The even cloudier future of peer-to-peer lending

In early 2015, we expressed skepticism about the prospects for peer-to-peer (P2P) lending. Like other efforts to slash financial transactions costs (think “block chain”), P2P was all the rage. The notion was that the lenders and borrowers could cut out the middle man, “disrupting” traditional finance.

For that to work, for P2P investors to get an attractive risk-adjusted return, it would have to embody a technology that can screen and monitor borrowers at a lower cost than do existing intermediaries in the long-established sector of consumer credit. That seemed especially doubtful in a competitive industry like credit card lending, which is what P2P lending often turns out to be...

Donald Trump, Treasury Debt and the Dollar

The time has come to start weighing in on presidential candidate Donald Trump’s statements on economic policy. Today, we examine his comments about U.S. government debt. After saying that he is the “king of debt” and that he “loves debt,” Mr. Trump recently went on suggest that if interest rates were to rise, he would seek to “make a deal” on U.S. Treasury debt. In his words, “I could see long-term renegotiations where we borrow long term at very low rates.” He also called this action: “refinance debt with longer term.”

Mr. Trump appears to assume that his sensibilities as real estate mogul and dealmaker can be directly applied to government debt management policy. They cannot. Treasury securities bear absolutely no resemblance to the debt issued by Trump Entertainment Resorts, which went bankrupt in 1991, 2004, 2009, and 2014...

GSEs: Reforms at the Margin

To borrow a phrase, a crisis as deep as the 2007-2008 collapse of U.S. housing finance is a terrible thing to waste. Yet, nearly eight years after investors shunned their debt, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remain in federal conservatorship. And there is no end in sight to the government’s dominant role in housing finance: securitizations by the GSEs and federal agencies still accounted for nearly 70% of originations in 2015 (with qualifying loan-to-value ratios as high as 97%). Despite this extensive government intervention in mortgage finance, the U.S. home ownership rate fell to 63.6% last year, its lowest level since 1966.

To say that U.S. housing finance is both inefficient and risky seems a dramatic understatement...

Leverage and Risk

A highly leveraged financial system is one prone to collapse. This notion underlies modern financial regulation: the control of systemic risk requires controlling leverage. And, it is what drives proposals for high capital requirements and to tax leverage. But, as is always the case with regulation, the devil is in the details. For one thing, we need a way to measure leverage. This turns out to be a surprisingly difficult task. Second, while risk varies positively with leverage, risk-taking can increase without increasing leverage, so we need to think about all major forms of risk-taking that can threaten financial stability...

Liquidity Runs

Despite mixed evidence, concerns about a decline of bond market liquidity persist. The typical worry is that a sudden decline in bond demand will cause prices to plunge and have serious knock-on effects.

Naturally, the issue merits attention: episodes in which market liquidity disappears rapidly can be disruptive (witness the flash crashes and flash rallies in various equity and bond markets in recent years). However, these incidents tend to be fleeting. Instead, from the perspective of financial stability, funding liquidity is the greater source of vulnerability...

The Map is the Message: Regional Feds versus Euro-area NCBs

Some time ago, we wrote about how the Fed and the ECB’s governance and communication were converging. Our focus was on the policy, governance and communications framework, including the 2% inflation objective, the voting rotation, post-meeting press conference, prompt publication of meeting minutes, and the like.

But important differences are built into the legal design of these two systems. Perhaps the most important one is the contrasting roles of the regional Federal Reserve Banks and that of the National Central Banks (NCBs)...

The Fed's Approach to Risk Management

“[W]e may well at present be seeing the first stirrings of an increase in the inflation rate--something that we would like to happen.” Stanley Fischer, Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board

The primary task of the central bank is to avert catastrophe, making sure that nothing really bad happens. This risk management approach imparts a natural asymmetry to policymakers’ words and deeds. Sometimes, it calls for bold, aggressive action. Others times, it means cautious plodding. Everyone agrees that 2008 was a clear case of the former. Most Federal Reserve officials argue that the current circumstance exemplifies the latter...

Too Big to Fail: MetLife v. FSOC

Last week, a Federal District Court overturned the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s (FSOC) designation of MetLife—the nation’s largest insurer by assets—as a systemically important financial intermediary (SIFI). Until the Court unseals this decision, we won’t know why. If the ruling is based on narrow grounds that the FSOC can readily address, it will have little impact on long-run prospects for U.S. financial stability.

However, if the Court has materially raised the hurdle to SIFI designation—and if its ruling holds up on appeal—“too big to fail” nonbanks could again loom large in future financial crises, making them both more likely and more damaging...

Making Markets Safe: The Role of Central Clearing

The financial crisis of 2007-09 prompted two distinct types of regulatory reforms. The first uses capital and liquidity requirements to make financial institutions resilient in the face of severe macroeconomic events. The second concerns market infrastructure and the ability to trade securities and derivatives or to use them as collateral. Here, the emphasis is on both information collection through trade reporting—who is buying or selling what to whom--and on shifting transactions from over-the-counter (OTC) markets to central clearing.

This post examines central clearing of OTC derivatives and highlights its importance for financial stability...

Central Banks and Systematic Risks

Modern economies are built by businesses that take risk. As Edison’s defense suggests, successful risk-takers need scope to experiment without distraction. Economies lacking institutions to support risk-taking are prone to stagnation.

By securing economic and financial stability, central banks play a key role in promoting the risk-taking that is fundamental to innovation and capital formation. On rare occasions, it is officials’ bold willingness to do “whatever it takes” that does the job. More often, it is a series of moderate, gradual actions. Yet, even then, the understanding that the central bank has the broad capacity to act—and, when necessary, to do so without limit—is a key factor underpinning the stability of the system...

Commentary

Money, Banking, and Financial Markets