Explaining the Banking Crisis

The Collapse of Capitalism? The World Banking Crisis Examined

‘Greed is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all its forms: greed for life, for money, for love for knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind.’ Gordon Gekko, Wall St 1987.

‘Crisis, what crisis? Enough kerfuffle, it’s just a slowdown.’ Bill Emmot (former editor Economist), Guardian, 12th August, 2008

‘No need to worry, this crisis will probably turn out to be another storm in a tea-cup’ Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, 6th September 2007[and many similar statements since…]

Slow Realisation
It took a while-well over a year- for the world to wake up to the fact that the crisis was indeed a serious one and that it had to get much worse before it would get better. Kaletsky, for example, wrote, ‘a US economic recovery is now assured’ on 8th September 2008. Since then even he has realised this is the worst crisis since the Great Depression. For most of us these developments have been ‘noises off’, something happening to a much envied and much disliked group ‘fat cats’. However, the repercussions of plummeting shares, bankruptcies and non available credit will hit everyone soon enough in the form of unemployment and recession.

Sources of the Crisis

1. Eighties Reagan-Thatcher Economics
During this decade a reaction set against what was seen as the ‘over-regulation’ of the left-leaning seventies: union power was confronted and reduced; state owned operations were privatised; prices and incomes policies abandoned; upper tax rates slashed. More crucially, for the present crisis, the financial system was progressively deregulated. All this was reinforced by the fall of the USSR which seemed signal that ‘capitalism’ had won all the arguments. All over the world countries began to open up their economies to liberal capitalism: the new technology made globalization possible.

2. Big Bang 1986: this removed the distinction between stockjobbers, who were intermediaries when any stock was sold between stockbrokers, the professional financier who buys and sells on behalf of investors. It also made redundant the system whereby shares were traded via ‘open outcry’ through moving most trading to electronic processes. These changes had a dramatic effect making London the centre of world finance and helping to boost enormously the volume of world financial trade. Financial flows grew exponentially now that constraints had been loosened or scrapped; as in the 1920s debt levels grew to astonishing levels.

3. Abundance of Credit: From the early nineties investors, from Europe and especially Asia, believed a good return on their money could be gained by buying shares and securities from US banks. This meant that these banks had huge amounts of cash to lend out as capital to earn them even more money. Americans wishing to fulfil their dreams of owning their own homes constituted a large part of those seeking to take advantage of this glut of money.

Such availability of funding led to a price rise in housing and it was commonplace for homebuyers to exceed what they could afford in the knowledge that prices were soaring and that they could refinance their mortgages on more favourable terms once the discount period had expired. While the bubble of confidence lasted it seemed impossible for investment in the property market to be a poor judgment. These were golden days for builders, estate agents and property financiers.

4. Prices Ease Down and Interest Rates up: Homeowners increased from 65% to 70% of the whole and house prices more than doubled 1997-2004. Many remortgaged their refinanced properties to generate funds for consumer spending; something similar was happening in the UK as well. However, by 2005-6, when it became evident that house prices were falling and interest rates edging up; refinancing became problematic.

Notwithstanding, these developments, confidence in property was such, even at that date, that builders overestimated demand and produced surplus stock, which in turn led to reductions in values. This meant that many homeowners, overextended financially on adjustable mortgages, were prevented, through loss of equity, from refinancing, as before, when the higher rate kicked in. The result was a rising number of defaults. But worse, much worse was in store.

5. Subprime Loans: this was the practice of giving mortgage loans to bad risk customers. In some cases they had poor credit histories, insufficient deposits and poor or no employment. Some have been dubbed ‘ninja’ loans for which ‘no income, no job no assets’ were required. Companies often used ‘teaser’ rates-often 4% or even less- to acquire the business which then leapt up several points or doubled after a year or so. This often caused payment failure and subsequent repossession. It was adduced by some critics that banks and loan company staff were encouraged to sell to such risky customers because they were keen to gain the commission paid on each mortgage contract signed.

Many such sales went through in 2005-6 until by 2007 the value of such mortgages was $1.3 trillion, 20% of the whole. In March 2008, 11% of homeowners had zero or negative equity: their homes were worth less than their mortgage. By the middle of 2008 a quarter of such mortgages were not being repaid. In the first quarter of 2007 there were 239,770 foreclosures; by the fourth quarter 527,740 and by the second quarter of 2008, 739, 714, more than double the figure in just over a year.

6. Securitization: This innovation also proved toxic in that financiers devised a system whereby rights to mortgage repayments(a bit like IOUs) could be sold on to investors as ‘asset (or mortgage) backed securities’(MBS) or, a more complex formulation, ‘collateralised debt obligations’ (CDOs). These new financial products were often so complex, few could understand them, but in the atmosphere of the time, they were bought up by investors convinced they would reap a good reward. Those selling the products were, like the mortgage vendors, intent on maximizing their cut: their end of year bonuses.

Consequently these products, cleverly designed so that the ‘dodgy’ mortgages were wrapped up together with sound ones, were accorded good credit ratings and were sold far and wide to investors overseas. ‘Derivatives’ are complex products whereby a buyer agrees a priced at which something can be bought back in the future. Those embodying mortgage debts were often so complicated few could disentangle the ‘toxic’ elements of the product.

These products were often bought up by Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs). An SIV is like a bank in that it borrows money at the standard rate from other banks and uses it to buy mortgage backed securities (MBSs), thus providing funds for mortgages, credit cards and student loans. The SIV would typically earn 0.25% more on these purchased bonds than it would pay on the money originally borrowed from other banks, thus accruing profit.
In consequence the ‘subprime’ crisis in USA was exported all over the world, especially, perhaps to the UK, where we have similar attitudes to home ownership and the centre of world securities trading: the City of London.

7. Inaccurate Credit Ratings: CDOs and MBS securities were given high investment grade ratings by the relevant agencies, thus fuelling the housing boom and encouraging the viral spread of the crisis. The US Securities and Exchange Commission, in June 2008 resolved to assess the rules governing such ratings.

8. Mortgage Fraud: this phenomenon, misrepresentation of mortgage information, hugely increased, by over 1000% 1997-2005.

9. Underwriting of high-risk Mortgages: Underwriters are the people who assess the risk of loans for banks and establish the criteria of lending, regarding the ability of the borrower to repay the loan. In 2007 40% of all loans were underwritten automatically via an electronic process. A process which took up to a week was reduced to a mere 30 seconds. Many point the main finger of blame at the underwriters who did not do their jobs properly.

10. Government Policies: critics claim the regulatory machinery is outdated and helped cause the crisis. There is much debate and accusations are being made regarding who is culpable, including the following candidates:

i) Repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act in 1999. This enabled banks like Citibank to operate outside conventional banking activities like taking deposits etc.; the most important consequence was that they were able to set up SIVs and buy the dodgy MBS and CDO securities.
ii) US Dept Housing and Urban Development Mortgage Policies assisted the issue of risky loans, it is alleged. In 1995 Fannie May and Freddy Mac began to receive housing credit for purchase of loans by low income borrowers.
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Explainer: Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac: what are they?
‘Fannie Mae was founded as a government agency in 1938 as part of Roosevelt's attempt via the New Deal to provide liquidity to the mortgage market. For the next thirty years, Fannie Mae held a virtual monopoly on the secondary mortgage market in the United States.
In 1968, to remove the activity of Fannie Mae from the annual balance sheet of the federal budget, it was converted into a private corporation. Fannie Mae ceased to be the guarantor of government-issued mortgages, and that responsibility was transferred to the new Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae). Freddy Mac was invented in 1970 as a further vehicle to assist the function of Fannie Mae.
In 1995, Fannie Mae began receiving affordable housing credit for buying subprime securities. In 1999, the Clinton administration and Fannie Mae shareholders encouraged the lender to increase the number of mortgage loans offered to those of low and moderate income, both to improve rates of home ownership among those groups and to increase profits.’
How do they operate?
They buy up mortgages from banks, building societies and the like. It then repackages them by ‘pooling’ the accounts and sells them on as ‘Mortgage Backed Securities’ on the ‘secondary mortgage market’. But these huge national institutions provide a guarantee that the loans will be paid whatever the borrowers’ circumstances. So they provide both a guarantee that mortgages will be paid and, with the money they pay to banks, a hugely increased liquidity with which they can offer yet more loans.
Critics of the two institutions pointed out how they received financial support from government and then repaid in the coin of political contributions. In April 2006 Freddy Mac was fined $3.8m for making illegal campaign contributions with much of them going to members of the House Committee on Financial Services, which has some responsibility for the mortgage providing bodies.
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Progress of the Crisis

1. Stock Market falls: these had been in progress since July 2007 when the Dow Jones Index had stood at a record high of 14,000 by August the decline had begun and it continued throughout 2008, with builders and mortgage lenders suffering the most. All over the world investors withdrew from mortgage bonds and invest in ‘safe havens’.

2. Investment Banks: In March 2008 investment bank Bear Sterns, in desperate trouble, was the object of a bale-out, assisted by the Federal Bank. The rescue attempt failed and the bank, founded in 1923, bit the dus when it was taken over by JP Morgan. The Guardian reported:
In London, leading City figures said the scale of the crisis was virtually unprecedented: "It does scare me," said veteran trader Terry Smith, chief executive of specialist inter-bank broker Tullett Prebon.
"I have been working in finance in the City and worldwide for 34 years and I have never seen anything like this," Smith told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"I don't think anybody alive has seen events of this seriousness and magnitude affecting the financial markets."

3. Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac Nationalized, 8th September 2008
Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac guarantee half of all US mortgages, worth $5.3 trillion so their role is crucial to the US economy. Given their remit to assist lower income house purchasers, it was unsurprising that they should have been in the firing line as the subprime housing crisis developed. When it did, shares in the two institutions plummeted and rumours spread that they were no longer able to provide guarantees as foreclosures had reached such a crisis point.
On 7th September the Federal government stepped in to take over -i.e. nationalised- the ailing giants. George Bush explained their risk of failure was ‘unacceptable’ to the overall economy, affecting home loans car loans and consumer credit, not to mention business finance. The crisis was now exposed to the whole world and the battle by politicians to pre-empt panic and construct solutions had begun.

4. Related Failures: Shares in other investment banks, especially those known to have invested in the toxic mortgage securities, now tumbled. Investment banks were vulnerable as they do not carry large cash deposits but are dependent on big inflows of credit. Once banks stopped lending to each other this made their position desperate. On September 15th Merril Lynch’s shares, $97 in January 2007 were bought at $29 each in a takeover by the bank of America. Four days earlier shares had been only $17. 16th September AIG, the huge insurance concern was bailed out to the tune of $85bn. On 22nd September The Guardian reported:
‘The concept of a Wall Street investment bank was in its death throes today as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs succumbed to a collapse in confidence in their financial stability by converting themselves into lower risk, tightly regulated commercial banks.
Beset by plunging share prices and alarmed by the demise of competitors, the two remaining standalone Wall Street banks accepted licences from the Federal Reserve which allow them to take deposits from the public backed by federal government guarantees.’

5. 25 September, the biggest bank failure yet: Washington Mutual closed by authorities. No government however, could allow a really big bank to fail as the knock-on effects could bring the whole system down in ruins.

6. Paulsen Plan: Within a few weeks the phenomenon of investment banks, vehicle for huge incomes for their board members and CEOs, had been virtually wiped out. The world’s financial system had become frozen, with banks unwilling to lend to each other in case they also began to slide. This was the situation in which US Treasury secretary, Hank Paulsen, former CEO Merril Lynch and someone personally worth £700m, announced his hastily constructed rescue plan for the US economy, an injection of a $700bn bail-out to purchase bad debts from banks.

7. 29th September: House of Representatives throws out the Paulsen plan, at the direction of their constituents who vocally point out in media interviews and elsewhere that these Wall St ‘fat cat’ bankers had only themselves to blame for the crisis and that the little guy on Main St had traditionally been allowed to go bust, or become unemployed in the case of millions of former Rust Belt industries. Around the world shares go into free-fall as an air of panic takes hold.
Ist October: Revised plan is passed by Senate
3rd October: House of Representatives also passes the revised deal.

The Crisis According to the UK

Britain had been keen to ape the deregulation of markets pioneered in the USA, with Gordon Brown as cheerleader for New Labour. Financial services flourished; the City now contributes about 10% of the economy. As important banking is an ‘enabling’ function, allowing business to function. Without credit, business is like a body without oxygen. Debt increased within a decade to an average of 180% of disposable income, the highest proportion of any member of the G7: £1.44 trillion (equals million millions).

12th September 2007: Northern Rock sought emergency help from Bank of England causing a run on their reserves. Government steps in to guarantee all deposits in the bank.

17th February 2008: Northern Rock nationalised.

21st April: Bank of England announces it will swap risky mortgages for up to £50bn government debt or ‘liquidity scheme’.

17th September: Lloyds-TSB buys HBOS, the owner of the Halifax, for £12bn. Gordon Brown has encouraged the sale.

28th September: Bradford and Bingley nationalised.

The days of cheap credit are now over: mortgages issued have shrunk to a fraction of a year ago and formerly extravagant consumers have opted to tighten their belts. The number of mortgage products on the ,market has reduced from 30,000 in 2007 to 6300 now. Shopping has ceased to be a national obsession as more discriminating practices have begun to be adopted. Even Prince Philip has been reported as having had a 51 year old pair of trousers restyled in Saville Row. Houses are now only being sold because of debts, divorce and death; playing the market is over for at least 3-4 years. A deep recession, comparable with the 1930s seems likely to affect UK for several years.

The crisis has also affected Ireland, Iceland, Germany, France, Greece, Russia, China, virtually every developed economy. When Ireland and Germany and Greece offered blanket guarantees to savers and account holders, there was some unease with the EU lest money leached across borders to such safe havens, thus disadvantaging countries like UK which has held back from such general measures, though may now be forced to follow suit.

So far,[but see below] it would seem, politicians have floundered for a measured response. Blaming bankers for incompetence might be understandable and accurate but to revive, the economy needs a functioning banking system and such resentment is irrelevant, though clearly politically significant. Something like a restructuring of the economic system seems necessary as in 1945 at Bretton Woods. Will Hutton, in the Observer, 5th October sums the situation up as follows:

‘A 30-year experiment has come to an end. The world of go-getting investment banks has gone forever. The danger is that we go from feast to famine; debt remains a vital element in any economy, and if we too suddenly try to live without it we will crush ourselves economically. What we are witnessing is a system failure that requires a systemic response – the creation of a new system that sponsors a fairer, more productive capitalism in its place, while maintaining high flows of credit and debt.’

Postscript: On 8th October, the British government announced a £500bn bail-out of banks in the firing line aiming to improve liquidity and confidence so that banks can start lending again. Strings were attached however and it seems clear the era of big bonuses has passed.
Bill Jones October 2008.
http://skipper59.blogspot.com/