the Federal Reserve, where minor banks would have to suffer what they must.

Whatever we do, the parasites who can print and dilute our currency through systematic inflation must be appeased and satisfied, or else they will inject poison into the entire system as a retaliation for trying to remove the blood sucking parasite. The bitcoin angle won't work.

Re: How to cut megabanks down to size

#76
post #13

I'm confused by this. The large banks are (arguably) more efficient because of economies of scale, eg. less duplicated management, purchasing power. So it's probably not a good idea to limit the size of banks which is what this article seems to propose, because that'll make banking more expensive. But the flip side is: why don't we just let megabanks go bust? If they go bust, the government steps in, briefly national…

It costs a lot less to save a small bank than a big bank, and the risk is spread out over multiple organisations. If we had (for example) small banks that were more specialised, if the housing market falls through, those sorts of investment banks would disappear, but others should stay relatively untouched. That was the whole point of Glass-Steagal : if the investors mess up, at least make sure that we don't have to wipe out Grandma's savings.

Re: How to cut megabanks down to size

#77
post #6

>small institutions must submit to the rigors of the free market. >market discipline has worked to keep smaller institutions on the straight and narrow, it has been ineffective with megabanks >market participants have proved [in]effective in monitoring risks at these [huge banks]. >They know they will be protected by a taxpayer rescue should a large institution teeter. How is this not obvious to everyone involved?

Systemic risk to an investment class such as mortgages, means that most banks would be subject to the same ill effects, and smaller less diversified banks will fail. There were 157 bank failures in 2010...zero in 2006. http://www.fdic.gov/bank/historical/bank/2010/index.html

However, just limit the amount of Federal Deposit Insurance that can be issued to one entity, if we can't figure out what they're doing.

Re: How to cut megabanks down to size

#78
post #74
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be an Austrian but it's been almost a century now and it's become clear to me that the Keynesians are actually correct. Even after the GFC things bounced back very quickly. The power to inflate away old debt is too useful to sacrifice.

Hm, it's interesting, would you care to elaborate: what do you mean by "too useful"? Too useful for whom?

Well let me put it this way:

If the USA kept the gold standard, I seriously doubt they'd be the number 1 economy in 2013.

Re: How to cut megabanks down to size

#79
post #72
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always remember what Milton Friedman used to say, he was amazed be people who see failure of regulation and propose a fix by seeking to introduce even more regulation. "well this time it will surely work!" "if only we had the right kind of regulation/people in charge!" they say. That's never gonna happen. Breaking the system in chunks artificially will not work, because it will consolidate again and buy up the regu…

I used to be an Austrian but it's been almost a century now and it's become clear to me that the Keynesians are actually correct. Even after the GFC things bounced back very quickly. The power to inflate away old debt is too useful to sacrifice.

>I used to be an Austrian but it's been almost a century now and it's become clear to me that the Keynesians are actually correct.

You're just like Greenspan: an Austrian turned Keynesian.

Don't see many of those!

Re: How to cut megabanks down to size

#80
post #78
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, it's interesting, would you care to elaborate: what do you mean by "too useful"? Too useful for whom?

Well let me put it this way: If the USA kept the gold standard, I seriously doubt they'd be the number 1 economy in 2013.

But you're not explaining your claim. How can possibly printing money can make society as a whole richer? It can make certain individuals better off, for sure (the ones who receive the newly created money first while the prices are low). But how does it make the economy as a whole better off? No additional value gets created.
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