Resolution

Ten Precepts for 21st Century Regulators

The regulatory reforms that followed the financial crisis of 2007-09 created a financial system that is far more resilient than the one in place 15 years ago. Yet, the events of March 2023 make clear that the progress thus far is simply not enough. To ensure resilience, we need to do more.

To steer the process of further reform, we propose a set of 10 precepts that those who make the rules should keep in mind as they refine the prudential framework. These practical guidelines lead us to conclusions that mirror those in a recent post: regulation should be more rule-based (less reliant on supervisory insight or discretion); simpler and more transparent; stricter and more rigorous; and more efficient in its use of resources. Concretely, this approach means increasing capital and liquidity requirements; shifting to mark-to-market accounting; and improving the transparency, flexibility and severity of capital and liquidity stress tests.

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Reforming the Federal Home Loan Bank System

We authored this post jointly with our friend and colleague, Lawrence J. White, Robert Kavesh Professor of Economics at the NYU Stern School of Business.

Some government financial institutions strengthen the system; others do not. In the United States, as the lender of last resort (LOLR), the Federal Reserve plays a critical role in stabilizing the financial system. Unfortunately, their LOLR job is made harder by the presence of the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) system—a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) that acts as a lender of next-to-last resort, keeping failing institutions alive and increasing the ultimate costs of their resolution.

We saw this dangerous pattern clearly over the past year when loans (“advances”) from Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs) helped postpone the inevitable regulatory reckoning for Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank (see Cecchetti, Schoenholtz and White, Chapter 9 in Acharya et. al. SVB and Beyond: The Banking Stress of 2023).

From a public policy perspective, FHLB advances have extremely undesirable properties. First, in addition to being overcollateralized, these loans are senior to other claims on the borrowing banks—including those of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve: If the borrower defaults, the FHLB lender has a “super-lien.” Second, there is little timely disclosure about the identity of the borrowers or the amount that they borrow. Third, they are willing to provide speedy, low-cost funding to failing institutions—something we assume private lenders would not do.

In this post, we make specific proposals to scale back the FHLB System’s ability to serve as a lender to stressed banks….

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Making Banking Safe

The regulatory reforms that followed the financial crisis of 2007-09 created a financial system that is far more resilient than the one we had 15 years ago. Today, banks and some nonbanks face more rigorous capital and liquidity requirements. Improved collateral rules for market-making activities can dampen shocks. And, some institutions are subject to well-structured resolution regimes.

Yet, the events of March 2023 make clear that the system remains fragile. The progress thus far is simply not enough. What else needs to be done?

In a new essay, we address this critical question. Our assessment of the banking system turmoil of 2023 leads us to several obvious conclusions, some of which clearly escaped both bank managers and their supervisors. Perhaps the simplest and most significant is that banks can survive either risky assets or volatile funding, but not both. Another is that supervisors are willing to treat some banks as systemic in death, but not in life.

We also draw two compelling lessons from the recent supervisory and resolution debacles. First, a financial system which relies heavily on supervisory discretion is unlikely to prove resilient. Second, authorities with emergency powers to bail out intermediaries during a panic will always do so. That is, policymakers are incapable of making credible commitments to impose losses on depositors and others. In our view, the only way to address this commitment problem is to prevent crises….

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The Future of Deposit Insurance

This post is authored jointly with our friend and colleague, Thomas Philippon, Max L. Heine Professor of Finance at the NYU Stern School of Business

Deposit insurance is a key regulatory tool for limiting bank runs and panics. In the United States, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has insured bank deposits since 1934. FDIC-insured deposits are protected by a credible government guarantee, so there is little incentive to run.

However, deposit insurance creates moral hazard. By eliminating the incentive of depositors to monitor their banks, it encourages bank managers to rely on low-cost insured deposits to fund risky activities. In the extreme, with 100% deposit insurance coverage, banks would have virtually no incentive to issue equity or debt.

Against this background, and in light of the events of March-April 2023, we ask what is to be done about deposit insurance. To prevent bank runs, should there be an increase in the legal limit? If so, how can authorities balance the costs of runs and panics against the costs associated with moral hazard, while keeping in mind the potential financial burden on the public? Or, are there alternatives?

We emphasize three promising ways to enhance deposit insurance: a higher insurance cap for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), new resolution rules, and the option to purchase supplementary deposit insurance. In addition, and as regular readers of this blog might expect, we also think that higher capital requirements should be part of the solution: if we require that banks increase the degree to which they finance their assets with capital (rather than deposits), the risk of runs and panics would decline even without raising the cap on deposit insurance….

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The Extraordinary Failures Exposed by Silicon Valley Bank's Collapse

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) revealed an extraordinary range of astonishing failures. There was the failure of the bank’s executives to manage the maturity and liquidity risks that are basic to the business of banking: they failed Money and Banking 101. There was the failure of market discipline by investors who either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the fact that the bank was severely undercapitalized for the better part of a year before it collapsed. There was the failure of the supervisors to compel the bank to manage the simplest and most obvious risks. And, there was the failure of the resolution authorities to act in mid-2022 when SVB’s true net worth had sunk far below the minimum threshold for “prompt corrective action.”

Waiting several quarters to act deepened the threat to the financial system, undermining confidence not only in many other banks but also in the competence of the supervisors. The extraordinary rescue actions last week by both the deposit insurer (FDIC) and the lender of last resort (Federal Reserve) are just a sign of the high costs associated with restoring financial stability when confidence plunges.

In this post we discuss each of these four failures, as well as the actions that authorities took to stabilize the financial system following the SVB failure. To anticipate our conclusions, we see an urgent need for officials to do at least five things:

  • First, to regain credibility, supervisors need to do an immediate review of the unrealized losses on the balance sheets of all 45 banks with assets in excess of $50 billion.

  • Second, they should perform a speedy and focused stress test on each of these banks to assess the  impact on their true net worth of a sizable further increase in interest rates. Any bank with a capital shortfall should be compelled either to issue new equity or shut down. (To ensure the availability of the necessary resources, authorities will need to have a pool of public funds available to recapitalize banks that cannot attract private investors.)

  • Third, to restore resilience, Congress must reverse the 2018-19 weakening of regulation that allowed medium-size banks to escape rigorous capital and liquidity requirements.

  • Fourth, the authorities must change accounting rules to ensure that reported capital more accurately reflects each bank’s true financial condition.

  • Finally, policymakers should assess the impact on the financial system and on the federal debt arising from the now-implicit promise to insure all deposits in a crisis. To limit risk taking, correspondingly greater fees and higher capital and liquidity requirements should accompany any explicit increase in the cap on deposit insurance.

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On the Resilience of Large U.S. banks

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007-09, policymakers were intent on making the financial system able to weather an extremely severe storm. The authorities had two complementary goals: increase the financial system’s reliance on equity financing and enhance the ability of institutions to recapitalize themselves after a shock. Well, COVID-19 is upon us, and the shock looks to be bigger than the most adverse scenarios in supervisory stress tests.

Our view is that we have made limited progress in promoting resilience. In a recent post, we emphasized how COVID-19 economic disruptions are eroding banks’ capital buffers (that already were slim in parts of Asia and Europe). As the full impact economic and financial impact of COVID 19 becomes apparent, we suspect that some banks will need a form of recapitalization. They were not able to do this in 2008-09 on their own. Will this time be different …?

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The Costs of Inefficient Regulation: The Volcker Rule

By creating a new regime to limit threats to the U.S. financial system—including heightened scrutiny for systemic intermediaries and a new resolution framework—the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA, passed in July 2010) has made the U.S. financial system notably safer. However, DFA also included burdensome regulations that, in our view, reduce efficiency while doing little to improve resilience. The leading example of such a provision is DFA section 619, known as the Volcker Rule. As Duffie noted before regulators began to implement the Rule (see the citation above), it is not “cost effective.”

Ultimately, the need to focus on this overly complex and relatively ineffective regulation distracts both the government authorities and private sector risk managers from tasks that really would make the system safer. Not only that, but cumbersome rules almost surely increase pressure to ease regulation more broadly. This leads policymakers to scale back on things like capital requirements and resolution plans that we truly need to ensure financial system resilience.

In this post, we briefly describe the Volcker Rule, highlighting its complexity, its tenuous links to risk management, and its apparent negative impact on the financial system….

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What Risk Professionals Want

As memories of the 2007-09 financial crisis fade, we worry that complacency is setting in. Recent news is not good. In the name of reducing the regulatory burden on small and some medium-sized firms, the Congress and the President enacted legislation that eased the requirements on some of the largest firms. Under the current Administration, several Treasury reports travel the same road, proposing ways to ease regulatory scrutiny of large entities without changing the law (see here, here and here). And, recently, the Federal Reserve Board altered its stress test in ways that make it more likely that poorly managed firms will pass. It also voted not to raise capital requirements on systemically risky banks over the next 12 months.

A few weeks ago, one of us (Steve) had the privilege to speak at the 20th Risk Convention of the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP). Founded in 1996, GARP engages in the education and certification of risk professionals and has several hundred thousand members worldwide. (Disclosure: Brandeis International Business School and NYU Stern are GARP Academic Partners.) The organizers allowed us to solicit the views of the 100-plus attendees on two issues that are central to financial resilience: Are bank capital requirements high enough? And, do central counterparties (CCPs) have sufficient loss-absorbing buffers? They answered both questions with a resounding “NO” ….

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E Pluribus Unum: single vs. multiple point of entry resolution

Addressing the calamity posed by the failure of large, global financial intermediaries has been high on the post-crisis regulatory reform agenda. When Lehman Brothers―a $600 billion entity―failed, it took heroic efforts by the world’s central bankers to prevent a financial meltdown. The lesson is that a robust resolution regime is a critical element of a resilient financial system.

Experts have been hard at work implementing a new mechanism so that the largest banks can continue operation, or be wound down in an orderly fashion, without resorting to taxpayer solvency support and without putting other parts of the financial system in danger. To enhance market discipline, the shareholders that own an entity and the bondholders that lent to it must face the consequences of poor performance.

How can we ensure that healthy operating subsidiaries of G-SIBs continue to serve their customers even during resolution? Authorities have proposed a solution that takes two forms: “single point of entry (SPOE)” and “multiple point of entry (MPOE).” A key difference between these two resolution methods is that the former allows for cross-subsidiary sharing of loss-absorbing capital and cross-jurisdictional transfers during resolution, while the latter does not. The purpose of this post is to describe SPOE and MPOE. We highlight both the relative efficiency of SPOE and the requirements for its sustainability: namely, adequate shared resources, an appropriate legal framework and a credible commitment among national resolution authorities to cooperate….

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Ten Years After Bear

Ten years ago this week, the run on Bear Stearns kicked off the second of three phases of the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007-2009. In an earlier post, we argued that the crisis began in earnest on August 9, 2007, when BNP Paribas suspended redemptions from three mutual funds invested in U.S. subprime mortgage debt. In that first phase of the crisis, the financial strains reflected a scramble for liquidity combined with doubts about the capital adequacy of a widening circle of intermediaries.

In responding to the run on Bear, the Federal Reserve transformed itself into a modern version of Bagehot’s lender of last resort (LOLR) directed at managing a pure liquidity crisis (see, for example, Madigan). Consequently, in the second phase of the GFC—in the period between Bear’s March 14 rescue and the September 15 failure of Lehman—the persistence of financial strains was, in our view, primarily an emerging solvency crisis. In the third phase, following Lehman’s collapse, the focus necessarily turned to recapitalization of the financial system—far beyond the role (or authority) of any LOLR.

In this post, we trace the evolution of the Federal Reserve during the period between Paribas and Bear, as it became a Bagehot LOLR. This sets the stage for a future analysis of the solvency issues that threatened to convert the GFC into another Great Depression.

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Time Consistency: A Primer

The problem of time consistency is one of the most profound in social science. With applications in areas ranging from economic policy to counterterrorism, it arises whenever the effectiveness of a policy today depends on the credibility of the commitment to implement that policy in the future.

For simplicity, we will define a time consistent policy as one where a future policymaker lacks the opportunity or the incentive to renege. Conversely, a policy lacks time consistency when a future policymaker has both the means and the motivation to break the commitment.

In this post, we describe the conceptual origins of time consistency. To emphasize its broad importance, we provide three economic examples—in monetary policy, prudential regulation, and tax policy—where the impact of the idea is especially notable....

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Resolution Regimes for Central Clearing Parties

Clean water and electric power are essential for modern life. In the same way, the financial infrastructure is the foundation for our economic system. Most of us take all three of these, water, electricity and finance, for granted, assuming they will operate through thick and thin.

As engineers know well, a system’s resilience depends critically on the design of its infrastructure. Recently, we discussed the chaos created by the October 1987 stock market crash, noting the problems associated with the mechanisms for trading and clearing of derivatives. Here, we take off where that discussion left off and elaborate on the challenge of designing a safe derivatives trading system―safe, that is, in the sense that it does not contribute to systemic risk.

Today’s infrastructure is significantly different from that of 1987. In the aftermath of the 2007-09 financial crisis, authorities in the advanced economies committed to overhaul over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives markets. The goal is to replace bilateral OTC trading with a central clearing party (CCP) that is the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer....

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The Other Trilemma: Governing Global Finance

Courses in international economics usually introduce students to the impossible trinity, also known as the trilemma of open-economy macroeconomics: namely, that a fixed exchange rate, free cross-border capital flows, and discretionary monetary policy are incompatible. Why? Because, in the presence of free capital flows under a fixed exchange rate, private currency preferences (rather than policymakers) determine the size of the central bank balance sheet and hence the domestic interest rate. We’ve highlighted this problem several times in analyzing China’s evolving exchange rate regime (see here and here).

While many students learn that a country can only have two of the three elements of the open-economy trilemma, few learn that there also exists a financial trilemma. That is, financial stability, cross-border financial integration, and national financial policies are incompatible as well. The logic behind this second trilemma is that increases in financial integration reduce the incentives for national policymakers to act in ways that preserve financial stability globally. Put differently, as the benefits from financial stability policies spread beyond borders, the willingness to bear the costs of stabilizing the system at the national level decline. This has the important implication that, if we are to sustain increasing financial integration, then we will need greater international coordination among national financial regulators (see here, or for a much broader case for international economic governance, see Rodrik)....

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An Open Letter to the Honorable Randal K. Quarles

Dear Mr. Quarles,

Congratulations on your nomination as the first Vice Chairman for Supervision on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. We are pleased that President Trump has chosen someone so qualified, and we are equally pleased that you are willing to serve.

Assuming everything goes according to plan, you will be assuming your position just as we mark the 10th anniversary of the start of the global financial crisis. As a direct consequence of numerous reforms, the U.S. financial system—both institutions and markets—is meaningfully stronger than it was in 2007. Among many other things, today banks finance a larger portion of their lending with equity, devote more of their portfolios to high-quality, liquid assets, and clear a large fraction of derivatives through central counterparties.

That said, in our view, the system is not yet strong enough. In your new role, it will be your job to continue to fortify the financial system to make it sufficiently resilient.

With that task in mind, we humbly propose some key agenda items for the first few years of your term in office. We divide our suggestions into five broad categories (admittedly with significant overlap): capital and communications, stress testing, too big to fail, resolution, and regulation by economic function....

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Ending Too Big to Fail: Resolution Edition

The failure of Lehman on September 15, 2008, signaled the most intense phase of the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, fueling a run on a broad array of intermediaries. Following Congress’ approval of TARP funding that was used mostly to recapitalize U.S. financial firms, the mantra of U.S. regulators became “…we will not pull a Lehman” (Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, page 380). Thereafter, to ensure that another large institution did not fail, policymakers chose bailouts to contain the crisis. As a result, today we still have intermediaries that are too big to fail.  

The autumn 2008 experience convinced many observers of the need for a robust resolution regime in which financial behemoths could be re-organized quickly without risk of contagion or crisis. The question was, and remains, how to do it. Dodd-Frank provided a two-pronged answer: the FDIC would first rely on the bankruptcy code (Title I), and second, on a resolution temporarily funded (if necessary) by government resources (Title II). The second piece is commonly known as Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA), which is funded by the Orderly Liquidation Fund (OLF).

In response to dissatisfaction with parts of this solution, Congress and the President are working on refinements. Last month, the House passed a bipartisan revision of the bankruptcy code (Financial Institutions Bankruptcy Act, or FIBA) that would expedite the resolution of adequately structured intermediaries. And, on April 21, President Trump ordered a Treasury review of OLA, expressing concern that the OLF authorization to use government funds “may encourage excessive risk taking by creditors, counterparties, and shareholders of financial companies.”

This post considers FIBA and how it fits in with the existing Dodd-Frank resolution mechanism....

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Regulating Wall Street: The Financial CHOICE Act and Systemic Risk

With the shift in power in Washington, among other things, the people newly in charge are taking aim at financial sector regulation. High on their agenda is repeal of much of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the most far-reaching financial regulatory reform since the 1930s. The prime objective of Dodd-Frank is to prevent a wholesale collapse of financial intermediation and the widespread damage that comes with it. That is, the new regulatory framework seeks to reduce systemic risk, by which we mean that it lowers the likelihood that the financial system will become undercapitalized and vulnerable in a manner that threatens the economy as a whole.

The Financial CHOICE Act proposed last year by the House Financial Services Committee is the most prominent proposal to ease various regulatory burdens imposed by Dodd-Frank. The CHOICE Act is complex, containing provisions that would alter many aspects of Dodd-Frank, including capital requirements, stress tests, resolution mechanisms, and more. This month, more than a dozen faculty of the NYU Stern School of Business (including one of us) and the NYU School of Law published a comprehensive study contrasting the differences between the CHOICE Act and Dodd-Frank.

Regulating Wall Street: CHOICE Act vs. Dodd-Frank considers the impact both on financial safety and on efficiency. In some cases, the CHOICE Act would slash inefficient regulation in a manner that would not foster systemic risk. At the same time, the book highlights the key flaw of the CHOICE Act—the failure to address systemic risk properly....

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The Lender of Last Resort and the Lehman Bankruptcy

Professor Larry Ball, our friend and colleague, has written a fascinating monograph reexamining the September 14, 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers. Following an exhaustive study of documents from a variety of sources, Professor Ball concludes that the Fed could have rescued Lehman. The firm had sufficient collateral to meet its liquidity needs, and may have been solvent. The implication is that the worst phase of the financial crisis was preventable. (A short summary is available here.)

We are skeptical on several fronts—that Lehman was solvent, that policymakers had authority to lend to an insolvent institution, and that doing so would have limited the financial crisis...

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Living Wills or Phoenix Plans: Making sure banks can rise from their ashes

Wills are for when you die. Living wills guide your affairs when you lose the capacity to act. We’re all mortal and fragile – not just people, but firms and banks, too. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 requires systemic intermediaries (and many others) to create “living wills” to guide their orderly resolution in bad times.

In August, these Dodd-Frank living wills made front-page business news when the FDIC and the Fed rejected those submitted by the biggest banks as inadequate. That should come as no surprise. In their current form, we doubt that living wills would do much to secure financial stability...

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A note on the lender of last resort 

With the publication of former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s book Stress Test comes a reconsideration of the many aspects of government intervention during the years of the financial crisis. Should banks have been nationalized? Should the fiscal stimulus have been larger? Should underwater households have received mortgage assistance?
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