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The First Global Financial Crisis
of the 21st Century
A VoxEU.org Publication
Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)
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June 2008 Centre for Economic Policy Research
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN,978-0-9557009-3-4
Edited by Andrew Felton and Carmen Reinhart
The First Global Financial Crisis
of the 21st Century
A VoxEU.org Publication
Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)
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The Centre is pluralist and non-partisan,bringing economic research to bear on the analysis
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in England (No,1727026),
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President Richard Portes
Chief Executive Officer Stephen Yeo
Research Director Mathias Dewatripont
Policy Director Richard Baldwin
Preface ix
Introduction 1
Section 1 Why Did the Crisis Happen? 5
The relationship between the recent boom and the current 7
delinquencies in subprime mortgages
Giovanni Dell¡¯Ariccia,Deniz Igan and Luc Laeven
Why bank risk models failed 11
Avinash Persaud
Blame the models 13
Jon Danielsson
The subprime crisis,observations on the emerging debate 17
Charles Wyplosz
The subprime series,part 1,Financial crises are not 21
going away
Stephen G,Cecchetti
The subprime series,part 2,Deposit insurance and the 25
lender of last resort
Stephen G,Cecchetti
The subprime series,part 3,Why central banks should be 29
financial supervisors
Stephen G,Cecchetti
The subprime series,part 4,Does well-designed monetary 33
policy encourage risk- taking?
Stephen G,Cecchetti
The subprime crisis,Greenspan¡¯s Legacy 37
Tito Boeri and Luigi Guiso
The impact of short-term interest rates on risk-taking,41
hard evidence
Vasso P,Ioannidou,Steven Ongena and Jose Luis Peydró
Why did bank supervision fail? 45
Guido Tabellini
Contents
The subprime crisis and credit risk transfer,49
something amiss
Luigi Spaventa
The crisis of 2007,some lessons from history 51
Michael D,Bordo
Reflections on the international dimensions and policy 55
lessons of the US subprime crisis
Carmen Reinhart
Section 2 How Is the Crisis Unfolding? 61
Federal Reserve policy actions in August 2007,63
frequently asked questions (updated)
Stephen G,Cecchetti
An extensive but benign crisis? 73
Tommaso Monacelli
Not (yet) a ¡®Minsky moment¡¯ 77
Charles W,Calomiris
A B & B future for subprime borrowers? 85
Willem Buiter
Double counting 101,the useful distinction between inside 91
and outside assets
Willem Buiter
Bagehot,central banking and the financial crisis 99
X,Vives
The financial crisis,why it may last 103
Angel Ubide
Fallout from the credit crunch 107
Dennis J,Snower
Four mega-dangers international financial markets face 109
Dennis J,Snower
Federal Reserve policy responses to the crisis of 2007¨C8,113
a summary
Stephen G,Cecchetti
While the ECB ponders,the Fed moves ¨C and cleverly at that 117
Charles Wyplosz
vi The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Section 3 What Can Be Done? 119
The subprime crisis,Who pays and what needs fixing 121
Marco Onado
Filling the information gap 125
Alberto Giovannini and Luigi Spaventa
Lessons from the North Atlantic financial crisis 129
Willem Buiter
Lessons from Northern Rock,banking and shadow 133
banking
Willem Buiter
Lessons from Northern Rock,how to handle failure 137
Willem Buiter
Ratings agency reform 145
Richard Portes
How to avoid further credit and liquidity confidence crises 151
Guillermo de la Dehesa
The inappropriateness of financial regulation 155
Avinash Persaud
There is more to central banking than inflation targeting 159
Paul De Grauwe
Can monetary policy really be used to stabilize asset prices? 163
Katrin Assenmacher-Wesche and Stefan Gerlach
A missed opportunity for the Fed 167
Willem Buiter and Anne Sibert
The central bank as the market-maker of last resort,171
from lender of last resort to market-maker of last resort
Willem Buiter and Anne Sibert
Avoiding disorderly deleveraging 179
Luigi Spaventa
Chronology 183
Glossary 191
Contents vii
ix
This book is a selection of VoxEU.org columns that deal with the subprime crisis.
VoxEU.org is a portal for research-based policy analysis and commentary written
by leading economists,It was launched in June 2007 with the aim of enriching the
economic policy debate by making it easier for serious researchers to contribute
and to make their contributions more accessible to the public.
The subprime crisis,which boiled over in August 2007,was the perfect showcase
for Vox¡¯s unique approach,Mainstream media¡¯s explanations of it as a liquidity
crisis did not seem to fit the facts,How could a few deadbeat homeowners in the
United States bring down a German Landesbank,force a restructuring on a major
French bank,and compel the Fed and the European Central Bank (ECB) to under-
take emergency injections of cash? The story was surely deeper than a standard-issue
credit problem.
Starting on 13 August 2007,Vox posted a slew of columns by economists who
really knew what they were talking about and were willing to explain the crisis in
terms that any trained economist could understand,Mainstream media¡¯s limits (800
words written for the average newspaper reader) just did not work for an event of
this complexity,Vox provided commentators with the space to explain the situation
using standard economic terminology,It raised the level of the public debate and
this attracted researchers who had also been at the cutting edge of policy-making,
such as,Willem Buiter (professor at LSE and former member of the Bank of
England¡¯s rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee),Steve Cecchetti (professor at
Brandeis University and former Executive Vice President and Director of Research at
the New York Fed),Charles Wyplosz (professor at the Graduate Institute,Geneva
and adviser to central banks),Marco Onado (professor at Bocconi and former
Commissioner of the Italian public authority responsible for regulating the Italian
securities market,CONSOB),Tito Boeri (professor at Bocconi and editor of LaVoce)
and Luigi Spaventa (professor in Rome and former Chairman of CONSOB),
On behalf of CEPR and the Vox editorial board,I would like to thank Carmen
Reinhart for agreeing to edit this compilation of columns,Together with her col-
league at the University of Maryland¡¯s School of Public Policy,Andrew Felton,the
result is what follows,a primer on what is probably the worst financial crisis of our
generation.
Richard Baldwin,VoxEU.org,Editor-in-Chief and CEPR Policy Director
June 2008
Preface
Introduction
1
Global financial markets are showing strains on a scale and scope not witnessed in
the past three-quarters of a century,What started with elevated losses on US
subprime mortgages has spread beyond the borders of the United States and the
confines of the mortgage market,Risk spreads have ballooned,liquidity in some
market segments has dried up and large complex financial institutions have admit-
ted significant losses,Bank runs are no longer the subject exclusively of history.
These events have challenged policy-makers,and the responses have varied
across regions,The ECB has injected reserves in unprecedented volumes,The Bank
of England participated in the bailout and,ultimately,the nationalization of a
depository,Northern Rock,The US Federal Reserve has introduced a variety of new
facilities and extended its support beyond the depository sector.
These events have also challenged economists to explain why the crisis devel-
oped,how it is unfolding,and what can be done,This volume compiles contri-
butions by leading economists in VoxEU over the past year that attempt to answer
these questions,We have grouped these contributions into three sections corre-
sponding to those three critical questions.
Why did the crisis happen?
The first set of articles contains reflections on the reasons for the crisis,Although
it is tempting to suggest that the crisis was inevitable with hindsight,several arti-
cles emphasize the inherent uncertainty of economic analysis,Dell¡¯Ariccia,Igan
and Laeven discuss the role of uncertainty in the subprime lending boom,Persaud
and Danielsson both caution against the overreliance on standardized quantita-
tive risk models,Finally,Wyplosz counsels prudence when analysing the crisis and
its causes in the face of high uncertainty,
Several articles search for the roots of the crisis in public policy,either mone-
tary or regulatory,Cecchetti has a series of ¡®Frequently Asked Questions¡¯ about the
extraordinary monetary policy actions taken to alleviate the crisis,He argues that
crises are endemic to modern economies and should not necessarily be blamed on
monetary policy,A well-functioning financial system needs both deposit insur-
ance and a central bank with regulatory authority,he says,Boeri and Guiso dis-
agree,blaming the crisis on low US interest rates,Ioannidou et al,avoid directly
blaming the Federal Reserve for the crisis but present empirical evidence that low
interest rates,like those present in the United States in 2003 and 2004,encourage
ex-ante risk-taking.
Other articles focus on the regulatory system,Tabellini blames some of the
problem on the fragmented nature of the US regulatory system,Spaventa focuses
on the growth of off-balance sheet banking activity and argued that regulators
both missed the explosive growth of financing mechanisms like structured invest-
ment vehicles (SIVs) and failed to see the hidden risks to the banking system that
these unconventional instruments created.
Several authors reach beyond the recent past to understand the present,Bordo,
starting from 1921,finds that turning points in the credit cycle often correspond
to turning points in the business cycle as well,Reinhart reviews five major finan-
cial crises in industrial economies and concludes that the current economic prob-
lems have a great deal of precedent,
How is the crisis unfolding?
The next section consists of articles discussing the events as they unfolded,As the
crisis opened in late summer 2007,economists disagreed on its likely magnitude.
It initially appeared to be a simple liquidity problem,The Federal Reserve intro-
duced a number of novel policy responses in its role as lender of last resort role,
detailed in a continuation of Cecchetti¡¯s FAQ series,These policies included the
largest single cut in the federal funds target rate since the early 1980s,currency
swaps with foreign central banks,and three new lending mechanisms,the term
auction facility,the term securities lending facility,and the primary dealer credit
facility,Monacelli thinks that the liquidity problems are ¡®extensive but benign¡¯.
Calomiris contends that ¡®there is little reason to believe that a substantial decline
in credit supply under the current circumstances will magnify the shocks and turn
them into a recession¡¯,Buiter judges the Federal Reserve¡¯s first rate cut in
September 2007 unnecessary,because of the fiscal policy response under way,
Buiter also cautions everyone to remember the difference between inside assets,
which are a zero-sum game that just transfer money between parties,and outside
assets,which are real assets that lack an offsetting liability,Vives suggests that the
problems in modern markets such as asset-backed commercial paper,auction-rate
securities,etc.,directly parallel and require the same response as an old-fashioned
banking crisis,namely the central bank should lend freely against good collateral
at penalty rates (as Bagehot¡¯s classic wisdom suggests).
However,Ubide presciently spells out a variety of reasons why what appeared
at first to be a simple liquidity problem masked far deeper credit pathologies.
Snower tries to anticipate some of the possible international spillover effects from
the US problems,In another article,Snower outlines four mega-dangers to the
financial system and suggests that our surprise at continued crises is more sur-
prising than the crises themselves.
The section ends with another article by Cecchetti that summarizes the Federal
Reserve¡¯s reactions to date,Wyplosz admires the Fed¡¯s innovation and speed,con-
trasting it to the more cautious ECB.
2 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Introduction 3
What can be done?
VoxEU.org has published several articles with policy suggestions to prevent this
kind of crisis from happening again,One major theme was enhancing information
dissemination,In August,Onado focused on three aspects that later commenta-
tors would return to,credit ratings,evaluations of asset marketability and trans-
parency in the retail market for financial assets,Giovannini and Spaventa urge
greater dissemination of information and rethinking of the Basel II accord on
bank capital requirements,
Buiter contributes a series of articles on the policy lessons from the United
Kingdom¡¯s Northern Rock debacle,He blames both policies and institutional
arrangements,including an ineffective deposit-insurance scheme,poor regulatory
coordination and division of responsibilities,and weaknesses of the supervisory
standards embodied in Basel II.
Portes writes on regulatory reform,covering ratings agencies,sovereign wealth
funds and financial institutions,De la Dehesa urges more regulation of mortgage
brokers,greater transparency and methods to overcome banks¡¯ principal¨Cagent
problems,Persaud says that regulators need to accept that the commoditization of
lending means that instability is built into the financial system and regulators
need to proactively pursue counter-cyclical policies.
The future of monetary policy and central banking is also a recurring theme.
De Grauwe contends that inflation targeting restricts banks¡¯ ability to restrain
asset bubbles,while Assenmacher-Wesche and Gerlach warn against trying to use
central-bank policy to stabilize asset prices,Buiter and Sibert advocate the expand-
ed use of liquidity policies rather than monetary easing,They think that central
banks should act as the market-maker of last resort,Spaventa proposes that the
government should purchase illiquid securities,likening his proposal to the Brady
Plan that unfroze the Latin American debt markets in 1989.
5
Section 1
Why Did the Crisis Happen?
4 February 2008
Recent US mortgage market troubles unsteadied the global economy,This article
summarizes research analysing millions of loan applications to investigate the
roots of the crisis,A credit boom may be to blame.
Recent events in the market for mortgage-backed securities have placed the US
subprime mortgage industry in the spotlight,Over the last decade,this market has
expanded dramatically,evolving from a small niche segment into a major portion
of the overall US mortgage market,Can the recent market turmoil ¨C triggered by
the sharp increase in delinquency rates ¨C be related to this rapid expansion? In
other words,is the recent experience,in part,the result of a credit boom gone
bad? While many would say yes to these questions,rigorous empirical evidence
on the matter has thus far been lacking.
Credit booms
There appears to be widespread agreement that periods of rapid credit growth tend
to be accompanied by loosening lending standards,For instance,in a speech deliv-
ered before the Independent Community Bankers of America on 7 March 2001,
the then Federal Reserve chairman,Alan Greenspan,pointed to ¡®an unfortunate
tendency¡¯ among bankers to lend aggressively at the peak of a cycle and argued
that most bad loans were made through this aggressive type of lending.
Indeed,most major banking crises in the past 25 years have occurred in the
wake of periods of extremely fast credit growth,Yet not all credit booms are
followed by banking crises,Indeed,most studies find that,while the probability
of a banking crisis increases significantly (by 50¨C75%) during booms,historically
only about 20% of boom episodes have ended in a crisis,For example,out of 135
credit booms identified in Barajas et al,(2007) only 23 preceded systemic banking
crises (about 17%),with that proportion rising to 31 (about 23%) if non-systemic
episodes of financial distress are included,In contrast,about half of the banking
crises in their sample were preceded by lending booms,Not surprisingly,larger and
longer-lasting booms,and those coinciding with higher inflation and ¨C to a lesser
extent ¨C lower growth,are more likely to end in a crisis,Booms associated with fast-
rising asset prices and real-estate prices are also more likely to end in crises.
The relationship between the recent
boom and the current delinquencies
in subprime mortgages
Giovanni Dell¡¯Ariccia,Deniz Igan and Luc Laeven
IMF; IMF; IMF and CEPR
7
The mortgage market
Reminiscent of this pattern linking credit booms with banking crises,current
mortgage delinquencies in the US subprime mortgage market appear indeed to be
related to past credit growth (Figure 1),In a new working paper,we analyse data
from over 50 million individual loan applications and find that delinquency rates
rose more sharply in areas that experienced larger increases in the number and
volume of originated loans (Dell¡¯Ariccia et al.,2008),This relationship is linked to
a decrease in lending standards,as measured by a significant increase in loan-to-
income ratios and a decline in denial rates,not explained by improvement in the
underlying economic fundamentals.
In turn,the deterioration in lending standards can be linked to five main factors.
Standards tended to decline more where the credit boom was larger,This is con-
sistent with cross-country evidence on aggregate credit booms.
Lower standards were associated with a fast rate of house price appreciation,
consistent with the notion that lenders were to some extent gambling on a
continuing housing boom,relying on the fact that borrowers in default could
always liquidate the collateral and repay the loan.
Changes in market structure mattered,lending standards declined more in regions
where large (and aggressive) previously absent institutions entered the market.
The increasing recourse by banks to loan sales and asset securitization appears
to have affected lender behaviour,with lending standards experiencing greater
declines in areas where lenders sold a larger proportion of originated loans.
Easy monetary conditions seem to have played a role,with the cycle in lending
standards mimicking that of the Federal Fund rate,In the subprime mortgage
market most of these effects appear to be stronger and more significant than in
the prime mortgage market,where loan denial decisions seem to be more closely
related to economic fundamentals.
8 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
¨C5
0
5
10
15
0510 15 20
Growth of Loan Origination Volume 2000¨C2004 (in percent)
Change in Delinguency Rate 2004¨C2006 (in percent)
Figure 1 A credit boom gone bad?
These findings are consistent with the notion that rapid credit growth episodes,
due to the cyclicality of lending standards,might create vulnerabilities in the
financial system,The subprime experience demonstrates that even highly-devel-
oped financial markets are not immune to problems associated with credit booms.
Possible solutions
What can be done to curb bad credit booms? Historically,the effectiveness of
macroeconomic polices in reducing credit growth has varied (see,for example,
Enoch and?tker-Robe,2007),While monetary tightening can reduce both the
demand and supply of bank loans,its effectiveness is often limited by capital-
account openness,This is especially the case in small open economies and in
countries with more advanced financial sectors,where banks have easy access to
foreign credit,including from parent institutions,Monetary tightening may also
lead to significant substitution between domestic and foreign-denominated credit,
especially in countries with (perceived) rigid exchange-rate regimes,Fiscal tight-
ening may also help reduce the expansionary pressures associated with credit
booms,though this is often not politically feasible.
While prudential and supervision policies alone may prove not very effective in
curbing credit growth,they may be very effective in reducing the risks associated
with a boom,Such policies include prudential measures to ensure that banks and
supervisors are equipped to deal with enhanced credit risk (such as higher capital
and provisioning requirements,more intensive surveillance of potential problem
banks and appropriate disclosure requirements of banks¡¯ risk management poli-
cies),Prudential measures may also target specific sources of risks (such as limits
on sectoral loan concentration,tighter eligibility and collateral requirements for
certain categories of loans,limits on foreign-exchange exposure and maturity mis-
match regulations),Other measures may aim at reducing existing distortions and
limiting the incentives for excessive borrowing and lending (such as the elimina-
tion of implicit guarantees or fiscal incentives for particular types of loans,and
public risk awareness campaigns).
In response to aggressive lending practices by mortgage lenders,several states
in the United States have enacted anti-predatory lending laws,By the end of 2004,
at least 23 states had enacted predatory lending laws that regulated the provision
of high-risk mortgages,However,research shows that these laws have not been
effective in limiting the growth of such mortgages,at least in the United States
(see,for example,Ho and Pennington-Cross,2007),At the end of 2006,US feder-
al banking agencies issued two guidelines out of concern that financial institu-
tions had become overexposed to the real-estate sector while lending standards
and risk management practices had been deteriorating,but these guidelines were
too little,too late.
International concerns
Other countries thus far seem to have avoided a crisis in their nonprime mortgage
markets,The UK,for example,where nonprime mortgages also constitute an
The relationship between the recent boom and the current delinquencies in subprime mortgages 9
increasingly large share of the overall mortgage market,has thus far avoided a
surge in delinquencies of such mortgages (though in September 2007,the US sub-
prime crisis indirectly did lead to liquidity problems and eventually a bank run on
deposits at Northern Rock,the United Kingdom¡¯s fifth-largest mortgage lender at
the time),Regulatory action on the part of the UK Financial Services Authority,
resulting in the 2004 Regulation on Mortgages,which made mortgage lending
more prescriptive and transparent in the UK,may have played a role,Of course,
only time will tell how successful these actions have been,We would not be sur-
prised to learn that lending standards have also deteriorated in mortgage markets
outside the United States.
References
Barajas,Adolfo,Giovanni Dell¡¯Ariccia and Andrei Levchenko (2007),¡®Credit
Booms,The Good,the Bad,and the Ugly¡¯,unpublished manuscript,
Washington,DC,International Monetary Fund.
Dell¡¯Ariccia,Giovanni,Deniz Igan and Luc Laeven (2008),¡®Credit Booms and
Lending Standards,Evidence from the Subprime Mortgage Market¡¯,CEPR
Discussion Paper No,6683,London,CEPR.
Enoch,Charles and Inci?tker-Robe,eds (2007),Rapid Credit Growth in Central
and Eastern Europe,Endless Boom or Early Warning?,Washington,DC:
International Monetary Fund and New York,Palgrave MacMillan.
Ho,Giang and Anthony Pennington-Cross (2007),¡®The Varying Effects of
Predatory Lending Laws on High-Cost Mortgage Applications¡¯,Federal Reserve
Bank of St Louis Review 89 (1),pp,39¨C59.
Note,This article refers to CEPR Discussion Paper DP6683.
10 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
4 April 2008
Financial supervision arguably failed to prevent today¡¯s turmoil because it relied
upon the very price-sensitive risk models that produced the crisis,This article calls
for an ambitious departure from trends in modern financial regulation to correct
the problem.
Greenspan and others have questioned why risk models,which are at the centre
of financial supervision,failed to avoid or mitigate today¡¯s financial turmoil,There
are two answers to this,one technical and the other philosophical,Neither is com-
plex,but many regulators and central bankers chose to ignore them both.
The technical explanation is that the market-sensitive risk models used by
thousands of market participants work on the assumption that each user is the only
person using them,This was not a bad approximation in 1952,when the intellec-
tual underpinnings of these models were being developed at the Rand Corporation
by Harry Markovitz and George Dantzig,This was a time of capital controls between
countries,the segmentation of domestic financial markets and ¨C to get the histori-
cal frame right ¨C it was the time of the Morris Minor with its top speed of 59mph.
In today¡¯s flat world,market participants from Argentina to New Zealand have
the same data on the risk,returns and correlation of financial instruments,and
use standard optimization models,which throw up the same portfolios to be
favoured and those not to be,Market participants do not stare helplessly at these
results,They move into the favoured markets and out of the unfavoured.
Enormous cross-border capital flows are unleashed,But under the weight of the
herd,favoured instruments cannot remain undervalued,uncorrelated and low-
risk,They are transformed into the precise opposite.
When a market participant¡¯s risk model detects a rise in risk in his or her port-
folio,perhaps because of some random rise in volatility,and he or she tries to
reduce his exposure,many others are trying to do the same thing at the same time
with the same assets,A vicious cycle ensues as vertical price falls,prompting
further selling,Liquidity vanishes down a black hole,The degree to which this
occurs has less to do with the precise financial instruments and more with the
depth of diversity of investors¡¯ behaviour,Paradoxically,the observation of areas
of safety in risk models creates risks,and the observation of risk creates safety.
Quantum physicists will note a parallel with Heisenberg¡¯s uncertainty principle.
Why bank risk models failed
Avinash Persaud
Intelligence Capital
11
Policy-makers cannot claim to be surprised by all of this,The observation that
market-sensitive risk models,increasingly integrated into financial supervision in
a prescriptive manner,were going to send the herd off the cliff edge was made
soon after the last round of crises.
1
Many policy officials in charge today responded
then that these warnings were too extreme to be considered realistic.
The reliance on risk models to protect us from crisis was always foolhardy,In
terms of solutions,there is only space to observe that if we rely on market prices
in our risk models and in value accounting,we must do so on the understanding
that in rowdy times central banks will have to become buyers of last resort of dis-
tressed assets to avoid systemic collapse,This is the approach upon which we have
stumbled,Central bankers now consider mortgage-backed securities as collateral
for their loans to banks,But the asymmetry of being a buyer of last resort without
also being a seller of last resort during the unsustainable boom will only condemn
us to cycles of instability.
The alternative is to try to avoid booms and crashes through regulatory and
fiscal mechanisms which counter the incentives that induce traders and investors
to place highly leveraged bets on what the markets currently believe is a ¡®sure
thing¡¯,This sounds fraught with regulatory risks,and policy-makers are not as
ambitious as they once were,We no longer walk on the moon,Of course,
President Kennedy¡¯s 1961 ambition to get to the moon within the decade was
partly driven by a fear of the Soviets getting there first,Regulatory ambition
should be set now,while the fear of the current crisis is fresh and not when the
crisis is over and the seat belts are working again,
12 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
1 Avinash Persaud (2000),¡®Sending the Herd off the Cliff Edge,the Disturbing Interaction between Herding and
Market-sensitive Risk Management Models¡¯,Jacques de Larosiere Prize Essay,Institute of International Finance,
Washington,DC.
8 May 2008
In response to financial turmoil,supervisors are demanding more risk calcula-
tions,But model-driven mispricing produced the crisis,and risk models do not
perform during crisis conditions,The belief that a really complicated statistical
model must be right is merely foolish sophistication.
A well-known US economist,drafted during the second world war to work in the US
Army meteorological service in England,got a phone call from a general in May 1944
asking for the weather forecast for Normandy in early June,The economist replied
that it was impossible to forecast weather that far into the future,The general whole-
heartedly agreed but nevertheless needed the number now for planning purposes.
Similar logic lies at the heart of the current crisis.
Statistical modelling increasingly drives decision-making in the financial system,
while at the same time significant questions remain about model reliability and
whether market participants trust these models,If we ask practitioners,regulators
or academics what they think of the quality of the statistical models underpinning
pricing and risk analysis,their response is frequently negative,At the same time,
many of these same individuals have no qualms about an ever-increasing use of
models,not only for internal risk control but especially for the assessment of sys-
temic risk and therefore the regulation of financial institutions.
1
To have numbers
seems to be more important than whether the numbers are reliable,This is a para-
dox,How can we simultaneously mistrust models and advocate their use?
What¡¯s in a rating?
Understanding this paradox helps understand both how the crisis came about and
the frequently inappropriate responses to the crisis,At the heart of the crisis is the
quality of ratings on SIVs,These ratings are generated by highly sophisticated sta-
tistical models.
Subprime mortgages have generated most headlines,That is of course simplistic.
A single asset class worth only $400 billion should not be able to cause such turmoil.
Blame the models
Jon Danielsson
London School of Economics
13
1 For example,see Nassim Taleb (2007),Fooled by Randomness,the Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the
Markets,Harmondsworth,Penguin Books.
And indeed,the problem lies elsewhere,with how financial institutions packaged
subprime loans into SIVs and conduits and the low quality of their ratings.
The main problem with the ratings of SIVs was the incorrect risk assessment
provided by rating agencies,who underestimated the default correlation in mort-
gages by assuming that mortgage defaults are fairly independent events,Of course,
at the height of the business cycle that may be true,but even a cursory glance at
history reveals that mortgage defaults become highly correlated in downturns.
Unfortunately,the data samples used to rate SIVs often were not long enough to
include a recession.
Ultimately this implies that the quality of SIV ratings left something to be
desired,However,the rating agencies have an 80-year history of evaluating cor-
porate obligations,which does give us a benchmark to assess the ratings quality.
Unfortunately,the quality of SIV ratings differs from the quality of ratings of reg-
ular corporations,A AAA for a SIV is not the same as a AAA for Microsoft.
And the market was not fooled,After all,why would a AAA-rated SIV earn 200
basis points above a AAA-rated corporate bond? One cannot escape the feeling
that many players understood what was going on but happily went along,The
pension fund manager buying such SIVs may have been incompetent,but he or
she was more likely simply bypassing restrictions on buying high-risk assets.
Foolish sophistication
Underpinning this whole process is a view that sophistication implies quality,a
really complicated statistical model must be right,That might be true if the laws
of physics were akin to the statistical laws of finance,However finance is not
physics,it is more complex (Danielsson,2002).
In physics the phenomena being measured do not generally change with meas-
urement,In finance that is not true,Financial modelling changes the statistical
laws governing the financial system in real time,The reason is that market partic-
ipants react to measurements and therefore change the underlying statistical
processes,The modellers are always playing catch-up with each other,This
becomes especially pronounced when the financial system gets into a crisis.
This is a phenomena we call endogenous risk,which emphasizes the impor-
tance of interactions between institutions in determining market outcomes,Day
to day,when everything is calm,we can ignore endogenous risk,In crisis,we can-
not,And that is when the models fail.
This does not mean that models are without merits,On the contrary,they have
a valuable use in the internal risk management processes of financial institutions,
where the focus is on relatively frequent small events,The reliability of models
designed for such purposes is readily assessed by a technique called backtesting,
which is fundamental to the risk management process and is a key component in
the Basel Accords.
Most models used to assess the probability of small frequent events can also be
used to forecast the probability of large infrequent events,However,such extrap-
olation is inappropriate,Not only are the models calibrated and tested with par-
ticular events in mind,but it is impossible to tailor model quality to large infre-
quent events or to assess the quality of such forecasts.
14 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Taken to the extreme,I have seen banks required to calculate the risk of annu-
al losses once every thousand years,the so-called 99.9% annual losses,However,
the fact that we can get such numbers does not mean the numbers mean any-
thing,The problem is that we cannot backtest at such extreme frequencies,Similar
arguments apply to many other calculations,such as expected shortfall or tail
value-at-risk,Fundamental to the scientific process is verification,in our case
backtesting,Neither the 99.9% models nor most tail value-at-risk models can be
backtested,and therefore cannot be considered scientific.
Demanding numbers
We do,however,see increasing demands from supervisors for exactly the calcula-
tion of such numbers as a response to the crisis,Of course the underlying moti-
vation is the worthwhile goal of trying to quantify financial stability and systemic
risk,However,exploiting the banks¡¯ internal models for this purpose is not the
right way to do it,The internal models were not designed with this in mind and
to do this calculation is a drain on the banks¡¯ risk management resources,It is the
lazy way out,If we do not understand how the system works,generating numbers
may give us comfort,But the numbers do not imply understanding.
Indeed,the current crisis took everybody by surprise in spite of all the sophis-
ticated models,all the stress testing and all the numbers,I think the primary
lesson from the crisis is that the financial institutions that had a good handle on
liquidity risk management came out best,It was management and internal
processes that mattered ¨C not model quality,Indeed,the problem created by the
conduits cannot be solved by models,but the problem could have been prevent-
ed by better management and especially better regulations.
With these facts increasingly understood,it is incomprehensible to me why
supervisors are increasingly advocating the use of models in assessing the risk of
individual institutions and financial stability,If model-driven mispricing enabled
the crisis to happen,what makes us believe that future models will be any better?
Therefore one of the most important lessons from the crisis has been the expo-
sure of the unreliability of models and the importance of management,The view
frequently expressed by supervisors that the solution to a problem like the
subprime crisis is Basel II is not really true,The reason is that Basel II is based on
modelling,What is missing is for the supervisors and the central banks to under-
stand the products being traded in the markets and have an idea of the magnitude,
potential for systemic risk and interactions between institutions and endogenous
risk,coupled with a willingness to act when necessary,In this crisis the key
problem lies with bank supervision and central banking,as well as with the banks
themselves.
Reference
Danielsson,Jon (2002),¡®The Emperor has No Clothes,Limits to Risk Modelling¡¯,
Journal of Banking and Finance 26 (7),pp,1273¨C96.
Blame the models 15
16 August 2007
A basic principle of high uncertainty is to be careful,This principle also applies to
analyses of the situation,even if decisiveness in the face of turmoil is at a premium.
Better wait than make things worse,Here are a few observations to sort through
the emerging debate.
As financial anxiety keeps mounting worldwide,comments flourish and joyfully
contradict each other,Central banks are bailing out dangerous gamblers,says one.
They are skilfully preventing a 1929-style crash,says another one,Things are
being gradually normalized,some assert,This is just the beginning of a vicious
circle of unforeseen meltdown,just wait,warn others.
One thing all agree about is that uncertainty,which market participants with
short memories ¨C many of whom were teenagers or unborn the last big time
around ¨C thought was a thing of the past,has made a striking comeback.
Uncertainty did not just hit markets all over the world,it is affecting our under-
standing as well,hence the wide disparity of opinions,A basic principle of high
uncertainty is to be careful,This principle also applies to analyses of the situation,
even if decisiveness in the face of turmoil is at a premium,Better wait than make
things worse,Here are a few observations to sort through the emerging debate.
The origin of the problem is pretty well understood and adequately described
in Stephen Cecchetti¡¯s 15 August 2007 Vox column ¡®Federal Reserve policy actions
in August 2007,frequently asked questions¡¯,As the US housing bubble is working
its way out,mortgaged loans go sour,Since the institutions that granted these
loans have promptly sold them on ¨C this is the securitization process ¨C to other
institutions,which sold them on to others,and so on again and again,those who
suffer losses are the ultimate holders,There are so many of them,all over the
world,that no one knows where the losses are being borne,It could even be you,
through your pension fund or some innocuous-looking investment.
The second observation that all agree about is that the total size of the now
infamous subprime loans,even augmented by normal mortgages,does not add up
to a huge amount,Normally,most financial institutions should be able to absorb
them with much damage,Of course,a few may have bought too much of the stuff
and they will go belly-up,but that is how things normally are,Most significant
financial institutions should be able to absorb those particular losses.
The subprime crisis,observations on
the emerging debate
Charles Wyplosz
Graduate Institute,Geneva and CEPR
17
Here comes the securitization story,and it is not controversial either,The dilu-
tion of risk is a good thing,no doubt about it,But it is generally the case that any
good thing has some drawback,In this case the drawback is that no one knows
who holds how much of these bad loans,Where things got bad is that,the same
as many other human beings,and maybe a little more so,financiers are prone to
mood swings,When all was going well,they trusted each other as if they had gone
to the same schools,which in fact they did,When the situation soured,they went
at light speed to the other corner and started to suspect that everyone else was
more in trouble,especially those they knew best because they went to school
together,So the interbank market froze.
This is where disagreements emerge,Did the central banks do the right thing?
Some observers lament that they should act as lenders of last resort,which means
intervening sparingly at punishing cost,The problem with that view is that central
banks did not intervene as lenders of last resort,All central banks have the respon-
sibility of assuring the orderly functioning of the financial markets,The interbank
market is the mother of all financial markets,and it was drying up,So the central
banks had no choice but to restart the interbank markets,In addition,modern
central banks operate by announcing an interest rate,the interbank rate,If they
do not enforce that rate,they destroy their own chosen strategy,which has served
them well so far,This strategy allows them to change the interbank rate any time
they wish,But until they do so,they have no choice but to make that rate stick.
As for punishment,who were they supposed to punish? Not a particular bank,this
time,The market,then? Collective punishment is generally a bad idea,In this
case,it would be a terrible idea,If central banks punish the interbank market,they
punish all financial markets,and therefore they punish all those who depend on
these markets,which means almost all of humanity,Even Castro and Kim Jong Il.
The next big disagreement is whether things will become worse,It is easy to
build scenarios that lead to disaster,Many excellent stories circulate and,like any
good horror stories,they ring true,They usually describe hedge funds with serious
exposure to subprime loans as quickly trying to restore solvency by selling their
best assets,pushing their value down,Even hedge funds that are not exposed to
bad loans may be fighting for their lives if their clients withdraw funds,either
because they are worried or because they must,given their own regulations or
rules,Rating agencies are then forced to downgrade loads of assets and funds
whose fundamentals are perfectly safe,simply because they are being downloaded
on the market,At that stage,1929 starts looking heavenly in comparison with
what happens next,Well,that could be what is in store,But note that it does not
have to be so.
Remember first that,on its own,the mortgage crisis is small beer,Recall next
that most serious financial institutions must have made adequate provisions to
face this long-expected crisis; some call it normalization,Note that the large cen-
tral banks have shown that they have learnt the lesson from past crisis and quickly
moved to provide the interbank markets with the required liquidity,The situation
is basically sound,But financial markets are always subject to self-fulfilling
prophecies,if they believe that things will go wrong,things go wrong,That is
where we stand now.
Isn¡¯t it very frustrating to find ourselves,once again,on the verge of disaster
and realize that our well-being depends on the whims of a few financiers not
18 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
particularly known for being sedate? Why can¡¯t we prevent this once and for all?
The sad thing is that armies of regulators and supervisors have been doing just
that for years and years,Remember Basel II,meant to be even better than Basel I?
Nowadays banks are so tightly regulated that it is almost not fun any more to be
a banker,Well,almost,Banking is about lending,and lending is risky,In addition,
as we all know,high risk means high (expected) return,Naturally,bankers have
responded to regulation by carrying on with lending,risky and not risky,but they
have been subcontracting the risk that they are not supposed to hold,The great
securitization wave is partly a consequence of the great regulation operation.
The deeper moral is simple,Financial markets exist to do risky things,The more
risk they take,the higher the (expected) returns,You can use regulation to squeeze
risk out of a segment of the market,say banks,but you do not eliminate the risk,
you just move it elsewhere,New segments,say hedge funds,emerge to take over
the risk and the high (expected) returns that go with it,The problem is that little
is known of the new segment and its players,so the armies of regulators and super-
visors that protect us look in the wrong direction because they do not know where
to look,There has been much talk about regulating the hedge funds; it might
happen,so the game will move elsewhere,The only way to eliminate financial
crises is to fully eliminate risk,Kim Jong Il knows how,eliminate financial insti-
tutions,But that means no (expected) returns.
The subprime crisis,observations on the emerging debate 19
26 November 2007
This is the first in a series of four essays exploring the lessons from the subprime
turmoil,It sets the stage for the series,arguing that financial crises are intrinsic to the
modern economy,but both individuals and governments should make adjustments
to reduce the frequency of financial crises and their impact on the broader economy.
While the crisis may not be over,we can still pause and take stock,What lessons
should we take away from the turmoil that began in early August 2007? Most of
what I will discuss is not new,But recent events have brought some important
issues into better focus,Reflecting on the central causes of the problems we cur-
rently face leads me to conclude,there will always be a next crisis.
Its centrality to industrial economic activity,combined with a potential for
abuse,has made the financial system one of the most heavily regulated parts of
our economy,Through a variety of regulators and supervisors with overlapping
responsibilities,governments make voluminous rules and then set out to enforce
them,The idea of a laissez-faire financial system makes no sense even to most
ardent champions of the free market.
Even with intense oversight by the governmental authorities ¨C in the United
States we have the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency,the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve,as well as state banking authori-
ties ¨C crises continue to come,One reason for this is the natural tendency of
officials to fight the last battle,looking for systemic weaknesses revealed by the
most recent crisis,So,when complex automated trading schemes were thought to
have contributed to the October 1987 stockmarket crash,circuit breakers were put
in place that shut down computer-based order systems when indices move by
more than a certain amount,In the aftermath of the Asian crisis,the IMF created
new lending facilities in an attempt to address issues of contagion ¨C in essence,to
deal with countries that were innocent victims of problems created elsewhere.
And when LTCM collapsed there was a flurry of activity to understand the poten-
tial impact of what were called highly leveraged institutions,
As necessary as each of these reforms may have been,we are not going to stop
tomorrow¡¯s crises by looking backwards,Financial innovators will always seek out
the weakest point in the system,Innovations will both exploit flaws in the regu-
latory and supervisory apparatus and manipulate the inherent limitations of the
The subprime series,part 1:
Financial crises are not going away
Stephen G,Cecchetti
Bank for International Settlements and CEPR
21
relationship between asset managers and their investor clients,The 2007 crisis
provides examples of both of these,Let us look at each in turn.
Innovations exploited flaws in the regulatory and supervisory
apparatus
Financial institutions have been allowed to reduce the capital that they hold by
shifting assets to various legal entities that they do not own,what we now refer to
as conduits and SIVs,(Every financial crisis seems to come with a new vocabulary.)
Instead of owning the assets,which would have attracted a capital charge,the
banks issued various guarantees to the SIVs,guarantees that did not require the
banks to hold capital.
The purpose of a financial institution¡¯s capital is to act as insurance against
drops in the value of its assets,The idea is that even if some portion of a bank¡¯s
loan portfolio goes bad,there will still be sufficient resources to pay off depositors.
Since capital is expensive,bank owners and managers are always on the lookout
for ways to reduce the amount they have to hold,It is important to keep in mind
that under any system of rules,clever (and very highly paid) bankers will always
develop strategies for holding the risks that they want as cheaply as they can,
thereby minimizing their capital.
Manipulation of the asset manager¨Cclient relationship
But this is not the only problem,Financial innovators will also seek ways in which
to exploit the relationship between the ultimate investor (the principal) and the
managers of the investor¡¯s assets (the agent),The problem is that the agent acts
primarily in his or her personal interest,which may or may not be the same as the
interest of the principal,The principal¨Cagent problem is impossible to escape.
Think about the manager of a pension fund who is looking for a place to put
some cash,
Rules,both governmental and institutional,restrict the choices to high-rated
fixed-income securities,The manager finds some AAA-rated bond that has a slightly
higher yield than the rest,Because of differences in liquidity risk,for example,one
bond might have a yield that is 20 or 30 basis points (0.20 or 0.30 percentage
points) higher,Looking at this higher-yielding option,the pension-fund manager
notices that there is a very slightly higher probability of a loss,But,on closer
examination,he sees that this higher-yielding bond will only start experiencing
difficulties if there is a system-wide catastrophe,Knowing that in the event of
crisis,he will have bigger problems than just this one bond,the manager buys it,
thereby beating the benchmark against which his performance is measured,I submit
that there is no way to stop this,Managers of financial institutions will always
search for the boundaries defined by the regulatory apparatus,and they will find
them,After all,detailed regulations are a guide for how to legally avoid the spirit
of the law,And the more detailed the rules,the more ingenious the avoidance.
This brand of ingenuity is very highly rewarded,so I am sure these strategies will
continue.
22 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Conclusions
So,what to do? Both individuals and government officials need to make adjust-
ments,Individual investors need to demand more information and they need to
get it in a digestible form,As individuals we should adhere to the same principle
that President Ronald Reagan followed in agreements over nuclear weapons with
the Soviet Union,trust,but verify,We should insist that asset managers and
underwriters start by disclosing the detailed characteristics of what they are sell-
ing together with their costs and fees,This will allow us to know what we buy,as
well as understand the incentives that our bankers face.
As for government officials,most of the lessons point to clarifying the relative
riskiness associated with various parts of the financial system,Elsewhere I have
suggested that at least some of the problems revealed by the current crisis can be
ameliorated by increasing the standardization of securities and encouraging trad-
ing to migrate to organized exchanges.
Next articles
In the next essays in this series I will continue along this theme,Part 2 discusses
the lesson I have taken away from the Bank of England¡¯s recent experience,that a
lender of last resort is no substitute for deposit insurance,In part 3,I address
whether central banks should have a direct role in financial supervision,conclud-
ing that they should,And finally,in part 4,I examine whether central banks¡¯
actions have created moral hazard,encouraging asset managers to take on more
risk than is in society¡¯s interest,My answer is no.
Notes,Deposit insurance has a dramatic impact on the amount of capital a bank holds,With deposit insurance,
depositors do not care about the assets on their bank¡¯s balance sheet,And without supervision from their liability
holders (the depositors) there is a natural tendency to increase the risk that they take,The bank¡¯s owners and man-
agers get the upside if the higher-risk loans and investments yield high returns,while the deposit insurer faces the
downside if the risky assets fail to pay off,The response to this is to regulate banks and force them to hold capital.
The argument that follows is due to Joshua D,Coval,Jakub W,Jurek and Erik Stafford (2007),¡®Economic
Catastrophe Bonds¡¯,Harvard Business School Working Paper 07-102,(June).
I made this proposal initially in ¡®A Better Way to Organize Securities Markets¡¯,Financial Times,4 October 2007,
and provide more details in ¡®Preparing for the Next Financial Crisis¡¯ published initially at
www.eurointelligence.com on 5 November 2007,and reprinted at www.voxeu.com on 18 November 2007.
The subprime series,part 1,Financial crises are not going away 23
28 November 2007
The second essay in this 4-part series discusses the lesson from the Bank of
England¡¯s recent experience,arguing that a lender of last resort is no substitute for
a well-designed deposit insurance mechanism.
For decades a debate has been simmering over the advisability of deposit insur-
ance,One side produces evidence that insuring deposits makes financial crises
more likely.
1
These critics of deposit insurance as the first line of defence against
bank panics go on to argue that that the central bank,in its role as lender of
last resort,can stem bank panics,Countering this is the view that,as a set of hard
and fast rules,deposit insurance is more robust than discretionary central bank
lending,In my view,the September 2007 bank run experienced by the British
mortgage lender Northern Rock settles this debate once and for all ¨C deposit insur-
ance is essential to financial stability.
To understand this conclusion,we need to look carefully at experiences with
central bank extensions of credit ¨C discount lending ¨C and at the varying experi-
ence with deposit insurance,Let¡¯s start with the lender of last resort.
Lender of last resort
In 1873 Walter Bagehot suggested that,in order to prevent the failure of solvent
but illiquid financial institutions,the central bank should lend freely on good
collateral at a penalty rate.
2
By lending freely,he meant providing liquidity on
demand to any bank that asked,Good collateral would ensure that the borrowing
bank was in fact solvent,and a high interest rate would penalize the bank for
failing to manage its assets sufficiently cautiously,While such a system could work
to stem financial contagion,it has a critical flaw,For Bagehot-style lending to
work,central bank officials who approve the loan applications must be able to dis-
tinguish an illiquid from an insolvent institution,But since there are no operat-
The subprime series,part 2,Deposit
insurance and the lender of last resort
Stephen G,Cecchetti
Bank for International Settlements and CEPR
25
1 This is the conclusion reached by Asli Demirgü?-Kunt and Edward Kane in their summary of international
research on this issue,See their paper,¡®Deposit Insurance around the Globe,Where does it Work?¡¯,Journal of
Economic Perspectives 16 (2) (Spring 2002),pp,175¨C95.
2 The original source is Walter Bagehot (1873),Lombard Street,A Description of the Money Market,London:
Henry S,Kin & Co.
ing financial markets and no prices for financial instruments during times of
crisis,computing the market value of a bank¡¯s asset is almost impossible,Because
a bank will go to the central bank for a direct loan only after exhausting all oppor-
tunities to sell its assets and borrow from other banks without collateral,the need
to seek a loan from the government draws its solvency into question.
3
Deposit insurance
Deposit insurance operates in a way that contrasts sharply with the lender of last
resort,A standard system has an explicit deposit limit that protects the bank¡¯s
liability holders ¨C usually small depositors ¨C from loss in the event that the bank
fails,Guarantees are financed by an insurance fund that collects premiums from
the banks,Logic and experience teach us both that insurers have to be national in
scope and backed,implicitly if not explicitly,by the national government trea-
sury¡¯s taxing authority,Funds that are either private or provided by regional
governments are simply incapable of credibly guaranteeing the deposits in the
entire banking system of a country.
But as I suggested at the outset,deposit insurance has its problems,We know
that insurance changes people¡¯s behaviour,Protected depositors have no incentive
to monitor their bankers¡¯ behaviour,Knowing this,bankers take on more risk than
they would normally,since they get the benefits while the government assumes
the costs,In protecting depositors,then,deposit insurance encourages creates
moral hazard ¨C something it has in common with the lender of last resort.
Which is better?
How can we figure out whether the lender of last resort or deposit insurance works
better? A physical scientist faced with such a question would run a controlled
experiment,drawing inferences from variation in experimental conditions.
Monetary and financial policy-makers cannot do this,Imagine a statement
announcing a policy action beginning something like this,¡®Having achieved our
stabilization objectives,we have decided to run an experiment that will help us
with further management of the economic and financial system...¡¯
There is an alternative to irresponsible policy experiments,figuring out which
policies are likely to work best requires us to look at the consequences of differ-
ences that occur on their own,Comparing the mid-September 2007 bank run
experienced by a UK mortgage lender,Northern Rock,with recent events in the
United States provides us with just such a natural experiment.
The US example is typical of how the loss of depositors¡¯ confidence,regardless
of its source,can lead to a run,The Abacus Savings Bank serves large numbers of
Chinese immigrants in New York,New Jersey and Pennsylvania,In April 2003
news spread through the Chinese-language media that one of the bank¡¯s New York
26 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
3 Another flaw in the Bagehot framework is that banks appear to attach a stigma to discount borrowing,For exam-
ple,in over one-third of the days between 9 August and 21 November 2007 there were federal funds transactions
reported at rates in excess of the discount lending rate,In one case,on 25 October 2007 when the lending rate
was set at 5.25%,the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported an intra-day high of 15%.
City managers had embezzled more than $1m,Frightened depositors,unfamiliar
with the safeguards in place at US banks,converged on three of the institution¡¯s
branches to withdraw their balances,Because Abacus Savings was financially
sound,having recently concluded its annual government examination,it was able
to meet all requested withdrawals during the course of the day,In the end,as a US
Treasury official observed,the real danger was that depositors might be robbed
carrying large quantities of cash away from the bank,Leaving their funds in the
bank would have been safer,But rumour and a lack of familiarity with govern-
ment-sponsored deposit insurance ¨C Federal Deposit Insurance insured every
depositor up to $100,000 ¨C caused depositors to panic.
4
Contrast this with the recent UK experience,where deposit insurance covers
100% of the first 2,000 and 90% of the next 33,000,and even then payouts can
take months,Under these circumstances,the lender of last resort is an important
component of the defence against runs.
5
Central banks are extremely wary of taking on any sort of credit risk; in some
cases there may be legal prohibitions against it,In lending operations,this trans-
lates into caution in the determining the acceptability of collateral,And here is
where the problem occurs,In order to carry out their responsibility,central
bankers must answer two important questions,First,is the borrower solvent?
Second,are the assets being brought as collateral of sufficient value?
6
The Northern Rock case brings the weaknesses of this system into stark relief.
The broad outlines of the case are as follows,Northern Rock is a mortgage lender
that financed its long-term lending with funds raised in short-term money mar-
kets,When,starting in mid-August 2007,the commercial paper markets came
under stress,Northern Rock started having trouble issuing sufficient liabilities to
support the level of assets on its balance sheet.
The natural move at this point was to seek funds from the Bank of England,But
lending requires that the answer to the two questions about solvency and collateral
quality are both yes,Were they for Northern Rock? I have no idea,Some combi-
nation of people in the Bank of England and the UK Financial Services Authority
may have known,but I wonder,Since Northern Rock is rumoured to have had
exposure to American subprime mortgages,securities for which prices were nearly
impossible to come by,it is no exaggeration to suggest that no one was in a posi-
tion to accurately evaluate solvency,As for the value of the collateral,again it was
likely very difficult to tell.
The subprime series,part 2,Deposit insurance and the lender of last resort 27
4 See James Barron (2003),¡®Chinatown Bank Endures Run as Fear Trumps Reassurances¡¯,New York Times,23 April.
5 For an exhaustive description of deposit insurance systems in the EU see Robert A,Eisenbeis and George G.
Kaufman (2006),¡®Cross-Border Banking,Challenges for Deposit Insurance and Financial Stability in the
European Union¡¯,Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Working Paper 2006-15 (October).
6 As an episode 20 years ago demonstrates,the Federal Reserve turns out to have substantial discretion in answer-
ing these questions,On 20 November 1985,a software error prevented the Bank of New York (BONY) from
keeping track of its Treasury bond trades,For 90 minutes transactions poured in,and the bank accumulated and
paid for US Treasury bonds,notes and bills,Importantly,BONY promised to make payments without actually
having the funds,But when the time came to deliver the securities and collect from the buyers,BONY employ-
ees could not tell who the buyers and sellers were,or what quantities and prices they had agreed to ¨C the infor-
mation had been erased,By the end of the day,BONY had bought and failed to deliver so many securities that it
was committed to paying out $23 billion that it did not have,The Federal Reserve stepped in and made an
overnight loan equal to that amount,taking virtually the entire bank ¨C buildings,furniture and all ¨C as collateral.
See the discussion in Stephen G,Cecchetti (2008),Money,Banking and Financial Markets,2nd edn,Boston,
MA,McGraw-Hill,Irwin.
Problem with last-resort lending
So,here is the problem,discount lending requires discretionary evaluations based
on incomplete information during a crisis,Deposit insurance is a set of pre-
announced rules,The lesson I take away from this is that if you want to stop bank
runs ¨C and I think we all do ¨C rules are better.
This all leads us to thinking more carefully about how to design deposit insur-
ance,Here,we have quite a bit of experience,As is always the case,the details
matter and not all schemes are created equal,A successful deposit-insurance
system ¨C one that insulates a commercial bank¡¯s retail customers from financial
crisis ¨C has a number of essential elements,Prime among them is the ability of
supervisors to close preemptively an institution prior to insolvency,This is what,
in the United States,is called ¡®prompt corrective action¡¯,and it is part of the
detailed regulatory and supervisory apparatus that must accompany deposit insur-
ance.
In addition to this,there is a need for quick resolution that leaves depositors
unaffected,Furthermore,since deposit insurance is about keeping depositors from
withdrawing their balances,there must be a mechanism whereby institutions can
be closed in a way that depositors do not notice,At its peak,during the clean-up
of the US savings and loan crisis,American authorities were closing depository
institutions at a rate of more than two per working day ¨C and they were doing it
without any disruption to individuals¡¯ access to their deposit balances.
Returning to my conclusion,I will reiterate that this episode makes clear that a
well-designed rules-based deposit insurance scheme should be the first step in pro-
tecting the banking system from future financial crises.
28 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
30 November 2007
The third essay in this four-part series argues that central banks should have a
direct role in financial supervision.
Central bankers regularly describe price stability as an essential foundation for
maximum sustainable growth,Well,financial stability is another one,In fact,
without a stable,well-functioning financial system,there is no way that an econ-
omy can flourish,A well-functioning financial system is like the plumbing,When
it works we take it for granted; when it does not,watch out,But,as we have seen
recently,financial markets and institutions can malfunction at a moment¡¯s notice.
To prevent this,governments regulate and supervise financial institutions and
markets,And best practice dictates that financial stability is one of the primary
objectives of the central bank.
Central banks and financial supervision
For over a decade there has been a debate over how to structure government over-
sight,What responsibilities should reside in the central bank? Different countries
resolve this question differently,In places like Italy,the Netherlands,Portugal,the
United States and New Zealand,the central bank supervises banks,By contrast,in
Australia,the United Kingdom and Japan,supervision is done by an independent
authority,Is one of these organizational arrangements better than the other? Does
one size fit all?
The events of the summer and autumn of 2007 shed new light on this question,
and my conclusion is that there is now an even stronger argument for placing
supervisory authority inside the central bank,As events unfolded through August
and September,it became increasingly clear that having the bank supervisors
separated from the liquidity provider placed added stress on the system.
1
Subprime series,part 3:
Why central banks should be
financial supervisors
Stephen G,Cecchetti
Bank for International Settlements and CEPR
29
1 The chronology of events is now well known,so I will not repeat them here,For a discussion of the initial
stages,see my description at ¡®Market Liquidity and Short-term Credit,the Financial Crisis of August 2007¡¯,
Pros and cons of separation
To understand this conclusion let me very briefly summarize the traditional argu-
ments for and against separation of the monetary and supervisory authorities.
2
Starting with the former,the most compelling rationale for separation is the
potential for conflict of interest,The central bank will be hesitant to impose
monetary restraint out of concern for the damage it might do to the banks it
supervises,The central bank will protect banks rather than the public interest.
Making banks look bad makes supervisors look bad,So,allowing banks to fail
would affect the central banker/supervisor¡¯s reputation.
In this same vein,Goodhart
3
argues for separation based on the fact that the
embarrassment of poor supervisory performance could damage the reputation of
the central bank,Monetary policy-makers who are viewed as incompetent have a
difficult time achieving their objectives.
Turning to the arguments against separation,there is the general question of
whether a central bank can deal effectively with threats to financial stability with-
out being a supervisor,There are a variety of reasons why the answer might be no.
First and foremost,as a supervisor,the central bank has expertise in evaluating
conditions in the banking sector,in the payments systems and in capital markets
more generally,During periods when financial stability is threatened,when there
is the threat that problems in one institution will spread,such evaluations must
be done extremely quickly.
Importantly,the central bank will be in a position to make informed decisions
about the tradeoffs among its goals,knowing whether provision of liquidity will
jeopardize its macroeconomic stabilization objectives,for example,They are in
the best position to evaluate the long-term costs of what may be seen as short-run
bailouts,Put another way,appropriate actions require that monetary policy-mak-
ers and bank supervisors internalize each others¡¯ objectives,Separation makes this
difficult.
Second,separation can lead central bankers to ignore the impact of monetary
policy on banking-system health,A simple example of this is the potential for cap-
ital requirements to exacerbate business-cycle fluctuations,Granted,this seems
unlikely,but regardless,the argument goes as follows,when the economy starts to
slow,the quality of bank assets decline,This,in turn,reduces the level of capital,
increasing leverage,Banks respond by cutting back on lending,slowing the econ-
omy even further,Combatting this requires that monetary policy-makers take
explicit account of banking-system health when making their decisions,And,
without adequate supervisory information,there is concern that they might not.
Most relevant to the recent experience is the fact that in their day-to-day inter-
actions with commercial banks (and other financial institutions) central bankers
need to manage credit risk both in the payments system and in their lending oper-
ations,In the United States,for example,the Federal Reserve allows banks what
30 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
2 For a detailed and very thought-provoking discussion see both the text and the references in Ben S,Bernanke,
¡®Central banking and Bank Supervision in the United States¡¯,speech delivered at the Allied Social Science
Association Annual Meeting,Chicago,Illinois,5 January 2007.
3 See Charles Goodhart (2000),¡®The Organizational Structure of Banking Supervision¡¯,Occasional Papers,no.1,
Basel,Switzerland,Financial Stability Institute (November).
are known as daylight overdrafts on their reserve accounts,That is,the Fed extends
very short-term credit to banks that makes payments with insufficient balances.
4
As the lender of last resort,central banks worldwide take on credit risk,To do so
responsibly requires information about the borrower,The evidence suggests that
this is nearly impossible without having fast and complete access to supervisory
information,An example will help to illustrate the problem policy-makers face.
An example
On 20 November 1988 a computer software error prevented the Bank of New York
from keeping track of its US Treasury securities trading.
5
For 90 minutes orders
poured in and the bank made payments without having the funds as normal,But
when it came time to deliver the bonds and collect from the buyers,the informa-
tion had been erased from the system,By the end of the day,the Bank of New York
had bought and failed to deliver so many securities that it was committed to
paying out $23 billion that it did not have,The Federal Reserve,knowing from its
up-to-date supervisory records that the bank was solvent,made an emergency $23
billion loan taking the entire bank as collateral and averting a systemic financial
crisis,Importantly,only a supervisor was in a position to know that the Bank of
New York¡¯s need to borrow was legitimate and did not arise from fraud.
A central bank needs to manage credit risk both in the operation of the pay-
ments system and in lending operations,In short-term lending it relies heavily on
supervisory information,While this can normally be obtained from the supervi-
sor,when an institution comes under stress it can be essential to have people in
the central bank who know what is going on.
We can summarize the argument against separation as being about efficiency in
the production and use of timely information on the one hand,and the ability to
internalize the tradeoffs on the other,Separation means something akin to the
children¡¯s game of ¡®telephone¡¯ or ¡®Chinese whispers¡¯,where a message is whis-
pered from one child to the next,getting distorted at each step along the way.
Internalization of the tradeoffs means that the central bank is best positioned to
decide whether actions aimed at calming financial markets today forsake macro-
economic stabilization objectives tomorrow.
I find all of this persuasive,But for those people who do not,recent events add
another argument for central banks retaining supervisory powers,Looking at the
Northern Rock episode,one has to wonder whether individuals would have
behaved the way that they did if they had all been working inside the same insti-
tution,Recall what happened in mid-September,Shortly after the governor of the
Subprime series,part 3,Why central banks should be financial supervisors 31
4 Because reserve balances are not remunerated in the US system ¨C that is,there is no interest paid on the balances
banks hold at the Fed ¨C there is an incentive to economize on the level of reserves held,This has created a system
in which banks regularly overdraw their accounts early in the day,making payments prior to receiving them,The
Fed has announced that starting in 2011 it will start paying interest on reserve balances,at which point daylight
overdrafts seem likely to disappear.
5 At the time,computers could store only 32,000 transactions at a time,When more transactions arrived than the
computer could handle,the software¡¯s counter restarted at zero,Since the counter number was the key to where
the trading information was stored,the information was effectively erased,Had all the original transactions been
processed before the counter restarted,there would have been no problem,See the discussion in Stephen G.
Cecchetti (2008),Money,Banking and Financial Markets,2nd edn,Boston,MA,McGraw-Hill,Irwin.
Bank of England,Mervyn King,sent a letter to the Treasury Committee of the
House of Commons,
6
the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) made it known
both that Northern Rock was on the verge of collapse,and that supervisors had
known this for some time,Contrary to widespread perception of the position taken
just a few days earlier in the governor¡¯s letter,the Bank of England was forced to
make a substantial emergency loan,greatly tarnishing their public image.
Northern Rock lessons
I have no special knowledge of the merits of this particular case,Should Northern
Rock have been extended this loan or forced into bankruptcy? Could the FSA have
taken preemptive action to avoid reaching this point? What was in the best long-
term interests of the UK public in this specific case? It will take some time to sort
out the answers to these questions and determine whether specific legal changes
are needed,What I will say is that things surely would have gone more smoothly
had the Bank of England had supervisory authority so that the officials with
intimate knowledge of Northern Rock¡¯s balance sheet would have been sitting at
the table on a regular basis with the management of the central bank.
Operations in a middle of a financial crisis are more like manoeuvres during a
war,And in the heat of a battle,it is essential that a single person be in charge.
That is why the military is organized with a clear chain of command,Separation
of supervision from the central bank is like having two generals with potentially
different objectives giving orders to the same army,It is hard to see how this could
possibly work.
So,as I consider the lessons that we should take away from the financial turmoil
of 2007,one of them is that it makes sense to place at least some supervisory author-
ity inside the central bank.
32 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
6 Mervyn King (2007),¡®Turmoil in Financial Markets,What Can Central Banks Do?¡¯,paper submitted by the
Governor of the Bank of England to the Treasury Committee of the UK Parliament (12 September).
3 December 2007
The final essay examines whether central bank actions have created moral hazard,
encouraging asset managers to take on more risk than is in society¡¯s interest; the
answer is no.
Yes,but isn¡¯t that what it is supposed to do? In order to meet the objectives of high,
stable growth and low,stable inflation,monetary policy-makers must insulate the
real economy from financial-sector shocks,That is,central bankers strive to keep
credit-market disturbances problems from spreading to the economy at large,This,
I submit,is the most important lesson we have learned from analysing the mone-
tary-policy failures that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
1
Analysis of the 2007 financial crisis has been filled with comments about moral
hazard and the ¡®Bernanke put¡¯,The thrust of these criticisms is that recent mone-
tary-policy actions by the Federal Reserve provided ex-post insurance to institutions
that engaged in reckless behaviour,It is claimed that such bailouts designed by
policy-makers underwrite risk-taking that leads,inevitably,to the next financial crisis.
In the first essay in this series,I explain why financial crises of the sort that we
have been experiencing recently have been,and are likely to continue to be,a
repeated consequence of the interaction of incentives and innovation.
2
Here,I argue
that a central bank that takes an appropriate risk-management perspective is a
stabilizing force,strengthening rather than weakening the financial system.
Moral hazard
To understand this conclusion,it is useful to begin with a few definitions,Let us
start with moral hazard,To nineteenth-century insurers,a moral hazard was a per-
son who was unusually susceptible to the temptations created by insurance,That
is,someone whose character made them predisposed to carelessness and fraud.
3
Subprime series,part 4:
Does well-designed monetary policy
encourage risk-taking?
Stephen G,Cecchetti
Bank for International Settlements and CEPR
33
1 This is the essential insight of Bernanke¡¯s path-breaking work collected in Essays on the Great Depression,
Princeton,NJ,Princeton University Press,2004.
2 See part 1 above.
3 For a fascinating history of the term ¡®moral hazard¡¯ see Tom Baker (1996),¡®On the Genealogy of Moral Hazard,¡¯
Texas Law Review 75 (2) (December),pp,237¨C92.
Modern (neoclassical) economics steers clear of such normative connotations,
defining moral hazard as the risk that a borrower,or someone who is insured,will
behave in a way that is not in the interest of the lender,or the person selling the
insurance.
4
As a general rule,the existence of insurance is a good thing,both providing diver-
sification for individuals who cannot obtain it otherwise,and allowing risk to go to
those able to bear it,The fact that people can purchase fire insurance for their homes
is what makes mortgages possible,This is just one example among many of how the
modern financial system improves the efficient operation of the economy.
It is important to accept that insurance changes incentives,But that is an argu-
ment for careful design,not for elimination.
5
Bernanke put or fire insurance?
The term ¡®Bernanke put¡¯ is the descendant of the ¡®Greenspan put¡¯,My favourite
source for conventional wisdom,Wikipedia,defines the latter as the ¡®perceived
attempt of then-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board,Greenspan,of ensuring
liquidity in capital markets by lowering interest rates if necessary.¡¯ (I did not write
this entry.)
6
The term was coined in 1998 after the Fed lowered interest rates
following the collapse of the investment firm LTCM,The effect of this rate reduc-
tion was that investors borrowed funds more cheaply to invest in the securities
market,thereby averting a potential downswing in the markets.
7
I believe that critical interpretations of these actions get it exactly wrong,As
Bernanke said on 31 August 2007,¡®It is not the responsibility of the Federal
Reserve ¨C nor would it be appropriate ¨C to protect lenders and investors from the
consequences of their financial decisions.¡¯
8
It is,however,the responsibility of the
Federal Reserve,and all central banks,to make sure very bad things do not hap-
pen; protecting the public from adverse consequences of financial turmoil and
reducing the volatility in the economy as a whole,That is,something exactly anal-
ogous to fire insurance.
Does it create moral hazard to make the worst possible economic outcomes
extremely unlikely? The answer is surely no,We should not be forced to buy insur-
ance against things that policy-makers can keep from happening in the first place.
What should happen,however,is that individuals who take more risk face the
possibility of more pain.
34 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
4 For a detailed discussion of the implications of moral hazard in finance see Chapter 11 of Stephen G,Cecchetti
(2008),Money,Banking and Financial Markets,2nd edn,Boston,MA,McGraw-Hill Irwin.
5 For an excellent discussion of why traditional concepts of moral hazard are not applicable to the current circum-
stance see Lawrence Summers (2007),¡®Moral Hazard Fundamentalists¡¯,Financial Times (23 September).
6 A textbook definition of a put option goes something like this,¡®A contract that confers the right,but not the obliga-
tion,to sell a financial instrument at a predetermined price prior to the expiration date of the option.¡¯ For someone
who plans to sell the asset in the future,a put option ensures that the price at which the asset can be sold will not
go down.
7 The result of the Greenspan put was that equity investors experienced substantial losses as US stock market capital-
ization fell from $20 trillion at the 2001 peak to $11 trillion a mere two years later,A 45% loss hardly seems like
iron-clad insurance.
8 ¡®Housing,Housing Finance,and Monetary Policy¡¯,speech presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City¡¯s
Economic Symposium,Jackson Hole,WY.
Returning to the current instance,we can now ask two questions,First,have
central bankers¡¯ actions reduced the likelihood of the worst possible outcomes?
Second,have individuals and institutions that took more risk paid a higher price?
It seems to me that the answer to both of these questions is unequivocally yes.
The purpose of the Federal Reserve¡¯s actions ¨C reducing the federal funds rate tar-
get by a total of 75 basis points and the discount rate by 125 basis points ¨C have
been aimed at making sure very bad things do not happen.
9
And,if my reading of
the news is accurate,losses are being distributed based on how much risk people
have taken.
Conclusions
I have suggested we consider four concrete remedies:
Trust,but verify,investors should insist that asset managers and under-
writers start by disclosing both the detailed characteristics of what they
are selling and their costs and fees,This will allow us to know what we
buy and understand our bankers¡¯ incentives.
Standardization and trading,Governments could help clarify the rela-
tive riskiness of assets by fostering the standardization of securities and
encouraging trading on organized exchanges.
Deposit insurance,a well-designed,rules-based deposit-insurance
scheme is essential for protecting the banking system from future finan-
cial crises,Lender of last-resort actions are no substitute for deposit
insurance.
Central banks should be financial regulators,they should have a direct
role in financial supervision,In times of financial crisis ¨C as in times of
war ¨C good policy-making requires a single ¡®general¡¯ directing the opera-
tions.
My final conclusion is negative,Some observers worry that recent central bankers¡¯
responses to the subprime crisis of 2007 will encourage asset managers to take on
more risk than is in society¡¯s interest,I believe that this is wrong,Punishment is
being meted out to many of those whose risky behaviour led to the problems,
while central banks¡¯ actions have,so far,reduced the collateral damage that this
crisis could have inflicted on the economy.
Subprime series,part 4,Does well-designed monetary policy encourage risk-taking? 35
9 Some people characterized these interest-rate reductions as a bailout,But since every debt instrument has both a
buyer and a seller,when interest-rate changes create transfers,someone wins and someone loses,And,the
winnings exactly cancel the losses,So,when the Federal Open Market Committee reduces the federal funds rate
target,whether you win or lose depends on whether you had an existing fixed-rate loan (lenders win and bor-
rowers lose) or either an existing adjustable-rate loan or a new loan (borrowers win and lenders lose),I cannot
see how such transfers,which always exist whenever interest rates change,create a bailout.
23 August 2007
The subprime crisis has its origin in Greenspan¡¯s low interest rate policy,His suc-
cessor should take care to reassure the markets in the short run without laying the
foundations for a new overreaction ¡®à la Greenspan¡¯.
It is difficult to predict how long the crisis in the world¡¯s financial markets will last.
Its dynamics recalls that of previous crises,such as that of 1998 (the Russian default
and the collapse of LTCM),which have by now been forgotten by many,An excess
of liquidity (i.e,an abundance of loans at low cost) has suddenly been transformed
into a dearth of liquidity; many dealers find it hard to sell the assets in their portfo-
lios,The present crisis bears little resemblance to the 1929 Great Depression,contrary
to what some politicians and commentators assert,Fortunately the Fed president,
Bernanke,has studied the Great Depression in depth,According to the analysis he
did as an academic,
1
the Great Depression was unleashed by a collapse of production
and consumption,amplified by a drastic reduction in the supply of bank credit which
came about largely because the Fed failed to act as a lender of last resort,Exactly the
opposite is happening today,The world economy continues to grow at sustained
rates since central banks have so far fulfilled their roles of supplying the necessary liq-
uidity to the market,The only (perhaps non¨Cnegligible) aspect that the current crisis
shares with the Great Depression is that its epicentre is the United States.
Back to the present
It is useful to disentangle the causes of the crisis,Three factors contribute to the
current crisis,that was triggered by the expectation of defaults on subprime mort-
gages in the United States.
The low financial literacy of US households;
The financial innovation that has resulted in the massive securitization
of illiquid assets; and
The subprime crisis:
Greenspan¡¯s legacy
Tito Boeri and Luigi Guiso
Bocconi University,Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti and
CEPR; European University Institute,Ente Luigi Einaudi
and CEPR
37
1 Ben Bernanke (1983),¡®Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression¡¯,
American Economic Review 73,pp,257¨C76.
The low interest rate policy followed by Greenspan¡¯s Fed from 2001 to
2004.
The third cause is by far the most important,Without Greenspan¡¯s pol-
icy,the present crisis probably would have never occurred.
Low financial literacy
The first ingredient of the crisis is a blend of bad information,financial inexperi-
ence and the myopia of consumers and investors,They fell for the prospect of
getting a mortgage at rates never seen before and then extrapolating these rates
out for 30 years,This myopia was encouraged and indeed exploited by banks and
other lenders eager to attract and retain clients,This is surprisingly similar to what
has been seen in the past when banks and intermediaries have advised their
clients to invest in financial assets ill-suited to their ability to bear risk,In both
cases,a biased adviser is the reflection of a clear conflict of interest in the finan-
cial industry,Financial literacy is low not only in financially backward countries
(as one would expect),but also in the United States,Only two out of three
Americans are familiar with the law of compound interest; less than half know
how to measure the effects of inflation on the costs of indebtedness,Financial lit-
eracy is particularly low among those who have taken out subprime mortgages.
The intermediaries exploited this financial illiteracy.
Securitization
The second ingredient is the pace of financial innovation during the last ten years
and the securitization that it produced,Today it is easy to liquidify [[liquefy?]] a
portfolio of illiquid credits (typically a combination of bank loans or mortgages) so
that they can be packaged into investor portfolios,Any bank with distressed loans
has used this technique to securitize its own credits,Like all financial innovations,
this too has pros and cons,The advantage is that by making an illiquid credit
liquid,one can achieve important efficiency gains; investors can take longer-term
positions and so earn a higher return,It also spreads the risk of insolvency across a
much wider group,reducing the level of risk exposure of any individual agent,But
securitizations also have their disadvantages,They weaken the incentives of finan-
cial intermediaries to monitor the behaviour of the original borrower,In addition,
since a credit that has become risky can be liquidated more easily,banks have less
incentive to screen borrowers carefully,This opens the credit-markets doors to poor-
quality borrowers.
Low interest rates
The first two factors are not new,Without the third factor ¨C the legacy of the ¡®cen-
tral banker of the century¡¯ ¨C the crisis probably would have never occurred,The
monetary policy of low interest rates ¨C introduced by Greenspan in response to
the post-9/11 recession and the collapse of the new economy bubble ¨C injected an
38 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
enormous amount of liquidity into the global monetary system,This reduced
short-term interest rates to 1%,their lowest level in 50 years,What is more,
Greenspan spent the next two years maintaining interest rates at levels signifi-
cantly below equilibrium.
2
Interest rates were kept at low levels for a long time,
and were often negative in inflation-adjusted terms,The result was no surprise.
Low returns on traditional investments pushed investors and lenders to take
bigger risks to get better returns,Financial intermediaries,in search of profits,
extended credit to families and companies with limited financial strength.
Investors with varying degrees of expertise duly reallocated their portfolios
towards more lucrative but riskier assets in an attempt to increase their wealth and
preserve its purchasing power,The low borrowing rates for both short- and long-
term maturity attracted throngs of borrowers,families (above all) who were
seduced by the possibility of acquiring assets that had always been beyond their
means,At the same time,house prices soared,ultimately encouraging the addi-
tional extension of credit; the value of real estate seemed almost guaranteed.
The song of the Keynesian sirens
Thanks,Alan! Today we are paying the cost of your overreaction to the 2001 reces-
sion,The ECB was wisely prudent and only let itself be partially tempted by
Keynesian arguments for reduced interest rates (which were already absurdly low)
as a tool for attacking European stagnation,Many would like the ECB to lower
rates now,arguing that to avoid a new Great Depression Europe needs Keynesian
policy of the type followed in the United States,the United Kingdom and
Germany after the 1929 collapse.
We think it is far better to avoid repeating Greenspan¡¯s error,and to avoid mon-
etary policies that are too accommodating for too long,At present,central banks
are acting correctly by injecting liquidity into the system,In such crises,one must
be afraid of fear,Expectations can unleash downward spirals that make the most
pessimistic prophecies come true,In addition,the market crisis hits everyone
indiscriminately ¨C even those who did not make money by extending mortgages
too readily,Last Friday¡¯s (17 August 2007) press release of the Federal Open Market
Committee (FOMC) did not clarify whether the half-point cut in the discount rate
was intended to merely prevent a downward expectations spiral or whether it was
the prelude to yet another overreaction to the market crisis,It is important to
show soon that the lesson of Greenspan¡¯s error has been learned,We should not
overreact,as has happened so many times in the past,by sowing the seeds of a
future crisis today.
The subprime crisis,Greenspan¡¯s legacy 39
2 See M,Lombardi and E,S,Sgherri (2007),¡®(Un)naturally Low? Sequential Monte Carlo Tracking of the US
Natural Interest Rate¡¯,ECB Working Papers,No,794 (August),ECB.
12 October 2007
Do low levels of short-term interest encourage risk-taking that can be considered
excessive? Do low interest rates imply higher credit risk in the short run? In the
medium run? New empirical research suggests that the answers are a resounding
yes,a subtle no and a qualifying ¡®it depends¡¯.
In the heat of the summer turmoil in the global financial markets,observers
immediately argued that the low levels of short-term interest rates during the
2002¨C5 period created the conditions for excessive risk-taking and were conse-
quently one of the main causes of these almost unprecedented credit market
convulsions.
1,2
Despite the theoretical appeal and widespread resonance of this
contention,
3
no detailed empirical evidence ¨C as far as we are aware ¨C has estab-
lished a clear and direct link from monetary policy to bank risk-taking.
4
To analyse the impact of short-term interest rates on bank risk-taking is not
straightforward,Monetary policy is endogenous,when financial stability is jeop-
ardized,for example,monetary authorities may react by lowering interest rates,
making any econometric identification extremely difficult,After the collapse of
LTCM in 1998,for example,the Federal Reserve reduced the federal funds rate
during the ensuing period of high financial uncertainty.
An excellent setting to econometrically identify the impact of short-term inter-
est rates on bank risk-taking is Bolivia,In recent years,the boliviano was pegged
The impact of short-term interest
rates on risk-taking,hard evidence
Vasso P,Ioannidou,Steven Ongena and Jose Luis Peydró
Tilburg University; Tilburg University and CEPR; European
Central Bank
41
1 For details see V,P,Ioannidou,S,Ongena and J,L,Peydró (2007),¡®Monetary Policy and Subprime Lending,¡®A Tall
Tale of Low Federal Funds Rates,Hazardous Loans,and Reduced Loan Spreads¡¯,CentER - Tilburg University/ECB,
mimeo,For complementary and supportive evidence using European data for over more than 20 years,see G.
Jiménez,S,Ongena,J.-L,Peydró and J,Saurina (2007),¡®Hazardous Times for Monetary Policy,What Do Twenty-
Three Million Bank Loans Say About the Effects of Monetary Policy on Credit Risk?¡¯,CEPR DP 6514,Any views
expressed are only those of the authors and should not be attributed to the ECB or the eurosystem.
2 See for example ¡®How Credit Got so Easy and Why It Is Tightening¡¯,front page,Wall Street Journal,7 August
2007,and the VoxEU.org column by Tito Boeri and Luigi Guiso (2007),¡®Subprime Crisis,Greenspan¡¯s Legacy¡¯.
3 See K,Matsuyama (2007),¡®Credit Traps and Credit Cycles¡¯,American Economic Review 97; G,Dell¡¯Ariccia and
R,Marquez (2006),¡®Lending Booms and Lending Standards¡¯,Journal of Finance 61; R,Rajan (2006),¡®Has
Finance Made the World Riskier?¡¯,European Financial Management 12; C,Borio and P,Lowe (2002),¡®Asset
Prices,Financial and Monetary Stability,Exploring the Nexus,¡¯ BIS Paper No,114.
4 In contrast,the effects of monetary policy on the volume of credit have been widely studied and documented,B,S.
Bernanke and A,S,Blinder (1992),¡®The Federal Funds Rate and the Channels of Monetary Transmission¡¯,American
Economic Review 82; B,S,Bernanke and M,Gertler (1995),¡®Inside the Black Box,the Credit Channel of Monetary
Policy Transmission¡¯,Journal of Economic Perspectives 9; A,K,Kashyap and J,C,Stein (2000),¡®What Do a Million
Banks Have to Say about the Transmission of Monetary Policy¡¯,American Economic Review 90.
to the US dollar and the financial system was highly dollarized,During this period,
the proper measure of short-term interest rates in Bolivia was the US federal funds
rate,which is exogenous to Bolivian economic conditions,Hence,using the
Bolivian credit registry,we analyse on a loan-by-loan basis the impact of the US
federal funds on risk-taking and credit risk,The registry contains detailed contract
information on all loans issued by any bank operating in the country as well as
several measures of bank risk-taking such as ex-post loan performance,internal
credit ratings,loan rates and borrower credit history,The analysis draws from the
1999¨C2003 period,when the funds rate varied between 0.98% and 6.5%,and the
boliviano was pegged to the US dollar.
We find that short-term interest rates affect risk-taking and credit risk,In par-
ticular,low interest rates encourage ex-ante risk-taking,Prior to loan origination,
low interest rates imply that banks soften their lending standards for new loans:
banks give more loans to borrowers with lower credit score and/or with bad credit
history,Not only do banks take loans with higher ex-ante risk but also grant new
loans that have higher ex-post credit risk,which we measure using a loan¡¯s hazard
rate,that is,the default rate per unit of time,In addition,banks do not seem to
price these extra risks they take,This finding suggest that our results are not driven
by a higher demand for loans from risky firms (vis-a-vis less risky firms) when
interest rates are low.
5
All in all,low short-term interest rates seem to increase the
banks¡¯ appetite for risk.
We also find that banks which are less-well monitored and disciplined (i.e.,sub-
ject to more moral hazard) not only take on more risk but they especially take it
when interest rates are low,Low rates therefore imply excessive risk-taking,When
rates are low not only do these banks take on more risk,but loan spreads are further
reduced at these banks despite the higher ex-post realization of credit risk.
We also analyse in a duration model how the stance and the path of interest
rates affect credit risk,We find that the hazard rate increases with lower interest
rates at loan origination but also increases as a result of higher rates during the life
of the loan,Consequently,there is a completely different impact of lower interest
rates on the credit risk of new vis-a-vis outstanding loans,In the short-term,lower
interest rates reduce the total amount of credit risk of the banks,since the volume
of outstanding loans is larger than the volume of new loans,In the medium term,
however,very low interest rates worsen credit risk,especially if interest rates rise
at least back to the ¡®normal¡¯ levels and the banks¡¯ portfolios are loaded with riskier
loans from the era of cheap money.
Some policy implications
We find that the level of short-term interest affects bank risk-taking and the
amount of credit risk in the system,Banks remain at the core of the financial sys-
tem and credit risk is the most important risk banks face,Consequently,the stance
and the path of monetary policy significantly affect financial stability,Indeed,
very low interest rates for too long make the reversal to higher ¡®normal¡¯ rates haz-
42 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
5 In J,Stiglitz and A,Weiss (1981),¡®Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information¡¯,American Economic
Review 71,the demand for funds from risky borrowers increases when interest rates are higher.
ardous,Therefore,prudential supervision cannot act independently of the stance
of monetary policy,(In fact,empirical evidence suggests that the two functions
may affect and even complement the behaviour of the monetary authority.
6
)
When short-term interest rates are too low and there is excessive liquidity in the
financial markets,prudential standards may have to be tightened,through
dynamic and forward-looking capital requirements and/or provisioning,for exam-
ple.
The critical moment for financial instability comes when short-term interest
rates have been unusually low for a long time and then return at least,for example,
to their ¡®normal¡¯ levels,In fact,we find that the lower the interest rates were and
the higher they move up afterwards,the worse credit risk will be,During this crit-
ical period of transition to higher interest rates,liquidity requirements should
increase to offset the higher instability,When interest rates rise,in contrast,we
find that bank risk-taking is reduced as lending standards get tougher,Hence,cap-
ital requirements should not be tightened then,it is too late,Regulatory capital
should have been higher before this moment of rising interest rates,when the
rates were low and risk-taking excessive.
All in all,our findings suggest first that prudential supervision cannot act inde-
pendently of the stance and path of monetary policy; second,that wide and fast
variations from low to high interest rates have a negative impact on financial
stability; and third,that cheap money is not a free lunch.
The impact of short-term interest rates on risk-taking,hard evidence 43
6 See for example,J,Peek,E,S,Rosengren and G,M,Tootell (1999),¡®Is Bank Supervision Central to Central
Banking¡¯,Quarterly Journal of Economics 124; V,P,Ioannidou (2005,) ¡®Does Monetary Policy Affect the Central
Bank¡¯s Role in Bank Supervision?¡¯,Journal of Financial Intermediation 14.
19 March 2008
The recent financial trouble has prompted much examination of private financial
institutions,but few have asked why regulatory supervision did not prevent the
crisis,This article argues that supervisory failure was also due to regulatory com-
petition between national authorities and calls for a consolidated EU authority.
The ongoing financial turmoil is spurring a large number of reports on what went
wrong and how to avoid future relapses,A clear picture of why major financial insti-
tutions made big mistakes and of systematic distortions in their incentive structures
is now emerging,But on a key question there is a deafening silence,why did bank
supervision fail? This is worrying,because with hindsight it is becoming increasing-
ly obvious that supervisory authorities too made some big mistakes,Understanding
why this occurred is important,if we want to avoid future repetitions.
A particularly comprehensive and lucid analysis of the deep causes of the ongo-
ing crisis is contained in the Interim Report of the Financial Stability Forum
presented by Italian Central Bank Governor Mario Draghi at the G7 meeting in
Tokyo,The report draws attention to three specific problems (besides the poor and
fraudulent practices in the US subprime market):
shortcomings in firms¡¯ risk management practices,in particular,too lit-
tle understanding of exposure to liquidity and market risk;
poor due diligence practices,including excessive and misplaced reliance
of credit rating agencies;
imperfect public disclosure of the links between on- and off-balance
sheet items.
Of course,these are only proximate causes,and the report asks,¡®Why did financial
institutions make these major mistakes?¡¯ The answer given is twofold,On the one
hand,poor judgement was almost certainly involved,The rapid pace of financial
innovation meant that even sophisticated investors did not always fully understand
the risk properties of the complex structures that were built,The systemic implica-
tions of these financial arrangements were even more poorly understood,Probably,
although the report does not say this,investors were fooled into collectively overes-
timating the resilience of global financial markets.
Why did bank supervision fail?
Guido Tabellini
Bocconi University and CEPR
45
On the other hand,there were systematic incentive distortions,First,the ¡®orig-
inate and distribute¡¯ business model entails obvious moral hazard problems.
Second,credit-ratings agencies face a conflict of interest,Third,management com-
pensation schemes reward myopic risk-taking behaviour; it is rational for me to
under-insure against the occurrence of rare disruptive events,if my bonus only
depends on short-term performance indicators.
All this is good and sound ¨C and far from trivial,But it is only part of the story.
The other part is that banking supervision did not prevent these shortcomings
from occurring,Each one of the proximate causes listed above could have been
prevented or at least discouraged by better and more proactive financial supervi-
sion,Supervisory authorities did not discourage the build up of off-balance sheet
risk exposure,although it was often induced by regulatory arbitrage,They did not
seem to care about,or they simply ignored,the implicit contingent liabilities that
this entailed for banks¡¯ balance sheets,The relevance of liquidity and market risk
(as opposed to default risk) was neglected.
Insuring adequate risk management of modern complex financial institutions
is a joint responsibility of the management of such institutions and of the super-
visory authorities,If risk management proves inadequate,it is a joint failure,not
just a management failure,Asking why supervision failed is just as relevant as ask-
ing what went wrong inside the private financial institutions.
Why did supervision fail?
Two answers can be given,The first one is bureaucratic inertia together with poor
judgement,Just as it happened with sophisticated investors,the rapid pace of
financial innovation may have led astray well-intentioned supervisory authorities.
No one,from the top banker to the last employee of government bureaucracies,
fully understood the huge risks that were piling up in these complex financial
structures,Moreover,while bank regulators and supervisors are traditionally wor-
ried about capital adequacy ratios,they were just too slow to adapt their priorities
and practice to the new dangers,lack of liquidity and market risk,They were also
unlucky,because the financial turmoil hit them right in the transition between
Basel I and Basel II,We cannot rule out that in a year or so financial supervision
would have been in a position to identify and remedy the weak points in the sys-
tem,Finally,light supervision might also have reflected excessive confidence in
the self-regulating abilities of modern financial institutions and an ideological
conviction that over-regulation was the more relevant danger to be avoided.
This explanation of why supervision failed is plausible and likely to contain
important elements of truth,But it is incomplete,Much information was actually
available,and there were mounting signs of concerns of too much complacency,
from both individual investors and public officials,Yet the information was not
acted upon,This suggests that other forces were at work.
The second possible answer is distorted incentives,Bureaucratic organizations
respond to incentives,just like financial institutions and their top managers,The
main suspect here is regulatory competition,Imposing sound risk management
procedures raises costs,It is quite likely that the lax supervisory standards and
practice also reflected the concern that the domestic industry would be hurt rela-
46 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
tive to foreign-based competitors or the fear that some institutions would shift
part of their business to regulatory heavens.
What can be done to remedy these incentive problems and achieve an effective
international coordination of banking supervision? To some extent,the answer
can only be provided by the supervisory authorities themselves,with reference to
specific and concrete details,But whatever is done,it will not completely solve the
problem,The Basel frameworks have been designed to prevent this kind of harm-
ful regulatory competition,But while Basel I is based on hard numbers,the more
flexible supervision under Basel II can be implemented with different degrees of
stringency at the authorities¡¯ discretion,This means that the distortions caused by
regulatory competition will not go away,It is not enough to agree that supervisors
need to encourage better risk management practice and the build-up of adequate
liquidity buffers,One also needs to worry about whether national supervisors
acting unilaterally will have the resolve and incentives to take effective actions.
If their incentives were too weak just before this crisis,they will remain weak once
this storm is gone.
The need for EU supervision
Worldwide coordination of bank supervision can only be achieved through infor-
mal means,But Europe can be much more ambitious,It is time to think about
replacing national regulation and supervision of banks with an EU-level agency.
Besides the issue of regulatory competition,there are additional and important
arguments in favour of an EU-level supervisory authority,It is almost self-evident
that cross-border banking requires some form of transnational or supernational
supervisory entity,Moreover,while local knowledge may be important,modern
financial arrangements have become so complex that there are relevant
economies of scale in concentrating the needed expertise inside a single supervi-
sory agency.
One should always be wary of taking rushed decisions during a crisis,because
the likelihood of making mistakes is very high,But the case in favour of a EU-wide
regulatory and supervisory regime for banks is overwhelming,The crisis and the
failure of national supervisory agencies provide a unique opportunity to overcome
bureaucratic and political opposition to this institutional innovation.
Why did bank supervision fail? 47
6 September 2007
Securitization transferred credit risk from the bank¡¯s balance sheets to the market.
The subprime problem became a crisis when some of this risk landed back on
banks,Regulators need to find a way to deal with the off-balance sheet operations
of banks that made this possible and to improve transparency concerning banks¡¯
effective exposure to risk.
By now everyone in Europe knows all about US subprime loans,ranging from ¡®Alt-
A¡¯ to the ¡®ninja¡¯ variety (granted with ¡®no verification of income,job status or asset-
s¡¯),Still,it is not obvious why an even pronounced increase in delinquency rates on
such loans,with the attendant losses on mortgage exposures,should have sparked
a financial crisis that touched all classes of assets globally,even those
relatively immune from credit risk,True,the share of the less safe loans in the
issuance of mortgage-backed securities had almost doubled in the past few years,But
an estimate of the direct losses of the actual and expected defaults ranges between
$100 billion and $200 billion,relatively little,considering the valued of aggregate of
financial assets (and also in comparison with $5 trillion lost in the dotcom crisis).
We know how the crisis has unfolded.
1
After a sharp drop in the prices and mar-
ket liquidity of all mortgage-backed securities,an equally sharp increase in the
price of risk and spreads,and a drying-up of the issuance of all asset-backed secu-
rities,contagion extended to the short-term end of the financial market,first to a
wide class of commercial paper and then to the money and interbank markets.
As uncertainty and mutual mistrust spread to counterparties (even banking coun-
terparties),overnight interest rates jumped and,as they say,cash became king.
The repeated injections of liquidity on the part of various monetary authorities
have so far provided only limited solace to this state of affairs,All this is clear,but
the question is why a surge of subprime defaults should affect (though not
disruptively for the moment) the banking system and (more worryingly) general
credit conditions?
The question arises because the subprime mortgage-backed securities that
sparked the crisis represent an extreme version of the credit risk transfer process
in which the core banks have been engaged for a long time pursuing the ¡®originate
The subprime crisis and credit risk
transfer,something amiss
Luigi Spaventa
University of Rome and CEPR
49
1 A useful rendition of the events since June and up to August 2007 is in Bank of International Settlements,BIS
Quarterly Review,September 2007,
and distribute¡¯ business model,The banks originate the loans and then distribute
the underlying risk to a myriad of outside investors,This made credit ¡®something
that is largely bought and sold on the markets,rather than held ¡­ on the balance
sheets of financial intermediaries¡¯.
2
Among the undisputable merits of this model
(more complete markets,a wider range of instruments available to investors,
enhanced liquidity,improved allocation of resources) is that the transfer of credit
risk away from banking intermediaries would make the system more resilient to
financial shocks,The fragmentation of risk and its distribution to non-bank play-
ers providing liquidity in several markets would alleviate the systemic conse-
quences and allow an easier absorption of such shocks,This,however,is not what
has happened,Though the credit underlying all kinds of asset-backed securities
and of credit derivatives should no longer be on the balance sheet of the origi-
nating banks,the collapse of one segment of those securities has affected and is
affecting the banking system,Why is that? The answer is that part of the credit
risk flowed back to some banks,though not on to their books.
This has mostly happened through the growing diffusion of conduits and SIVs.
3
These are entities,off the banks¡¯ balance sheets,that invest long-term,largely in
high-yield asset-backed securities and raise short-term finance by issuing corre-
spondingly collateralized commercial paper (so-called asset-backed commercial
paper),The banks provide such entities with financial guarantees that only appear
below-the-line in their balance sheet,playing the role of last-resort liquidity
providers if and when difficulties of refinancing arise,The precise extent of such
commitments in the aggregate and for individual banks is unknown,According to
market estimates reported by the BIS,outstanding asset-backed commercial paper
reached a sum of $1.5 trillion last March,of which some $300 billion was based
on mortgage-backed assets,According to another estimate,European banks have
more than $500 billion invested in asset-backed commercial-paper conduits,with
German banks holding a quarter of this sum.
This crisis,however it ends,is likely to prompt ill-conceived regulatory proposals.
But,if there is one field where something ought to be done,even before damning
the sins of rating agencies,it is to find a way to deal with the off-balance sheet oper-
ations of banks and achieve greater transparency of their effective exposure to risk.
50 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
2 Mario Draghi,¡®Monetary Policy and New Financial Instruments¡¯,Central Bank of Argentina ¨C 2007 Money and
Banking Conference,On which see BIS Quarterly Review,cit; Stephen Day and Agnes Molnar (2006),
¡®Investment Vehicles,The Advantages of Flexibility¡¯,International Financial Law Review (November).
3 Ivar Simensen and Ralph Atkins (2007),¡®¡°Not Uncritical¡±,Subprime Exposure Drags down German Banks¡¯,
Financial Times (22 August).
17 December 2007
There is a strong tendency in the media and policy circles to view each crisis as totally
new and unexpected,Financial crises,however,are as old as financial markets,Here are
the lessons drawn by one of the world¡¯s leading economic historians of financial crises.
Recent financial instability triggered by the collapse of the US subprime mortgage
market has many features with great resonance from financial history.
The crisis occurred following two years of rising policy interest rates.
Its causes include lax oversight and a relaxation of normal standards of
prudent lending in a period of abnormally low interest rates.
The default on a significant fraction of subprime mortgages has pro-
duced spillover effects round the world via the securitized mortgage
derivatives into which these mortgages were bundled,to the balance
sheets of hedge funds,investment banks and conduits (which are bank-
owned but off their balance sheets) which intermediate between mort-
gage and other asset-backed commercial paper and long-term securities.
The uncertainty about the value of the securities collateralized by these
mortgages spread uncertainty about the value of commercial paper
collateral and the soundness of loans for leveraged buyouts.
All this has led to the freezing up of the interbank lending market
across the world in August 2007 and substantial liquidity injections by
the ECB and the Federal Reserve to avert a credit crunch from affecting
the real economy.
The credit crunch has not yet been alleviated and a recession in the United
States with consequences for Europe and other countries threatens.
A historical perspective
Many of the financial institutions and instruments caught up in the crisis are part
of the centuries-old phenomenon of financial innovation,The new instruments ¨C
often devised to avoid regulation ¨C are then proved to be successful or not by the
test of financial stress such as we have been recently encountering,The rise and
fall of financial institutions and instruments occurs as part of a lending boom-
The crisis of 2007,some lessons
from history
Michael D,Bordo
Rutgers University
51
and-bust cycle financed by bank credit,The credit cycle is connected to the busi-
ness cycle.
Irving Fisher,the famous macroeconomist,and others have told the story of a
business cycle upswing driven by a displacement leading to an investment boom
financed by bank credit and new credit instruments,The boom leads to a state of
euphoria and possibly an asset bubble,A state of over-indebtedness develops
which often ends in a bust.
A key dynamic in the crisis is information asymmetry manifest in the spread
between risky and safe securities,The bust would in the past often lead to bank
failures and possibly panics,The process could be short-circuited by a lender of last
resort providing ample liquidity at a penalty rate.
Countercyclical monetary policy is also an integral part of the boom-bust credit
cycle,For example the historical record shows that stockmarket booms occur in
environments of low inflation,rising real GDP growth and low policy interest rates.
As the boom progresses and inflationary pressure builds up,central banks inevitably
tighten policy to trigger the ensuing crash,The story is similar for housing.
Stockmarket crashes have serious real consequences through wealth effects and
possible liquidity crises,Housing busts,in addition to directly producing negative
effects on the real economy,can also destabilize the banking system,These risks
are present in the current housing bust.
Bordo (2007) presents some historical empirical evidence for the United States
from 1921 to the present on the relationship between credit crunches,recessions,
financial crises and monetary policy,I plot the monthly spreads between the Baa
corporate bond rate and the ten-year Treasury constant maturity bond rate,as a
measure of the financial market¡¯s assessment of credit risk,I also show NBER reces-
sion dates and major financial market events,including stockmarket crashes,
financial crises and some major political events that affected financial markets,I
also show policy interest rates (the federal funds rate and the discount rate).
The patterns revealed by the data show that peaks in the credit cycle proxied by
the spreads are often lined up with the upper turning points of the business cycle.
Also many of the events like banking crises and stockmarket crashes occur close to
the peaks,Furthermore,policy rates peak very close to or before the peaks of the
credit cycle.
The historical relationship for the United States between real housing prices
(and other measures of the housing market),the business cycle and policy rates
reveals a similar pattern,Tightening of monetary policy is associated with rever-
sals of real housing prices and business-cycle downturns.
Financial innovation and financial crises
Historically,financial crises originate on the liability side of banks¡¯ balance sheets
as depositors rush to convert deposits into currency in the face of a financial
shock,In recent decades,since the advent of deposit insurance,pressure has come
from the asset side,Examples include the commercial-paper market in the 1970
Penn Central crisis,emerging market debt on money centre banks in 1982 and
hedge funds in the LTCM meltdown in 1998,A historical example was the 1763
crisis in the market for bills of exchange.
52 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
In many of these cases financial innovation which increased leverage and was
often devised to circumvent regulations was an integral part of the story of the
boom,Examples include Penn Central in 1970 with innovation in the commer-
cial-paper market; the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s with junk bonds; LTCM
with derivatives and hedge funds; and today with the securitization of subprime
mortgages,In this episode risk has been shifted from the originating bank into
mortgage-backed securities which bundles shaky risk with the creditworthy,Asset-
backed securities were absorbed by hedge funds,offshore banks and commercial
paper,The shifting of risk from the banks to the financial markets as banks tried
to avoid regulated capital requirements did not reduce systemic risk and increased
the risk of a more widespread meltdown,Indeed the exposure of the non-bank
financial sector has ultimately put pressure on the banking system.
International spillovers
Financial crises have always had an international dimension,Contagion spreads
through asset markets,international banking and the exchange-rate standard,The
Baring crisis of 1890,when Argentina defaulted on its debt,is a classic historical
example of contagion,Tightening by the Bank of England created the backdrop for
the crisis,It led to sudden stops in lending from the European core to the periphery.
This led to currency crises and debt defaults in a pattern similar to 1997¨C8.
The current crisis has spread between advanced countries via the holding of
opaque subprime mortgage derivatives in diverse banks in Europe and elsewhere.
Emerging countries have so far avoided crises because of defensive measures,espe-
cially large foreign-exchange reserves,in reaction to the 1990s meltdown.
However,if the credit crunch continues and the US economy goes into recession,
the emerging countries will also be affected.
Policy lessons
1,Anna Schwartz once made a distinction between real financial crises,defined as
a scramble for liquidity requiring lender of last-resort action,and pseudo-crises
(asset busts leading to wealth losses) which do not require the lender of last resort.
The recent wealth losses by hedge funds and others represent pseudo-crises.
However,the spillover of the subprime crisis into the interbank loan market
and the freezing of liquidity to the banking system have posed the threat of a
real crisis and have been dealt with properly by the ECB and the Federal
Reserve,By contrast,the Bank of England initially followed a strict Bagehot pol-
icy of keeping its discount window open at a penalty rate,The run on Northern
Rock on 14 September 2007 and the Bank¡¯s apparent volteface likely did not
reflect the failure of the Bank¡¯s lender-of-last-resort policy but perceived inade-
quacies in the UK¡¯s deposit insurance,the lack of coordination between the FSA
and the Bank,and political pressure.
2,The Federal Reserve by cutting its Funds rate by 100 basis points between
September and December has correctly followed the conventional approach to
The crisis of 2007,some lessons from history 53
monetary policy by temporarily putting its inflation objectives in abeyance to
prevent an incipient recession,As long as the Fed¡¯s commitment to its goal of
a low inflation nominal anchor is perceived to be credible,such easing should
not be inflationary,However,once the threat of recession dissipates,it
behooves the Fed,if it wishes to maintain its credibility,to take back the money
and raise rates,The ECB and the Bank of England as of now have not cut their
policy rates,although they have been countering the liquidity crisis by inject-
ing funds into the money markets,Should the risk of recession become as
serious as in the United States,they should follow the Fed¡¯s example.
3,The Fed has followed the conventional wisdom and acted reactively by dealing
with the consequences of an asset boom after it has bust,However,there may
be a case for the central bank in some circumstances acting in a preemptive
manner to forestall a low probability event such as a national housing bust.
Finally,I speculate on whether the recent financial crisis could have been avoided
if the Fed had not provided as much liquidity as it did from 2001 to 2004,The Fed
injected liquidity following shocks (the tech bust,9/11) that might lead to finan-
cial crises,but when no financial crises occurred,it permitted the additional funds
to remain in the money market,It also overreacted to the threat of deflation in
2003¨C4,which most likely was of the ¡®good¡¯ (productivity-driven) variety rather
than the ¡®bad¡¯ recessionary variety.
If,consequent upon these events,the markets had not been infused with liquid-
ity as much as they were and for so long,then interest rates would not have been as
low in recent years as they were and the housing boom which just bust may not
have expanded as much as it did.
Reference
Bordo,Michael D,( 2007),¡®The Crisis of 2007,The Same Old Story Only the
Players have Changed¡¯,http://michael.bordo.googlepages.com.
54 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
15 March 2008
We may just have started to feel the pain,Asset price drops,including housing,are
common markers in all the big banking crises over the past 30 years,GDP declines
after such crises were both large (¨C2% on average) and protracted (two years to
return to trend); in the five biggest crises,the numbers were ¨C5% and three years.
This article,based on the author¡¯s testimony to the Congress,picks through the
causes and consequences,It argues that when it comes to ¡®cures¡¯,it would be far
better to get the job done right than get the job done quickly.
¡®There is nothing new except what is forgotten.¡¯ ¨C Mlle Rose Bertin
Financial crisis,the setting
Across countries and over the centuries,economic crises of all types follow a similar
pattern.
1
An innovation emerges,Sometimes it is a new tool of science of industry,
such as the diving bell,steam engine or radio,Sometimes it is a tool of financial
engineering,such as the joint-stock company,junk bonds or collateralized debt obli-
gations (CDOs),Investors may be wary at first,but then they see that extraordinary
returns appear to be available on these new instruments and they rush in,Financial
intermediaries ¨C banks and investment companies ¨C stretch their balance sheets so
as not to be left out,The upward surge in asset prices continues,and that generation
of financial-market participants concludes that rules have been rewritten,Risk has
been tamed,and leverage is always rewarded,All too often,policy-makers assert that
the asset-price boom is a vote of confidence for their regime,that this time is differ-
ent,Seldom,to my knowledge,do they protest that perhaps the world has not
changed and that the old rules of valuation still apply.
But the old rules do apply,The asset price rise peters out,sometimes from
exhaustion on its own or sometimes because of a real shock to the economy,This
exposes the weaknesses of the balance sheets of those who justified high leverage
by the expectation of outsized capital gains,Many financial firms admit losses,
and some ultimately fail,All those financial firms hunker down,constricting cred-
Reflections on the international
dimensions and policy lessons
of the US subprime crisis
Carmen Reinhart
University of Maryland and CEPR
55
1 Michael D,Bordo ( 2007),¡®The Crisis of 2007,The Same Old Story Only the Players have Changed¡¯,at
http://michael.bordo.googlepages.com.
it availability in an effort to slim their balance sheets,With wealth lower and cred-
it harder to get,economic activity typically contracts,Only after the losses are
flushed out of the financial system and often with the encouragement of lagging
monetary and fiscal ease does the economy recover.
The role of the real-estate market
This sorry spectacle repeats itself in the various types of crises,but the most rele-
vant to the present situation is the aftermath of banking crises,In recent work
with Kenneth Rogoff,I documented 18 such episodes in industrial economies over
the past 30 years.
2,3
Declines in assets,including those of both houses and equi-
ties that the United States has experienced over the past year,are common mark-
ers of the onset of banking crises,In the worst five banking crises (the Big Five) in
industrial countries over the past 30 years,the value of houses fell about 25% on
average from their peak (Figure 1).
Sources,Reinhart and Rogoff (2008) and sources cited therein.
56 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
95
100
105
110
115
120
125
130
135
t-4 t-3 t-2 t-1 T t+1 t+2 t+3
Average for banking crises in
advanced economies
US,2003=100
Index t-4=100
Average for the,Big 5¡±
Crises
Index
Figure 1 Real housing prices and banking crises
2 Carmen M,Reinhart and Kenneth S,Rogoff (2008),¡®Is the 2007 U.S,Subprime Crisis So Different? An
International Historical Comparison¡¯,forthcoming in American Economic Review (May).
3 The five Big Five crises,Spain (1977),Norway (1987),Finland (1991),Sweden (1991) and Japan (1992) (starting
year in parenthesis).
Other banking and financial crises,Australia (1989),Canada (1983),Denmark (1987),France (1994),Germany
(1977),Greece (1991),Iceland (1985),Italy (1990),New Zealand (1987),United Kingdom (1974,1991,1995)
and United States (1984).
The fallout of banking crises
The cautionary lesson for today¡¯s situation in the United States is that the decline
in output after a banking crisis is both large and protracted (Figure 2),The average
drop in (real per head) output growth is over 2%,and it typically takes two years
to return to trend,For the five most catastrophic cases,the drop in annual output
growth from peak to trough is over 5%,and growth remained well below pre-crisis
trend even after three years.
Sources,Reinhart and Rogoff (2008) and sources cited therein.
The international repercussions of the US crisis,contagion
or confusion?
Swift international spillovers are not a new phenomenon,In this regard,the panic
of 1907,which began in the United States and quickly spread to other advanced
economies (particularly,Denmark,France,Italy,Japan and Sweden),serves as an
illustrative historical benchmark for modern-day financial contagion.
4
Like in the
present episode,emerging markets were mostly spared in 1907; the only casualty
in that episode was Mexico.
There is little doubt that the US crisis has spilled over into other markets,Two
major advanced economies,Japan and Germany,have been singled out by the
financial press as being particularly hard hit,There is no denying that German and
Japanese financial institutions sought more attractive returns in the US subprime
market,perhaps owing to the fact that profit opportunities in domestic real estate
Reflections on the international dimensions and policy lessons of the US subprime crisis 57
¨C2
¨C1
0
1
2
3
4
5
Percent
Average for banking crises in
advanced economies
US
Average for the,Big 5¡± Crises
t-4 t-3 t-1 t t+1 t+2t-2
Figure 2 Real GDP growth per capita and banking crises (PPP basis)
4 See Reinhart and Rogoff (2008).
were limited at best and dismal at worst (Figure 3),Indeed,after the fact,it has
become evident that financial institutions in these countries had non-trivial expo-
sure to the US subprime market.
5
This is a classic channel of transmission or con-
tagion,through which a crisis in one country spreads across international borders.
In the present context,however,contagion or spillovers are only a part of the
story
If other countries are experiencing economic difficulties at the same time as the
United States,it is due to the fact that many of the features that characterized the
run-up to the subprime crisis in the United States were also present in many other
advanced economies,Specifically,many countries in Europe and elsewhere (New
Zealand,for example) were having their own home-grown real-estate bubbles
(Figure 3),This,in and of itself,makes these countries vulnerable to the usual
nasty consequences of asset-market crashes,irrespective of what may be happen-
ing in the United States,This cannot be pinned on the US subprime fiasco or on
contagion,The odds of a correction were already present.
Sources,Shiller; BIS.
58 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
5 Owing to the opaqueness of balance sheets in many of these financial institutions in these countries,the full
extent of exposure is still unknown.
¨C30 ¨C20 ¨C10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
New Zealand
Spain
Denmark
France
U.S.
Belgium
Ireland
Canada
Sweden
U.K.
Finland
Australia
Norway
Italy
Netherlands
Switzerland
Japan
Germany
Figure 3 Percentage change in real housing prices 2002¨C2006
Policy lessons,the banana republic approach to banking
supervision
As Venezuela¡¯s worst banking crisis unfolded in 1994¨C5 (conservative estimates of
the bailout costs of that crisis are at around 18% of GDP),no one in that country
seemed to know whose responsibility it was to supervise the financial institutions.
As is usual in most banking crises,lending standards had become lax,there was
interconnected lending and there was plenty of plain old-fashioned graft,The
central bank blamed the main regulatory agency (SUDEBAN),the regulatory
agency blamed the deposit insurance agency (FOGADE) and everyone else blamed
the central bank.
6
At the time of that crisis,the received wisdom was that such supervisory disarray
could only happen in an emerging market; advanced economies had outgrown such
chaos,We now know better.
For starters,part of the supervisory responsibilities in the United States is
delegated to the states,which is to say that 50 emerging-markets agencies were
partially responsible for the oversight of real-estate lending,Supervisors failed to
caution depositories as they offered potential borrowers unsuitable mortgages.
They also acquiesced as complicated structures were booked off the balance sheet,
even though,in the event,they were not treated as such by corporate headquar-
ters at the first sign of stress,And after the fact,they have pointed to the other guy
as responsible for the problem,
No doubt,change is needed in both the private and public sectors,My imme-
diate fear is that,as in most prior episodes,the initial reaction will be overdone
and inefficient,Financial institutions are already tightening the terms and stan-
dards for new lending at a ferocious clip,Rating agencies,following their
pro-cyclical tendencies,will overreact as well in the effort to distract the investing
public from their laxness of the past few years by strict standards going forward.
7
Similarly,bank examiners will interpret the regulations narrowly,reinforcing the
natural tendencies of depositories to tighten credit availability,
And last but not least,politicians have already turned their focus toward the
financial industry,If the regulation of financial institutions needs to be revisited,
there are compelling arguments to pare the multitude of regulators of depository
institutions and insurance companies and to restructure the supervision of rating
agencies.
8
But the outcome of hurried debate in the heat of the moment is more
likely to be legislative overreach than informed policy-making,It would be far bet-
ter to get the job done right than get the job done quickly.
Reflections on the international dimensions and policy lessons of the US subprime crisis 59
6 Superintendencia de Bancos y Otras Instituciones Financieras (SUDEBAN); Fondo de Garantías de Depósitos y
Protección Bancaria (FOGADE),
7 See Carmen M,Reinhart (2002),¡®Sovereign Credit Ratings Before and After Financial Crises¡¯,and other chapters
in R,Levich,G,Majnoni and C,M,Reinhart,eds,Ratings,Rating Agencies and the Global Financial System,
New York,Kluwer Academic Press.
8 See Richard Portes (2008) ¡®Rating Agencies Reform¡¯,VoxEu.org,for an insightful discussion.
Section 2
How is the Crisis Unfolding?
61
15 August 2007
A revised and updated version of the 13 August article on the basic whos and whys
of what the Fed has been doing to calm financial markets.
Editors¡¯ note,This column updates the 13 August 2007 article on the same topic
and includes a slightly revised version of the content of the earlier article.
Let us start with the facts,On Thursday 9 August 2007 the Federal Reserve¡¯s
Open Market Trading Desk (the ¡®Desk¡¯) injected $24 billion into the US banking
system,This was done in two equal-sized operations,one at 8:25am and a second
70 minutes later at 9:35am.
1
On Friday 10 August 2007,the Desk was in the mar-
ket three times (8:25am,10:55am and 1:50pm),putting in a total of $38 billion.
By early this week,things seemed to have returned to normal with injections of
$2 billion on Monday and no action at all on Tuesday.
The Fed¡¯s operations came on the heels of two even larger injections by the ECB
in Frankfurt,On Thursday morning it put nearly €95 billion ($130 billion) into
European financial institutions,followed by a somewhat smaller operation of
€61 billion ($83.6 billion) on Friday,Things continued to seem unsettled in
Europe after the weekend,as the ECB added €47.7 billion ($65.3 billion) on
Monday (13 August),and then in two separate operations put €25 billion ($34.2
billion) into the European banking system on Tuesday.
2
How is this actually done? What are the mechanics of the
transactions?
In all of these cases,the funds were put into the banking system using what are called
¡®repurchase agreements¡¯ or ¡®repos¡¯ for short,A repurchase agreement is a short-term
collateralized loan in which a security is exchanged for cash,with the agreement that
the parties will reverse the transaction on a specific future date at an agreed price,as
soon as the next day,For example,a bank that has a US Treasury bill (T-bill) might
Federal Reserve policy actions in
August 2007,frequently asked
questions (updated)
Stephen G,Cecchetti
Bank for International Settlements and CEPR
63
1 You can find all the details by looking at the historical data on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York¡¯s website.
Every transaction is posted shortly after it is completed.
2 On Tuesday,the ECB provided €17.5 billion through its regular weekly auction plus €7.5 billion through fine-
tuning operations.
need cash,while a pension fund might have cash that it does not need overnight.
Through a repurchase agreement,the bank would give the T-bill to the pension fund
in exchange for cash,agreeing to buy it back at the original price ¨C repurchase it ¨C
with interest the next day,In short,the bank gets an overnight loan and the pension
fund gets some extra interest,The details are shown in the figure below.
The easiest way to think about a repo is as an overnight mortgage,In the same
way that you pledge your house to the bank in exchange for a loan,a financial
institution pledges a bond to the Fed in exchange for funds.
The Desk engages in repurchase agreements every morning (the exact time
varies),The quantities normally range from $2 billion to $20 billion.
3
Most of them
are overnight; but it is standard to engage in repos that are as long as 14 days,The
$35 billion on Friday 10 August 2007 was the largest since those in the aftermath of
the 9/11 terrorist attacks,The record is $81.25 billion on 14 September 2001.
How does the Fed pay for the repo? Where does it get the money?
There is an important difference between what happens when two private finan-
cial institutions engage in a repo with each other and how it works when the Fed
is involved,When a pension fund engages in a repo with a bank,the pension fund
transfers cash to the bank,Looking at the cash accounts of the two institutions,
64 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Figure 1
3 The Desk puts out a call for bids,usually stating the term of the repo and the type of collateral that it will
accept,Banks and securities dealers submit their offers ¨C quantities and prices ¨C and then the manager at the
New York Fed decides how much to accept,There are three types of collateral,US Treasury securities,US agency
securities (issued by people like Fannie Mae and the Small Business Administration) and mortgage-backed secu-
rities,Offers average roughly five times what is accepted for Treasury securities,ten times for agency securities
and 15 times for mortgage-backed.
Mechanics of an Overnight Repurchase Agreement
Day One
Bank sells U.S,Treasury Bill to Pension Fund in exchange for Cash
U.S,Treasury Bill to Pension Fund
Bank Pension Fund
Cash to Bank
Day Two
Bank repurchases the U.S,Treasury Bill from the Pension Fund
in exchange for Cash plus Interest
U.S,treasury Bill returned to Pension Fund
Bank Pension Fund
Cash+ Interest paid to Pension Fund
we see the level of one going down (the pension fund) and the other one (the
bank) going up,for a total of zero,When the Fed engages in a repo,it simply cred-
its a bank¡¯s reserve account,creating money (albeit for a very short time),Put
another way,when the Fed wants to engage in a repo,or buy anything else for that
matter,it can simply create liabilities to do it,It is a bit like having a credit card
with no limit where the bill never comes.
What happens if the bonds used in the repo fall in value
overnight?
When the Fed engages in a repo the bank (or securities dealer) on the other side ¨C
what is called the counterparty ¨C agrees to repurchase the security at a fixed price
regardless of what happens in the markets.
4
It is these banks which reap the gains
or suffer the losses from prices moving up or down,The only risk the Fed faces is
that the counterparty in a repo goes bankrupt and cannot make good on the
promise,Given that these are very large banks,and that the repos are very short-
term,this is an incredibly unlikely event.
Does this have any impact on the government¡¯s budget deficit?
No,Central banks¡¯ operations have nothing to do with fiscal policy ¨C federal gov-
ernment tax,expenditure and debt management policies ¨C they are all about the
interest rate and the quantity of reserves in the banking system,The Federal
Reserve is the Federal Government¡¯s banker,accepting and making payments,
issuing debt when it wants,etc.,but they are not connected in any material way.
(This is a slight simplification,as there is an esoteric connection that creates a
quantitatively negligible impact.)
If the Fed has $35 billion to help the financial system,why can¡¯t it use some
of its money to help the poor?
The Fed is not spending the money on bailing out banks or hedge funds,or
helping rich people,It is making fully collateralized loans that will be repaid the
next day (or week),So,while it is putting the funds in today,it is taking them out
almost immediately,If,instead,the Fed were to take $35 billion in $20-dollar bills
and hand them out to the needy,this would be a permanent increase in the quan-
tity of money in circulation,More money in the long run means higher prices ¨C
and that is inflation.
What is liquidity and why is it so important?
The publicly stated rationale for these large interventions is that liquidity has
dried up,Unfortunately,liquidity is one of those terms that means different things
Federal Reserve policy actions in August 2007,frequently asked questions (updated) 65
4 The Fed only engages in transactions with 21 primary dealers,Primary dealers agree to make bids or offers when
the Fed conducts open-market operations,provide information to the Fed¡¯s open-market trading desk and active-
ly participate in US Treasury securities auctions when the bonds,notes and bills are initially sold.
to different people,In the glossary to my money and banking textbook,I define
liquidity as ¡®the ease with which an asset can be turned into a means of payment
such as money¡¯,that is,when an asset is liquid it is easy to sell large quantities
without moving market prices,When something is illiquid,it is hard to sell.
People do not want to buy things that they cannot easily sell,If they are wor-
ried that a bond they are considering buying may be difficult or expensive to sell
they will lower the price they are willing to pay,assuming anyone is still willing
to buy it at all,For financial markets to function well,it must be cheap and easy
both to buy and to sell securities,When market liquidity dries up,the financial
markets stop functioning.
This form of liquidity might be better labelled market liquidity as distinct from
what I would call lending liquidity,Lending liquidity is the term I attach to the
concept that was in the news until recently,You may recall reading or hearing
about enormous amounts of liquidity sloshing around the system,When people
said this what they meant (I think) is that loan supply was plentiful so it was easy
to borrow at favourable rates,Put differently (and using some technical jargon),it
meant risk spreads were low and insensitive to a borrower¡¯s balance sheet position,
that is,the risk premium a borrower paid was small and did not increase with
additional borrowing,which should be riskier.
The autumn of 1998 was the last time market liquidity dried up to a greater
extent than we observe today,Then it was difficult to even trade US Treasury secu-
rities,usually the most liquid financial market there is.
5
So far,things are nowhere
near that bad,In fact,with few exceptions,markets still seem to be operating nor-
mally.
$35 billion seems like quite a bit of money,Is it?
To put the number into perspective,we have to understand what these funds are
used for,When the Fed injects ¡®money¡¯ into the financial system what it does is
create balances in what are called reserve accounts,That is where the money goes.
Commercial banks have deposit accounts at the Fed (you and I cannot have one).
Those are the bank¡¯s checking accounts,with the exception that they do not pay
interest,Because there is no interest paid on reserve balances,banks try to econo-
mize on the quantities.
Banks hold reserves at the Fed for three primary reasons,First,they are required
to hold them,Second,they need it to do business,so that they can meet customer
demands for withdrawals and they can make payments to other banks,Third,it is
prudent to do so; reserves act as the bank¡¯s emergency fund,they are always ready
just in case disaster strikes.
66 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
5 We can get some sense of the operation of a market by looking at the behaviour of securities dealers who both
buy and sell,When a market operates normally,the difference between the price they bidding to buy and the
one they asking to sell ¨C the bid/ask spread ¨C is very small and they are willing to quote a single price for a large
quantity,In the fall of 1998 there was a brief period when the bid/ask spread for US Treasury bonds was ten
times normal and the quantity for which dealers were willing to hold the price was one-tenth normal.
So,is $35 billion a big number or not?
Here are three numbers we could use to get some sense,First,total reserves in the
US banking system for the two weeks ending 1 August 2007 averaged $45 billion,
of which roughly $12 billion was held as deposits in reserve accounts at the
Federal Reserve,The remainder is held in cash in banks¡¯ vaults ¨C that counts,too.
Second,excess reserves,those above what the Fed requires banks to hold,usu-
ally total less than $2 billion.
Third,on an average day,the gross quantity of interbank transfers is $4 trillion.
This includes $1.6 trillion in funds that are transferred for the purpose of settling
purchases and sales of various bonds (primarily US Treasury securities).
6
Looking at these numbers,first we see that the Fed¡¯s action on Friday increased
banking system reserves by more than 75%,More importantly,the addition of $35
billion increased the size of reserve accounts by a factor of four,Second,the
increase was more than ten times the normal level of excess reserves (although for
complex reasons it is hard to know today exactly how much it will add to average
excess reserves),
Finally,note the rather amazing fact that during normal times the banking sys-
tem uses $12 billion to engage in $4 trillion in daily transactions,That is,on aver-
age a dollar in a reserve account is used more than 300 times per day,Because
reserves do not pay interest,banks have a big incentive to economize on their use
¨C this is pretty efficient,(This is also the reason that excess reserves are so low.)
That banks do this every day suggests that they know how to do it; but the fact
that they use the funds so many times means that if anyone starts hoarding
reserves,there is the potential to disrupt the system.
The conclusion is that $35 billion is a very big number,three times the normal
level of reserves that banks hold,
Why did the banks need this money?
It is easy to explain why the Fed used open-market operations to add $81.25 bil-
lion on 14 September 2001 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks,People¡¯s
inability to reach their offices in downtown New York had closed some very large
banks,Though those banks could still receive payments from other banks,they
could not make any payments to anyone else,Funds were flowing into a few huge
reserve accounts,but nothing was coming out,A few large banks were sucking up
the lifeblood of the financial system.
Last week the trigger seems to have been the continued fall in the value of cer-
tain mortgage-backed securities,Mortgage-backed securities bundle a large num-
ber of mortgages together into a pool in which shares are then sold,The owners
of these securities receive a share of the payments made by the homeowners who
borrowed the funds,The pools create a form of insurance,In the same way that
automobile insurance companies know what fraction of the insured will have col-
lisions (but not exactly which individuals),pools of mortgages mean investors can
predict the quantity of defaults and the repayment rates.
Federal Reserve policy actions in August 2007,frequently asked questions (updated) 67
6 If you want to know more,look at,www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fedwire/default.htm
There are numerous types of mortgage-backed securities,but the ones that have
run into difficulty are in what is called the subprime segment of the market.
Subprime borrowers are basically people with poor credit who cannot qualify for
a standard mortgage,Making loans to these people is known to be risky,And
when things are risky,sometimes they do not work out,That is what happened.
But up to now,the problems in the subprime mortgage market are relatively
small,Currently,losses are estimated to be at most $35 billion,equivalent to a
stockmarket decline of about 0.2%,(Last week the value of stocks traded in US
markets were down a not terribly unusual 1.5%,or seven times the total expected
decline in the value of these mortgages.)
What has happened is that problems in this one small part of the financial sys-
tem have been seeping into the rest of the market,When people see that they
have underestimated the risks in one place,they start to question their ability to
accurately evaluate risks everywhere else,
Then two things happen,First,the prices of risky financial assets fall,Risk
requires compensation,and the more risk there is the more compensation.
Second,people flee from risky stuff that they find hard to evaluate and put their
money in safe assets,This is what is called a flight to quality and it is reflected in
an increase in prices of US Treasury securities and an influx of funds into the bank-
ing system.
So,the first reasons the banks need the reserves is to serve the customers that
have brought money into their deposit accounts.
But individuals are not the only ones who have reduced their tolerance for risk.
Bankers have,too,Bankers¡¯ reduced risk tolerance shows up in two important
ways,both of which result in higher demand for reserve balances,The first is that
they simply want a bigger cushion against the possibility of losses,That is pretty
simple,
The second reason bankers need more reserves is that they became less willing
to lend their reserves to other banks,There is a huge daily interbank market for
overnight loans,It is called the federal funds market and the interest rate charged
on those overnight loans is the federal funds rate,The federal funds rate is the rate
targeted by the Federal Reserve.
7
On a normal day (which Thursday and Friday of
last week were not) banks are willing to make loans early in the day even if it
means temporarily overdrawing their accounts,(Yes,they are allowed to do that.)
Banks that are overdrawn in the morning figure that if they do not receive pay-
ments to bring their reserve accounts back into positive territory by the end of the
day,they can always go out and borrow it back,Well,it appears that last week
banks were not willing to behave in this way and the result was that it was very
difficult to borrow late in the day.
The bottom line of this very long-winded explanation is that the banks wanted
to hold substantially higher level of reserves,Keeping the federal funds rate at its
target level of 5?% ¨C that is what the desk is supposed to do every day ¨C meant
engaging in huge operations.
68 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
7 When the Federal Open Market Committee sets the interest rate they are really instructing the Desk to try to
keep the federal funds rate determined by banks in the market for overnight loans near a specific target,The
Desk does this by supplying the quantity of reserves it believes the banking system will want at that target rate.
For somewhat complex reasons,the Fed does not actually determine the rate,See Chapter 18 of my textbook
Money,Banking,and Financial Markets (pp,462 ff.,1st edn,pp,430ff.,2nd edn).
Did the Fed¡¯s operation have something to do with mortgages?
Yes,On Friday 10 August the Fed accepted mortgage-backed securities as collater-
al for the entirety of the $35 billion in repos it engaged in that day,Importantly,
though,they did not accept just any mortgage-backed securities,They only
allowed dealers to pledge mortgage-backed securities issued or fully guaranteed by
federal agencies.
Two comments are important here,First,this is not new,The willingness to
accept mortgage-backed securities as collateral in repo goes back to changes made
in advance of the year 2000 switchover,At the time there were concerns about
being able to get funds into the financial system quickly,and this is one of the
changes made to ensure the Desk could do that,Since then,the Fed has taken
mortgage-backed securities as collateral in repo at nearly the same rate they have
taken agency securities.
Nevertheless,the way in which the Fed chose to do this on Friday 10 August is
notable,Normally,when the Fed sends out a message it tells dealers exactly what
it wants in collateral,Each of the three categories is treated separately,So,it is
common for the Desk to send out a message that it is willing to accept only
Treasury securities,Alternatively it might send out a message that it will accept all
three types ¨C Treasury,agency and mortgage-backed ¨C in three separate operations.
What the Desk did on Friday is send out a message that said it would take what-
ever the dealers wanted to deliver,Since mortgage-backed securities are the cheap-
est to deliver (they have the lowest price in the market),that is what came in.
My speculation is that the Fed did this to demonstrate to the markets that it
believes mortgage-backed securities are good as collateral,It was trying get finan-
cial-market participants to value mortgage pools sensibly.
Who decides to do this?
A number of people are involved in deciding the quantity of a daily open-market
operation,On a normal day there is not much to decide,The Desk staff makes a
recommendation in a conference call and the participants agree,(Having listened
in on these calls,I can attest to the fact that they are normally not very interest-
ing.) Last week was obviously not normal,While I doubt that the entire Federal
Open Market Committee decided on the action,the committee members may
have been consulted through a conference call,My guess is that the chairman,
Ben Bernanke,and the New York Fed president,Timothy Geithner,had a say.
What I can be sure of is that the decision was made by the Federal Reserve,not by
the Secretary of the Treasury or the President of the United States.
Why did this happen when it did?
It is natural to ask whether there is some specific reason for these events to occur
when they did,Can we identify a specific trigger? While we can see something has
happened,as I suggested earlier,there has been no fundamental deterioration in
economic conditions,In fact,in the United States there was no economic data
Federal Reserve policy actions in August 2007,frequently asked questions (updated) 69
released on Thursday 9 August 2007,So,people did not suddenly change their
view of the future.
Instead,what happened was analogous to a bank run,Bank runs can be the
result of either real or imagined problems,How it works is that most people,even
fairly sophisticated investors,are not in a position to assess the quality of the
assets on a financial institution¡¯s balance sheet,In fact,most people do not even
know what those assets are,So when we learn that one bank is in trouble,
investors begin to worry about all financial institutions and start to flee,The
inability to accurately value assets leads to a strong shift toward high-quality secu-
rities like Treasury bonds,
Thinking about it this way,there are two events that may have precipitated
this,The first was the announcement on 2 August that the German bank,IKB
Deutsche Industriebank AG,was in trouble because of investment in US subprime
loans,And then,on Wednesday one of Europe¡¯s largest banks,BNP Paribas,had
three funds with similar problems,Financial-market participants¡¯ response was to
reduce their exposure to risky investments,on the assumption that they could not
properly assess the risks,That is exactly analogous to a bank run,It is impossible
to predict the exact timing of something like that.
Does this have anything to do with discount lending?
For those of you who have seen (and heard) Jim Cramer¡¯s diatribe on CNBC on
Monday 3 August,
8
you may be wondering about discount lending,The Fed has a
standing offer to lend to banks (so long as they have collateral to pledge for the
loan) at a rate that is 1 percentage point above the federal funds rate target of
5?%,So,today a bank can borrow from the Fed at 6?%,Banks,not the Fed,
decide when to request a discount loan,The borrowed funds are deposited into
the bank¡¯s reserve account and can be loaned out to other banks.
While we do not know for sure,it seems unlikely that discount lending
increased much last week,The reason is that banks always have the option of bor-
rowing from other banks at the federal funds rate,and the Federal Reserve Bank
of New York reports that the highest rate charged for an overnight interbank loan
late last week was 6%.
9
I seriously doubt that a bank would borrow from the Fed
at 6?% when it can borrow more cheaply from another bank.
I would guess that Cramer was really arguing for an interest-rate cut,It is hard
to see why that is necessary at the moment,If you cannot buy and sell the secu-
rities you own,you probably do not care if the cost of funds is 5?% or 4%,or
whatever.
70 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
8 You can watch Jim Cramer screaming on UTUBE at,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWksEJQEYVU It is very
entertaining and will take you only 3:13 minutes to watch.
9 On the day of Cramer¡¯s diatribe,there was a federal funds loan reported at 6?%,above the level at which the
Fed was willing to lend,But because both the effective federal funds rate was close to the target and the (weight-
ed) standard deviation was low,my strong suspicion is that the quantity of lending at 6?% was very low.
The ECB¡¯s operation was much larger than the Fed¡¯s.
Is there a reason?
The details of the ECB¡¯s operating procedures are very different from those of the
Fed,and I will not go into the details here,Nevertheless,I can provide the sim-
plest explanation for the size of the ECB¡¯s operation,When the ECB announced
its intention to provide funds on Thursday 9 August 2007 (a day it would not nor-
mally operate at all),it said that it would accept all bids at or above their 4%
target,The result was that banks asked for and received €95 billion ($130 billion)
on Thursday,€61 billion ($83.6 billion) on Friday,and €47.7 billion ($65.3 bil-
lion) the following Monday.
10
To explain this,we need to understand two things about how bank reserves
work in Europe,As it turns out,9 August is the first day of a 35 day reserve main-
tenance period in the eurosystem,As I mentioned earlier,banks hold reserves
because they are required,The amount they need to hold depends (in a compli-
cated way) on the size of deposits the bank held in the past,Because there can be
day-to-day fluctuations in accounts,the requirement is enforced as an average
over a longer period,called the maintenance period,In the United States,the
maintenance period is two weeks,In Europe it varies from 28 days to 35 days.
The second point is that in Europe banks receive interest on the reserves that
they are holding,The interest rate paid on required reserves is equal to the aver-
age of the overnight lending rate over the maintenance period,a rate that is
almost always slightly above the ECB¡¯s target rate,(This is very different from the
United States,where no interest is paid.)
Imagine that you are a bank and you hear the ECB announce that it will lend
you as much as you want at the 4% target,Maybe you know something about
what is going on,maybe not,In either case,when the ECB says that it is going to
give you as much as you want on a day when it normally does nothing,you have
to wonder what they know that you don¡¯t,
You also know that since the reserve requirement is an average over the next 35
days,if you hold a high level of reserves today,you can always make up for it with
a very low level before the end of the maintenance period,And,again unlike in
the United States if you are stuck with excess reserves holdings,in you can rede-
posit it at the ECB at a 3% interest rate,All of this makes it much cheaper for
European banks to take the reserves from the ECB and helps explain why they
took so much.
Federal Reserve policy actions in August 2007,frequently asked questions (updated) 71
10 It is possible that the ECB did this to rescue a single institution that was unable to obtain credit elsewhere,I hope
that is not the case.
31 August 2007
The public is overreacting to the current turmoil in financial markets,The turmoil
is most likely a situation where very specific problems are spread out extensively
across investors and countries and thus the defaults are benign.
The public and (especially) the press seem to have overreacted to the current tur-
moil in financial markets,It is often claimed that all we are witnessing is
global liquidity¡¯s revenge on Bernanke,However,if it is a financial turmoil that we
are facing,it is most likely to involve an ¡®extensive/benign¡¯ scenario rather than
an ¡®intensive/malign¡¯ scenario,An extensive/benign scenario is one in which a
specific and quantitatively limited type of risk (i.e,the one related to the subprime
borrowers in the United States) is spread out extensively across investors and
countries for risk-sharing purposes (the benign phenomenon) via the instruments
of financial diversification,An intensive/malign scenario,by contrast,is one asso-
ciated with a large amount of risk concentrated with some investors (possibly
geographically),whose deterioration usually leads to large default losses (the
malign phenomenon).
In the last 20 years,financial markets have changed dramatically throughout the
world,and in the United States in particular,This has been synonymous with the
increased ability of risk diversification,Put differently,the new financial
system has become increasingly atomistic,The physical link between the primary bor-
rower (the family seeking a mortgage) and the lender,via a plethora of instruments of
financial diversification (and of subsequent borrowers/lenders along this chain),has
weakened considerably.
1
At the same time,technological improvements in the risk
assessment process have substantially reduced monitoring costs for lenders.
In this context,the fact that lenders (loosely speaking) have been assuming an
increasing amount of risk (the subprime loans) is a natural implication of the
deepening of financial diversification,In the specifics of mortgage markets,home-
ownership projects that were turned down ten years ago have now become
eligible for finance,With falling monitoring costs and the increased ability of diver-
sification,financing riskier categories of borrowers can be perfectly consistent with
profit maximization by lending institutions,But for previously constrained families,
An extensive but benign crisis?
Tommaso Monacelli
Bocconi University and CEPR
73
1 The IMF refers to this as a more arm¡¯s-length financial system,with an increased role for price signals and com-
petition among lenders (see IMF WEO,September 2006).
this process of financial diversification has meant a loosening of their borrowing con-
straints,Overall,and from the viewpoint of economic theory,it is hard to identify
this as a malign phenomenon.
It is sometimes argued that,along the financial diversification chain,it may
become increasingly difficult to identify where the risk exactly lies,Certainly true,
yet isn¡¯t this exactly what financial diversification is all about? Making idiosyn-
cratic (family-specific) risk negligible relative to the aggregate pool of financed
(home-ownership) projects.
From a different angle,many critics have pointed out the fallacy of this process
arguing,somewhat loosely,about excessive lending or excessive amount of risk as
necessary drawbacks of increased financial diversification,From the standpoint of
economic theory,though,excessive is meaningful only if inefficient,In this case,
one can formally identify an inefficiency if either of two phenomena arises,an
increased ¡®adverse selection¡¯ and/or an increased moral hazard problem,Possibly
only the latter qualifies as concrete in this context.
Adverse selection and moral hazard
Is it not worrying that,simply allured by the rumour that nowadays nobody is
denied a mortgage,virtually any family ¨C including the most risky ones ¨C can
decide to show up in a bank and ask for a loan? Not really,to the extent that the
risk associated with this borrower is priced correctly (with this being more likely
as monitoring costs fall) and is diversified through the system,After all,once
again,this is what financial risk-sharing is all about.
Is it not true that,tempted by the increased opportunities of insurance,financial
institutions have been taking up an increasing amount of risk? Prima facie,this may
qualify as a deepening of a moral hazard problem,¡®Lending institutions need to take
risks by making loans,and usually the most risky loans have the potential for mak-
ing the most money,A moral hazard arises if lending institutions believe that they
can make risky loans that will pay handsomely if the investment turns out well but
they will not have to fully pay for losses if the investment turns out badly.¡¯
2
In the specifics of our example,the insured is financial institution ¡®n-1¡¯ along
the chain and the insurer is financial institution ¡®n¡¯ buying a mortgage-backed
security,What is crucial about moral hazard,though,is that the insured individ-
ual (better informed than the insurer about his/her own intentions) has the abili-
ty to affect the return distribution through his/her behaviour,and does that in a
distorted way,Does this apply to our case? Possibly yes,Pushed by fierce compe-
tition to make it to the ¡®funds-of-the week¡¯ top-ten list of pseudo-specialized finan-
cial reviews,with the comfortable belief that one will be handsomely compensat-
ed in the case of success and allured by the possibility of diversifying much of the
risk away,many funds¡¯ managers have probably taken up an increasingly ineffi-
cient amount of risk,A correct assessment of risk should instead consist in com-
pensating funds managers just slightly less if the fund is listed at,for example,
11th in the ranking (if only such an ideal ranking existed).
3
To be sure,this poten-
74 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
2 Source,Wikipedia.
3 I thank Nicola Pavoni for a lively discussion on this point.
tial source of inefficiency does not lie in the funding of subprime loans per se,but
in the excess funding of risky projects due to a perverse or distorted assessment of
risk.
A correct quantitative assessment of the proportion of these inefficiently risky
loans is extremely hard,However,one should make sure that such an assessment
be made relative to the spectacular increase in financial investment experienced
in the last ten years in both the US and global markets,In this vein,there is scope
for cautious optimism.
House prices and aggregate compared with idiosyncratic risk
In the turmoil of comments witnessed these days,many seem to have forgotten
that,in the United States,the initial cause of distress has been a fall in house
prices,It is well-known that,via gains in home equity,
4
the house price accelera-
tion has considerably widened the access to borrowing for the average family
through a series of instruments,secondary loans,mortgage-equity withdrawal,
mortgage refinancing,etc,Here,though,we would like to focus the attention on
two partly neglected aspects,the previous increase in house prices may not have
necessarily been a bubble; a fall in house prices is the realization of an aggregate
risk.
Are we really confident that the recent fall in house prices qualifies (as many
have repeatedly suggested) as the pricking of a bubble? This is important; for it
implies that the previous price inflation was somehow inefficient.
5
However,seri-
ous models exist (the elaboration of which Bernanke has eminently contributed
to
6
) that can rationalize an acceleration in asset prices as the result of a so-called
credit cycle,an initial increase in house prices (perfectly consistent with funda-
mentals) strengthens the demand for borrowing (via an equity valuation effect),
which in turn validates and reinforces the initial increase in prices,Of course,one
cannot rule out that part of the observed run-up in house prices may have been
unjustified on the basis of fundamentals,Yet,once again,such an assessment
should be made relative to the acceleration that can be rationalized on the basis
of a coherent model of the type described above,Furthermore,the parallel strong
acceleration in housing investment experienced in the United States may have
gradually led to a re-balancing of supply with demand in the housing market,
finally leading to the recent fall in prices.
A possible source of concern behind the fall in house prices is that it constitutes
the realization of an aggregate shock,As it hits all families simultaneously,this
shock is by definition not diversifiable,Hence,there is nothing to blame the mod-
ern financial architecture here,This is definitely material for monetary policy.
Fortunately nobody knows better than Bernanke about the connections between
the financial and the real side of the economy,Despite the allegations of ¡®rooky
mistake¡¯ for defining the subprime problem as contained,Bernanke is the one that
An extensive but benign crisis? 75
4 Technically,the difference between the existing value of the mortgage and the market value of the house.
5 Some economists would,for good reasons,also qualify bubbles as efficient outcomes,but we prefer to abstract
from this point here.
6 Bernanke and Gertler (1989); Kiyotaki and Moore (1997),These papers differ in many details but both contain a
financial acceleration mechanism,
has spoken recently about a possibly forthcoming negative financial acceleration
problem for US families,falling house prices leading to a worsening of balance
sheets,to a rise in families¡¯ finance premia and tightened borrowing conditions,
with possible final effects on consumption.
7
However,this concern may once again be worth a word of caution,In today¡¯s
increasingly integrated financial markets,national (usually the prototype of aggre-
gate) shocks assume increasingly the form of idiosyncratic shocks,country risk
can in fact be shared away internationally,This entails that both the United States
and Europe may end up experiencing a dampening in their growth rates of con-
sumption/output in the near future,but of possibly contained magnitude exactly
because of the benefits of international risk-sharing.
The stockmarket and Bernanke¡¯s two sides
What to make,then,of the recent turmoil in financial markets? Here we obvious-
ly enter more risky territory,One interpretation is that the usual irrational exu-
berance of the market may have focused excessively on the extensive rather than
the benign part of the story,A spark originating from a somewhat limited niche
of the US mortgage markets was after all spreading geographically with surprising
pervasiveness,In this vein,the phenomenon was taking the form of a new crisis.
But could it not be that we are just facing a relative benign risk being spread out
extensively (and therefore not likely to generate major losses and defaults),as
opposed to a malign intensive risk concentrated geographically (as the bank crises
of the past,see for instance the Massachusetts credit crunch of the 1980s)?
Is the Fed hesitating too long in cutting interest rates? The malevolent inter-
pretation is that Bernanke is hostage to his (alleged) schizophrenic identity,with
the champion of inflation targeting on the one hand,and the scholar of the Great
Depression on the other,More than a weakness we may see this as a strength,The
Fed may well have embraced the extensive-benign interpretation,If this was the
case,it is sensible to wait that the portion of,inefficient risk¡± (see our point
above) be naturally re-absorbed by the market,thereby avoiding an ex-post vali-
dation of any moral hazard behaviour (however relevant it might have been).
Different,and more important,is the issue that pertains to spillovers that may
affect the real side of the economy,The Fed is definitely anticipating a cut in the
funds rate if any signals of such spillover materialise,In the meantime,the inter-
national risk-sharing scenario cited above may continue to offer a comfortable
buffer of inertia,both for the Fed and the ECB.
References
Bernanke,B,and Mark Gertler (1989).,Agency Costs,Net Worth,and Business
Fluctuations.¡±,American Economic Review 79(1),14¨C31.
Kiyotaki,Nobuhiro and John Moore (1997),Credit Cycles,¡± Journal of Political
Economy,105,211¨C248.
76 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
7 See http://www.federalreserve.gov/boardDocs/speeches/2007/20070615/default.htm
23 November 2007
The subprime troubles caused a liquidity shock,but there is little reason to believe
that a substantial decline in credit supply under the current circumstances will
magnify the shocks and turn them into a recession,We have not (yet) arrived at a
Minsky moment.
The late Hyman Minsky developed theories of financial crises as macroeconomic
events,The economic logic he focused on starts with unrealistically high asset
prices and buildups of leverage based on momentum effects,myopic expectations
and widespread overleveraging of consumers and firms,When asset prices col-
lapse,the negative wealth effect on aggregate demand is amplified by a,financial
accelerator¡±; that is,collapsing credit magnifies falling aggregate demand,A severe
economic decline is the outcome,Many bloggers refer to this as a,Minsky
moment¡± (see Minsky 1975 for the real thing.)
I am sympathetic to the view that,Minsky moments¡± can happen (indeed,I have
written numerous studies that give some support to that claim),But in my view,the
correct application of the Minsky model to the current data indicates that we are not
facing a Minsky moment ¨C at least not yet,This column,which draws on a much
longer analysis I have posted at the AEI,summarises my reasoning.
At the moment,it is not obvious that housing or other asset prices are collaps-
ing,or that leverage is unsustainably large for most firms or consumers,That is not
to say that the economy will avoid a slowdown,or possibly even a recession,My
main focus is not on forecasting changes in housing prices or consumption,per
se,which are very hard to predict,I am interested in assessing the likelihood that
financial weakness will substantially magnify aggregate demand shocks through a
The current liquidity shock
We are currently experiencing a liquidity shock to the financial system,initiated
by problems in the subprime mortgage market,which spread to securitisation
products more generally - that is,mortgage-backed securities,asset-backed securi-
ties,and asset-backed commercial paper,Banks are being asked to increase the
amount of risk that they absorb (by moving off-balance sheet assets onto the bal-
ance sheet),but the related losses that the banks have suffered are limiting some-
what the capacity of banks to absorb those risky assets,The result is a reduction in
Not (yet) a ¡®Minsky moment¡¯
Charles W,Calomiris
Columbia University
77
aggregate risk capacity in the financial system as losses force those who are used
to absorbing risk to sell off or close out their positions.
The financing of many risky activities unrelated to the core mortgage market
shock has been reduced relative to their pre-shock levels,There are,at least
temporarily,lots of,innocent bystanders¡± that are affected due to the aggregate
scarcity of equity capital in financial intermediaries relative to the risk that needs
reallocating.
The housing finance sector shock that started the current problems was small
relative to the economy and financial system (estimated losses on subprime mort-
gages range from $200 billion to $400 billion),It was magnified because of the
increased and imprudent use that has been made of subprime mortgage-backed
securities in the creation of other securitisation conduits,and because of the
connection of the instruments issued by those conduits to short-term asset-backed
commercial paper.
From 2000 to 2005,the percentage of non-conforming mortgages that became
securitized increased from 35% to 60%,and the volume of non-conforming
origination also rose dramatically,Subprime mortgage originations rose from $160
billion in 2001 to $600 billion in 2006,And many of these securitized mortgages
became re-securitized as backing for CDOs,As of October 2006,39.5% of existing
CDO pools covered by Moody¡¯s consisted of MBS,of which 70% were subprime or
second-lien mortgages,Why did subprime issuance boom from 2002 to 2006?
Foreclosure rates for subprime mortgages actually peaked in 2002,but remarkably,
that experience led to a sharp acceleration in the volume of subprime originations
because the 2002¨C3 foreclosures did not produce large losses,Losses from foreclo-
sure were low in the liquid and appreciating housing market,and ratings agencies
wrongly concluded that the forward-looking risks associated with subprime
foreclosure were low,Instead,ratings should have recognized that this was an
unusual environment,and that there was substantial risk implied by high fore-
closure rates.
Despite CDOs¡¯ increasing reliance on subprime mortgage-backed securities and
the observably low quality of these assets (i.e,high subprime foreclosure rates),
CDO pools issued large amounts of highly rated debts backed by these assets,The
CDO problem became magnified by the creation of additional layers of securiti-
zation involving the leveraging of the super-senior tranches of CDOs (the AAA-
rated tranches issued by CDO conduits),These so-called leveraged super-senior
conduits,or LSS trades,were financed in the asset-backed commercial paper
(ABCP) market,Some banks structured securitizations that levered up their hold-
ings of these super-senior tranches of CDOs by more than ten times,so that the
ABCP issued by the LSS conduits was based on underlying organizer equity of only
one-tenth the amount of the ABCP borrowings,with additional credit and liquid-
ity enhancements offered to assure ABCP holders and ratings agencies,When
CDO super-senior tranches turned out not to be of AAA quality,the leveraging of
the CDOs multiplied the consequences of the ratings error,which was a major
concern to ABCP holders of LSS conduits.
We have learned from the recent turmoil that mistakes in the pricing of funda-
mental risks in one market can have large consequences for the global financial
system,In some ways,the global dimension of the shock is a sign of progress,Over
the last two decades,securitization produced great progress in the sharing of risk
78 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
and the reduction of the amount of financial system equity capital needed to
absorb risk,by establishing mechanisms for transferring risk from banks¡¯ and
finance companies¡¯ balance sheets to the market,and by establishing those mech-
anisms in creative ways that reduced adverse selection and moral hazard costs
associated with more traditional securities markets.
That progress was real and these technological innovations will persist.
Mistakes were made as part of what could be called a process of learning by losing
(the history of the last two decades has seen many temporary disruptions to
the process of financial innovation in securitization,as discussed in Calomiris
and Mason (2004),of which the current liquidity shock is clearly the most severe).
Securitizations have had a bumpy ride for two decades,which is inherent in
innovation,but overall the gains from reshaping risk,sharing risk and creating
mechanisms that reduce the amount of equity needed per unit of risk (through
improved risk measurement and management) have been large and will remain
large,even if there is a substantial permanent shrinkage in securitized assets.
Risk reallocation has already produced a decline in the supply of available credit
for some purposes,and this will not be fixed overnight,The financial system was
devoting too little equity to intermediating risk in the mortgage securitization
market,There is likely to be a long-term reduction in the amount of credit that
can be supplied per unit of equity capital in the financial system.
Furthermore,the shock occurred at a time when credit spreads seemed unrea-
sonably low to many of us,reflecting the unusually high level of liquidity in the
marketplace and the willingness of investors consequently not to charge suffi-
ciently for bearing risk,In this sense,it is quite possible that credit spreads,once
disturbed from those unrealistically low levels,will remain somewhat elevated
after the shock dissipates.
But these adjustments,at least for now,do not a financial crisis make,It is possi-
ble that the financial system and economy could follow the patterns of 1970,1987
and 1998 and recover from financial disturbances quickly without experiencing a
recession,even without any further monetary policy stimulus by the Fed.
1
Reasons to be cheerful
My view of the limited fallout rests on eight empirical observations.
1,Housing prices may not be falling by as much as some economists say they are.
Too much weight is being attached to the Case-Shiller index as a measure of the
value of the US housing stock,Stanley Longhofer and I,along with many oth-
ers,have noted (Calomiris and Longhofer,2007) that the Case-Shiller index has
important flaws,Most obviously,it does not cover the entire US market,and
Not (yet) a ¡®Minsky moment¡¯ 79
1 Recent Fed actions through the discount window and the fed funds rate (discussed below) are comparable with
the Fed actions in 1970,1987 and 1998,episodes during which Fed loosening was confined to fed funds rate
declines that averaged 1.1% over the three episodes,To be specific,in 1970 the fed funds rate fell from 7.80%
on 17 June to 6.34% on 26 August; in 1987 it fell from 7.59% on 14 October to 6.43% on 4 November; in
1998 it fell from 5.50% on 29 September to 4.75% on 17 November.
the omitted parts of the US market seem to be doing better than the included
parts,A comparison between the Case-Shiller and OFHEO (Office of Federal
Housing Enterprise Oversight) housing price indexes shows that the Case-
Shiller index provides a strikingly different,and less representative,picture of
the US housing stock from OFHEO¡¯s index,According to the OFHEO index,as
shown in Figure 1,housing prices continued to rise on average through June
2007.
2,Although the inventory of homes for sale has risen,housing construction activ-
ity has fallen substantially.
The reduced supply of new housing should be a positive influence on housing
prices going forward,Single-family housing starts dropped 7.1% in August rel-
ative to July and are down 27.1% on a year-to-year basis,Building permits for
single-family homes slumped 8.1% in August (the largest decline since March
of 2002) and were down 27.9% on the year,This decline in residential invest-
ment responded to an apparent excess supply problem; homeowner vacancy
rates,which had averaged 1.7% from 1985 to 2005,jumped to 2.8% in 2006.
The decline thus far in residential investment by the household sector as a share
of GDP has been comparable by historical standards with the declines in the
1950s,1960s,1970s and 1980s (most,but not all,of which preceded reces-
sions),as shown in Figure 2.
80 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Figure 1 U.S,home price appreciation
Note,Recessions are shaded.
Source,Federal Reserve Statistical Release Z.1,Table F.6.; National Bureau of Economic Research,Business Cycle
Expansions and Contractions.
As Figure 3 shows,almost the entire decline in commercial paper in recent
months has come from a contraction of asset-backed commercial paper,while
financial commercial paper has contributed somewhat to the decline,and non-
financial commercial paper has remained virtually unchanged.
Not (yet) a ¡®Minsky moment¡¯ 81
Figure 2 Residential investment by household sector relative to GDP
Figure 3 Commercial paper outstanding (weekly,seasonally adjusted)
Source,Federal Reserve (http//www.federalreserve.gov/DataDownload/Choose.aspx?rel=CP)
This shows that the fallout from the shock has mainly to do with the loss in
confidence in the architecture of securitization per se,and secondarily with rising
adverse-selection costs for financial institutions,but has not produced a decline in
credit availability generally.
4,Aggregate financial market indicators improved substantially in September and
subsequently,Stock prices have recovered,Treasury yields rose in September as
the flight to quality subsided,and bond credit spreads have fallen relative to
their levels during the flight to quality (although T-bill yields remain low rela-
tive to other money market instruments).
5,As Figure 4 shows,non-financial firms are highly liquid and not overleveraged.
Thus,many firms have the capacity to invest using their own resources,even if
bank credit supply were to contract.
Note,Gross corporate leverage is defined as liabilities divided by assets,Net corporate leverage is defined as lia-
bilities,less cash,divided by assets,Cash is defined as total financial assets,less trade receivables,con-
sumer credit,and miscellaneous assets.
Source,Federal Reserve Statistical Release Z.1,Table B.102.
6,As Malpass (2007) has emphasized,households¡¯ wealth is at an all-time high
and continues to grow,So long as employment remains strong,consumption
may continue to grow despite housing-sector problems.
7,Of central importance is the healthy condition of banks,As the Fed chairman,
Ben Bernanke,noted from the outset of the recent difficulties,financial insti-
tutions¡¯ balance sheets remain strong,for the most part,even under reasonable
worst-case scenarios about financial-sector losses associated with the subprime
fallout,Bank lending has been growing rapidly,which is accommodating the
82 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Figure 4 Corporate leverage
transfer of securitized assets back on to bank balance sheets,The high capital
ratios of banks at the onset of the turmoil is allowing substantial reintermedia-
tion to take place without posing a threat to the maintenance of sufficient min-
imum capital-to-asset ratios.
8,Banks hold much more diversified portfolios today than they used to,They are
less exposed to real-estate risk than in the 1980s,and much less exposed to local
real-estate risk,although US banks¡¯ exposure to residential real estate has been
rising since 2000 (Wheelock,2006).
I conclude from this evidence that the consequences of the recent shocks for the
supply of bank credit may turn out to be modest.
Conclusion
The current financial market turmoil resulted from a moderate shock to the hous-
ing and mortgage markets,which was magnified by the uses of subprime mort-
gages in a variety of securitization vehicles,which produced a collapse of confi-
dence in the architecture of securitization and led to a sudden need to reallocate
and reduce risk in the financial system,The liquidity risks inherent in maturity-
mismatched asset-backed commercial paper conduits substantially aggravated the
short-term problem,Despite these disruptions,the fallout thus far in the financial
system has been limited and appears to have been contained by a combination of
market discipline and short-term central bank intervention,It is hard to know
whether new financial shocks will occur (e.g,large housing price declines,or sub-
stantial increases in defaults on other consumer loans),or whether consumption
demand will decline independent of financial system problems,but there is little
reason to believe that a substantial decline in credit supply under the current cir-
cumstances will magnify the shocks and turn them into a recession,We have not
(yet) arrived at a Minsky moment.
References
Calomiris,Charles W,and Joseph R,Mason (2004),¡®Credit Card Securitization and
Regulatory Arbitrage¡¯,Journal of Financial Services Research 26,pp,5¨C-27.
Calomiris,Charles W.,and Stanley D,Longhofer (2007),¡®Why the Housing
Market Crisis Isn¡¯t¡¯,Working Paper.
Malpass,David (2007),¡®Running on Empty?¡¯,The American (September/October),
pp,72¨C3.
Minsky,Hyman P,(1975),John Maynard Keynes,New York,Columbia University
Press.
Wheelock,David C,(2006),¡®What Happens to Banks When House Prices Fall? U.S.
Regional Housing Busts of the 1980s and 1990s¡¯,Federal Reserve Bank of St
Louis Review (September/October),pp,413¨C28.
Not (yet) a ¡®Minsky moment¡¯ 83
3 September 2007
A rate cut is unnecessary,Congress will swiftly augment the Bush bailout,adding
a fiscal stimulus worth,say,0.5% of GDP,The anticipation of relief on both the
fiscal and monetary side is likely to be enough to normalize credit conditions.
Both addressed the crisis in the US subprime mortgage market,falling US house
prices,the wider turmoil in credit markets and the liquidity problems encountered
by a growing number of diverse financial institutions,Bernanke listed the weapons
in the Fed¡¯s armoury and tried to outline the Fed¡¯s contingent reaction function to
new developments,Bush outlined a small bailout for financially distressed low- and
middle-income homeowners.
Bernanke¡¯s ¡®wait and you shall see¡¯
Bernanke succeeded completely in what he set out to do,he said nothing at all new,
but said it very well indeed,Ignoring the scholarly and historical bits,what is relevant
to future Fed policy can be captured by the following quotes and their translations.
¡®¡­ if current conditions persist in mortgage markets,the demand for homes
could weaken further,with possible implications for the broader economy,We
are following these developments closely.¡¯
Translation,Even though the Fed is in Washington,DC,we are not asleep at the
wheel.
¡®The Federal Reserve stands ready to take additional actions as needed to pro-
vide liquidity and promote the orderly functioning of markets.¡¯
Translation,We can inject additional liquidity through open-market purchases
or at the discount window; we can cut the discount rate or the federal funds tar-
get rate,and we can widen the range of eligible assets we will accept as collateral
in repos or at the discount window,
¡®¡­ the further tightening of credit conditions,if sustained,would increase the
risk that the current weakness in housing could be deeper or more prolonged
than previously expected,with possible adverse effects on consumer spending
and the economy more generally.¡¯
A B and B future for subprime
borrowers?
Willem Buiter
London School of Economics,University of Amsterdam
and CEPR
85
Translation,An increase in credit risk spreads represents a tightening of monetary
conditions,even if the federal funds target is unchanged,The Fed is aware of this,
¡®¡­ in light of recent financial developments,economic data bearing on past
months or quarters may be less useful than usual for our forecasts of economic
activity and inflation,Consequently,we will pay particularly close attention to
the timeliest indicators,as well as information gleaned from our business and
banking contacts around the country,Inevitably,the uncertainty surrounding
the outlook will be greater than normal,presenting a challenge to policymak-
ers to manage the risks to their growth and price stability objectives,The
Committee continues to monitor the situation and will act as needed to limit
the adverse effects on the broader economy that may arise from the disruptions
in financial markets.¡¯
Translation,Never mind what we said following the August 7 FOMC meeting.
That was then,This is now,However,financial kerfuffles influence the setting of
the federal funds target if and only if (and to the extent that) they have a materi-
al impact on our fundamental objectives,employment and price stability,going
forward.
What does this mean for the future path of the federal funds rate?
Most of the recent real economy data are robust,including the Q2 GDP growth
rate of 4.0% (annualized) and robust personal income and personal spending
growth in July,However,they extend no later than July 2007,and therefore do
not capture any negative effect on consumer and investment demand of the
August financial turmoil,
Core PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditure) rose 0.1% in July 2007,keeping
the 12-month rate of core PCE inflation at 1.9% for a second month,Headline CPI
also rose by 0.1% in July,and fell to 2.1% over a 12-month period,down from
2.3% in June,While both are north of the centre of the Fed¡¯s assumed comfort
zone (which ranges from 1.0% to 2.0%),they are low enough not to be a cause for
embarrassment were the Fed to decide to cut the federal funds target on 6
September,
Although if I were a voting member of the FOMC,I would vote to keep the fed-
eral funds rate constant,barring exceptional developments between now and 6
September,I believe that the most likely outcome is a 25 basis points insurance
cut in the federal funds rate,We shall see.
Bush¡¯s small bailout
By revealed preference,poverty in the United States is something this Republican
Administration and Democratic Congress (like past Republican and Democratic
Administrations and Congresses) can live with,The prospect of a couple of million
homeowners being foreclosed upon during the year before a presidential election is,
however,more than the body politic can stand ¨C these people might well be voters.
President Bush gave us the homeowners bailout ¡®lite¡¯ in his speech,The Congress
will no doubt up the ante and turn this into a homeowners bailout ¡®premium¡¯,
Bush first gave a concise statement of the case against bailing out mortgage
lenders,speculative investors in real estate and those who unwisely took on exces-
sive mortgages,and then outlined a plan for bailing out the last-mentioned cate-
gory.
86 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
¡®A federal bailout of lenders would only encourage a recurrence of the problem.
It¡¯s not the government¡¯s job to bail out speculators,or those who made the
decision to buy a home they knew they could never afford,Yet there are many
American homeowners who could get through this difficult time with a little
flexibility from their lenders,or a little help from their government,So I strong-
ly urge lenders to work with homeowners to adjust their mortgages,I believe
lenders have a responsibility to help these good people to renegotiate so they
can stay in their home,And today I¡¯m going to outline a variety of steps at the
federal level to help American families keep their homes.¡¯
There are a number of aspects of these proposals that are interesting from an
economic point of view.
1,It represents a cyclically appropriate,albeit small (especially in the President¡¯s
version,the only one formally on the table) fiscal stimulus,That is what is
meant by ¡®a little help from their government¡¯.
2,The fiscal stimulus proposed by the President will be implemented mainly
through quasi-fiscal means,That means that they will not come in the form of
on-budget tax cuts or increases in subsidies or other public spending,Instead
they will be hidden in below-market mortgage interest rates,supported by fed-
eral guarantees,through subsidized mortgage insurance and other off-budget
measures that are functionally equivalent to tax cuts or subsidies,The full budg-
etary impacts will be obscured and delayed,
That is clear from the central role assigned to the Federal Housing Association
(FHA),the cornerstone of socialized housing finance in the United States,The FHA
is a government agency that started operations in 1934 and provides mortgage
insurance to borrowers through a network of private-sector lenders,Bush propos-
es to expand a proposal he sent to the Congress 16 months ago that enables more
homeowners to qualify for this insurance by lowering down-payment require-
ments,increasing loan limits and providing more flexibility in pricing,There are
obvious elements of subsidy in this proposal.
Already about to come online is a new FHA program (¡®FHA-Secure¡¯) that aims
to allow American homeowners who have a good credit history but cannot afford
their current mortgage payments to refinance into FHA-insured mortgages,Again,
the unaffordable can only be made affordable through a federal subsidy.
The President also proposes to change a feature of the US federal income system
that can hit homeowners who no longer can service their mortgages hard,Debt for-
giveness counts as taxable income,Assume you have $100,000 worth of mortgage
debt you cannot afford to service,Your house is worth $100,000 to the bank,If the
bank were to forgive you your mortgage debt and take your house in exchange,you
would still be left with income-tax liability on the $100,000 of forgiven debt,That
seems a bit rough,Of course,you could instead sell the house to the bank for
$100,000 and use the proceeds of the sale to pay off the loan,No income tax would
be due (there could,under certain conditions,be capital gains tax),
The US Congress is likely to expand on these proposals by letting Fannie May
(or Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (or Federal Home
Loan Mortgage Corporation),two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) creat-
ed by the Congress that are at the heart of the US system of socialized housing
A B and B future for subprime borrowers? 87
finance,expand the scale of their operations,specifically by increasing the upper
limit on the size of the mortgages they can extend or guarantee from its current
level of $417,000.
1
3,It represents a redistribution of income towards those low- and middle-income
Americans who had taken on excessive mortgage debt,The bill is paid mainly
by the shareholders of the mortgage lenders (that is what is meant by ¡®a little
flexibility from their lenders¡¯ and by the American taxpayer,who will have to
foot the bill of the increased subsidies attached to the loan guarantees and sub-
sidized mortgage insurance offered by the FHA,If the Congress manages to get
Fannie May and Freddie Mac involved in the game,the cost to the taxpayer
could turn out to be significantly higher,
4,By subsidizing excessive and imprudent borrowing,it reinforces the moral haz-
ard faced in the future by low- and middle-income Americans pondering the
size of the mortgage they can enforce (if the market-friendly President Bush is
willing to bail us out today,would a more market-sceptical President Barack
Obama or President Hillary Clinton not do so again tomorrow?)
5,By leaning on the lenders to show greater leniency towards delinquent mort-
gage borrowers than would be required by the mortgage contracts and the dic-
tates of the competitive environment,it will discourage future subprime lend-
ing and other higher-risk mortgage lending by banks and other mortgage
finance institutions,This will further increase the role of the FHA,Fannie,
Freddie and the federal home loan banks,and will further strengthen the role
of socialized housing finance in the United States.
6,There is a reasonable prospect that federal legislation and federal regulation and
supervision of the housing-finance industry will be changed in such a way as to
reduce the likelihood of the excesses,the misselling and the misrepresentations
that became rampant especially during the past five years or so,There has been
a serious failure by the regulators to stop the rogue mortgage lending practices
that have proliferated,and not just in the subprime market,The Fed,under
both Chairman Greenspan and Chairman Bernanke,is one of the institutions
that bears responsibility for this regulatory fiasco,
It is,unfortunately quite likely that the legislative and regulatory changes we will
get will amount to a Sarbanes-Oxley-style regulatory overshoot,that is,regulation
of the ¡®if it moves,stop it¡¯ variety,This will discourage future lending to low-
income or credit-impaired would-be homeowners even when such lending is fun-
damentally sound.
88 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
1 Together,the three mortgage finance GSEs (Fannie Mae,Freddie Mac and the 12 federal home loan banks) have
about $4.4 trillion of on-balance sheet assets,Fannie May has about $2.6 trillion,Freddie Mac has about $820
billion and the 12 federal home loan banks just over $ 1.0 trillion,Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac initiated the
securitization of home mortgages,
Parochialism in US economic policy
Both sets of remarks were amazingly parochial,The President clearly believes that,
except for oil and Chinese imports,the United States is a closed economy,
Bernanke¡¯s text contains a few rather generic references to global matters,but
rather less than the topic deserved,Surely the fact that so much of the subprime
exposure ended up in European and Asian financial institutions must have made
it easier for the US lending excesses to occur,One also has to recognize the impor-
tance of international regulatory arbitrage as a factor limiting the ability of national
regulators to impose even mild disclosure restrictions (let alone more serious
regulatory constraints,whether for prudential or consumer protection reasons) on
internationally mobile financial institutions,
Even in a lecture on ¡®Housing,housing finance,and monetary policy¡¯,it is sur-
prising not to find the word ¡®exchange rate¡¯ in a section of the lecture titled ¡®The
Monetary Transmission Mechanism Since the Mid-1980s¡¯,During the past 20
years,the US economy has become increasingly open,as regards trade in both real
goods and services and financial instruments,Transmission of monetary policy
through the exchange rate undoubtedly has become more important,both for
prices and for aggregate demand,during this period,and US real interest rates are
increasingly influenced by global economic developments,as Bernanke himself
has pointed out in a lecture on the global saving glut,
When all is said and done,the entire construction sector in the United States is
5% of GDP,The bit that is hurting badly,residential construction,is somewhere
between 3% and 4% of GDP,Exports are 12% of GDP and growing in volume
terms at an annual rate of over 11%,Import competing industries are also doing
well,The combination of a sharp nominal and real depreciation of the US dollar
and continued rapid growth outside the United States accounts for the strength of
the externally exposed sectors of the US economy,It goes a long way towards off-
setting the weakness of parts of the non-traded sectors,including housing,While
increased credit risk spreads represent a tightening of monetary conditions,the
weaker dollar represents a loosening of monetary conditions,There is no indica-
tion from Bernanke¡¯s address that the Fed pays any attention to this in its actual
policy deliberations,This is especially surprising in view of Bernanke¡¯s recognition
of these issues ¡®in the abstract¡¯,in some recent lectures.
Of course,housing troubles are not limited to the construction sector,Housing
wealth is an important component of total net household financial wealth; real-
estate assets can be collateralized and thus are a ready source of consumer spend-
ing power,Another Fed governor,Frederic Mishkin,argued at the same Jackson
Hole conference that a fall in housing wealth could be a serious drag on consumer
spending,assuming that the marginal propensity to spend out of housing wealth
was 3.75% (a very precise number indeed),
Bottom line
A 25-bps cut in the federal funds rate on 6 September is unnecessary,likely,but by
no means a foregone conclusion,By the time Congress is done augmenting the
Bush small bailout of financially stressed mortgage-holders,there may be a fiscal
A B and B future for subprime borrowers? 89
stimulus worth about 0.5% of GDP,With elections looming,this fiscal stimulus
could be enacted rather swiftly,The anticipation of relief on both the fiscal and
monetary side is likely to be enough to normalize credit conditions (albeit at
spreads closer to long-run historical levels rather than at the anomalously low lev-
els between 2003 and mid-2007) and to provide a boost to asset markets,The US
housing market is in structural trouble,with excess capacity in most categories
that will take years to work off,But that is a small enough part of the US econo-
my not to be a serious drag on overall activity in the years to come.
90 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
13 March 2008
Loan defaults create financial losers and winners,but the losses are highly con-
centrated in highly visible financial institutions while the winners are dispersed
among millions of mortgage-holders that have been written down or written off.
Here is a discussion how the subprime crisis has created winners and what it
means for analysis of this unfolding situation.
The sky must surely be falling on the financial sector,Reported or estimated sub-
prime related losses have,since last summer,gone from $50 billion,to $100 bil-
lion,$200 billion,$400 billion,even $800 billion,Let us call it $1 trillion,or even
$2 trillion,just to be sure we catch most of the likely eventual losses,What have
not been reported are the matching subprime-related gains,which without a shad-
ow of a doubt also follow the sequence $50 billion,$100 billion,$200 billion,$400
billion,$800 billion,$1 trillion and $2 trillion,Why this failure to report the sub-
prime-related gains?
One reason,no doubt,is that there is a lot of ignorance and stupidity around;
the distinction between inside and outside assets appears to be a difficult one for
economists,especially financial specialists,brought up in a partial equilibrium tra-
dition,I am lucky in having had Jim Tobin as my PhD adviser and mentor.
Balance-sheet constraints,budget constraints,Walras¡¯ law,adding up constraints
¨C it was the bread and butter of what he taught,A little general equilibrium does
go a long way.
The second reason is that the losses are highly concentrated among a few
hundred commercial banks,investment banks,hedge funds and similar shadow
banking sector institutions,while the matching gains are widely dispersed among
the many millions of homeowners who owed the mortgages that have been written
down or written off,Mancur Olson¡¯s logic of collective action strikes again,In addi-
tion,many of the winners may not wish to advertise the fact that,given the amount
by which the value of their property fell,they are better off now because they were
able to force the bank that held their mortgage to eat their negative equity.
Double counting 101,the useful
distinction between inside and
outside assets
Willem Buiter
London School of Economics,University of Amsterdam
and CEPR
91
Inside and outside assets
For every financial asset there is a matching financial liability,That is,financial
assets are inside assets,Inside assets are assets owned by a natural or legal person
that are the liability of some other natural or legal person(s),Outside assets are
assets of a natural or legal person that are not a liability of some other natural or
legal person(s),When you net out all inside assets against the corresponding
liabilities,you are left with just the outside assets,or the net wealth of the system.
In a closed economy (foreign assets and liabilities present no conceptual problems
but clutter up the argument),the outside assets are the stocks of natural resources
(including land) and physical capital (residential housing,other structures,equip-
ment,infrastructure),the human capital (the current and future labour endow-
ments of the economy,that is,the resources embodied in current and future
natural persons) and the productive resources (goodwill,synergy,monopoly
power) embodied in legal persons such as incorporated firms.
There is an interesting argument about whether the labour endowments of the
unborn should be included among a society¡¯s outside assets,In a society without
hereditary slavery,future endowments of labour embodied in natural persons yet
to be born are not owned by anyone alive today,and therefore do not constitute
private wealth,They can,however,be viewed as part of the tax base,because the
institution of the state (and the associated power to tax) is likely to endure as long
as mankind,That issue will have to wait till some future occasion to be treated in
earnest.
So residential property is an outside asset and constitutes net wealth,A mort-
gage is a liability of the homeowner and an asset of the mortgage lender (bank).
The mortgage held by the bank is an inside asset and does not constitute net
wealth.
Assume the bank securitizes the mortgages by selling them to an SPV that pools
them and issues mortgage-backed securities against them (residential mortgage-
backed securities or RMBS),Securities backed by residential mortgages are a liabil-
ity of the SPV that issued them and an (inside) asset of whoever holds them,say
an SIV owned by another bank,The SPV has as (inside) assets the mortgages it
bought from the originator,The mortgages are still liabilities of the homeowner
borrower,All CDOs backed by subprime mortgages (or by Alt-A or prime mort-
gages),by credit card receivables or by car loans are inside assets for which there
is a matching liability,They are not net wealth,The cars themselves are net
wealth.
Even a fall in outside residential housing wealth does not make
you worse off
The US residential housing stock at the beginning of 2007 was worth around $23
billion,Let us assume that its value has declined by 10%,There has therefore been
a reduction in the value of this outside asset of $2.3 trillion,I have argued else-
where (¡®Housing wealth isn¡¯t wealth¡¯,¡®OK then,housing wealth is wealth,but not
NET wealth!¡¯ and ¡®The coming decline in UK house prices,how large and how
helpful?¡¯) that because this outside asset yields its future income stream in kind,
92 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
in the form of consumable housing services,and because on average,homeown-
ers expect to consume (over their lifetime) the housing services yielded by the
stock of housing they own,a change in the value of residential property on aver-
age does not make anyone better off,
A fall in house prices redistributes wealth from those long housing (for whom
the value of the house they own,the present discounted value of the future actu-
al or imputed rental income of the property,exceeds the present discounted value
of the future housing services they plan to consume) to those short housing (for
whom the value of the house they own is lower than the present discounted value
of the future housing services they plan to consume),Simply put,a decline in
house prices redistributes wealth from landlords to tenants,On average,an
American household is a tenant in its own home,Changes in house prices do not
make the average American better or worse off,unless there is a lot of ownership
in US housing by non-resident foreigners,in which case a decline in house prices
would make the average US resident better off,The same point has been made by
many others,including Mike Buchanan and Themistoklis Fiotakis.
1
It is also a
viewpoint that,subject to all the aforementioned qualifications and further qual-
ifications to be mentioned below) is shared by Mervyn King,the governor of the
Bank of England,who first explained the issue to me in 1997.
This argument is false if the decline in house prices reflects the bursting of a
bubble rather than a reduction in its fundamental value (the present value of
future rentals),In that case the homeowners lose the bubble value,without a cor-
responding gain for the tenants through a lower present value of future rents.
Other necessary qualifications come from the fact that the average expected
remaining lifetime of housing consumers is likely to be less than the remaining
lifespan of the existing stock of residential property,This is certainly true if the
durability of the land is taken into account,In that case a fall in house prices can
hurt homeowners more than it helps renters,But with reasonable discount rates,
this effect is probably not very large.
Even if there is no net wealth effect from a change in home prices,this does not
mean it will not have any behavioural effect,Unlike human capital,housing
wealth can be collateralized,A lower value of residential housing,even if it does
not make you worse off,may lower the amount you can borrow against the secu-
rity of your property,Mortgage equity withdrawal becomes more restricted,This
means that,through this credit or liquidity channel,falling house prices will have
a temporary depressing effect on consumer demand (approximately,the level of
consumer spending goes up with the change in house prices).
What banks lose on mortgages,mortgage borrowers gain
What follows is independent of whether you buy the argument that a change in
house prices does not make the average American household worse off or better
off,Mortgages,like any other IOU,secured or unsecured,are inside assets,If the
value of the asset goes down for the investor (the bank holding the mortgage),the
Double counting 101,the useful distinction between inside and outside assets 93
1 M,Buchanan and T,Fiotakis (2004),¡®House Prices,A Threat to Global Recovery or Part of the Necessary
Rebalancing?¡¯,Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper No,114 (15 July).
value of the liability goes down for the borrower (the homeowner who took out
the mortgage with the bank),There is no change in net wealth,no economy-wide
net wealth effect.
There has been $800 billion worth of redistribution from banks and other mort-
gage lenders (and/or from those who invested in securities backed by the mort-
gages) to those who took out the mortgages (and/or from those who issued the
mortgage-backed securities),The same is true for changes (up or down) in the
value of any financial claim,bonds,options,CDS,complex financial structures
like ABSs (Asset Backed Securities),CDOs (Collateralised Debt Obligations),CBOs
(Collateralised Bond Obligations) or any of the other alphabet-soup financial
instruments,Changes in the value of inside assets,like RMBS (Residential
Mortgage-Backed Securities),represent pure redistribution between those who
hold them and those who issue them; the point is most easily seen for options and
other derivatives,All financial claims can,of course,be viewed as derivatives that
are in zero net supply.
Redistribution can matter for aggregate demand,It will not,in general be neu-
tral,But the non-neutralities have to be documented and substantiated carefully.
The size of the losses on inside assets by themselves (multiple trillions no doubt
before this crisis is over) bears no necessary relationship to the size of the aggre-
gate demand effects.
Asymmetries
1,The person owing a debt (a mortgage,in the subprime case) may not value it in
the same way as the person owning it,In other areas there have been spectac-
ular examples of this,Most workers enrolled in defined-benefit company pen-
sion plans probably put a positive present discounted value on their expected
future stream of pension benefits,For a long time,the companies that owed the
matching liabilities kept them off-balance sheet,Out of sight,out of mind,and
before long these future pension liabilities were not viewed as liabilities at all.
The realization that they were indeed unsecured liabilities has crippled much of
the US domestic steel and automobile industry.
2,When default risk increases but default has not (yet) occurred,the marked-to-
market value of the bank¡¯s asset (the mortgage) goes down,but the borrower is
still servicing the debt in full,While the homeowner owing the mortgage
should also mentally mark it to market,that is,allow for the prospect that (s)he
will service the mortgage in full in the future,the continuing full debt service
in the present may,because of liquidity and cashflow constraints,restrain
household spending.
3,Consider a household that purchases a home worth $400,000 with $100,000 of
its own money and a mortgage of $300,000 secured against the property.
Assume the price of the home halves as soon as the purchase is completed.
With negative equity of $100,000 the homeowner chooses to default,The mort-
gage now is worth nothing,The bank forecloses,repossesses the house and sells
it for $200,000,spending $50,000 in the process.
94 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
The loss of net wealth as a result of the price collapse and the subsequent
default and repossession is $250,000,the $200,000 reduction in the value of the
house and the $50,000 repossession costs (lawyers,bailiffs,etc.),The homeown-
er loses $100,000,his original,pre-price collapse equity in the house,the differ-
ence between what he paid for the house and the value of the mortgage he took
out,The bank loses $150,000,the sum of the $100,000 excess of the value of the
mortgage over the post-collapse low price of the house and the $50,000 real fore-
closure costs,The $300,000 mortgage is an inside asset,an asset to the bank and
a liability to the homeowner-borrower,When it gets wiped out,the borrower
gains (by no longer having to service the debt) what the lender loses.
The legal event of default and foreclosure,however,is certainly not neutral,In
this case it triggers the repossession procedure that uses up $50,000 of real
resources,This waste of real resources would,however,constitute aggregate
demand in a Keynesian-digging-holes-and-filling-them-again sense,a form of pri-
vate provision of pointless public works.
4,Continuing the previous example,how does the redistribution,following the
default,of $100,000 from the bank to the defaulting borrower ¨C the write-off of
the excess of the face value of the mortgage over the new low value of the house
¨C affect aggregate demand?
There is one transmission channel that suggests it is likely,had this redistribu-
tion not taken place,that demand would have fallen more than it does follow-
ing the default,The homeowner-borrower is likely to have a higher marginal
propensity to spend out of current resources than the owners of the bank,since
residential mortgage borrowers are more likely to be liquidity-constrained than
the shareholders of the mortgage lender.
5,Finally,we have to allow for the effect of the mortgage default on the willing-
ness and ability of the bank to make new loans and to roll over existing loans.
Clearly,the write-off or write-down of the mortgage will put pressure on the
bank¡¯s capital adequacy,The bank can respond by reducing its dividends,by
issuing additional equity or by curtailing lending,The greatest threat to eco-
nomic activity presumably comes from new lending.
The magnitude of the effect on demand of a cut in bank lending depends of course
on who the banks are lending to and what the borrower uses the funds for,If they
are lending to other financial intermediaries who are,directly or indirectly,lend-
ing back to our banks,then there can be a graceful contraction of the credit pyra-
mid,a multi-layered deleveraging without much effect on the real economy,If
bank A lends $1 trillion to bank B,which then lends the same $1 trillion back to
bank A again,there could be a lot of gross deleveraging without any substantive
impact on anything that matters.
With a few more non-bank intermediaries tossed in between banks A and B,
such intra-financial sector lending and borrowing (often involving complex struc-
tured products) has represented a growing share of bank and financial sector busi-
ness this past decade.
Double counting 101,the useful distinction between inside and outside assets 95
A group of people cannot get richer by shining each other¡¯s shoes or taking in
each other¡¯s laundry,Similarly,financial institutions (intermediaries) cannot get
richer by lending to each other,They can only get richer by intermediating,that
is,by lending to the real economy,Of course,a more efficient structure of inter-
mediation adds to the productive potential of the economy (by better matching
savers with profitable investment opportunities),but the degree of efficiency of
the structure of intermediation (markets and institutions) needs bear no relation
to the gross volumes of inside assets issued by the financial intermediaries.
Somehow,the financial markets and those buying shares in financial interme-
diaries forgot about the mutual shining of shoes theorem,A bubble or Ponzi
[[explain?]] finance scheme developed that caused the gross value of intermedia-
tion and leverage in the financial sector to rise massively,When the bubble burst,
there was a loss of net wealth equal to the bubble component in the valuation of
the financial sector,The subsequent deleveraging and contraction of balance
sheets do not,however,destroy net wealth.
Some of the lending of the financial sector went to the real economy,house-
holds and non-financial corporations,There will undoubtedly be an increase in
the cost and a reduction in the availability of such lending beyond what we have
seen already,The effect of this on spending by households and non-financial firms
(consumption and investment) is not,of course,equal to the reduction in bank
lending to these sectors.
There are other outside sources of funds for non-financial corporates,and both
households and firms can maintain spending by reducing household saving and
corporate retained profits respectively,So there is many a slip between the cup of
the massive deleveraging and inside asset blowout in the banking and non-bank
financial sector on the one hand and,on the other hand,the lip of private con-
sumption and investment,I consider the estimate of David Greenlaw,Jan Hatzius,
Anil K Kashyap and Hyun Song Shin in their paper ¡®Leveraged Losses,Lessons
from the Mortgage Market Meltdown¡¯,that a one dollar loss in bank assets reduces
spending on goods and services in the long run by just under 44 cents,to be an
order of magnitude too large; it also is bound to be far from a structural effect,that
is,an effect invariant under plausible changes in the economic environment driv-
ing these two endogenous variables.
A little statistical rant (don¡¯t read unless you are interested in
identification,endogeneity and simultaneity).
The authors calculate/calibrate a value for the ratio of total credit to end-users (either
the non-leveraged sector or just households and non-financial corporates) to the total
assets of the leveraged sector (banks,the brokerage sector,hedge funds,Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac,and savings institutions and credit unions),They then treat this
ratio as a constant,which means that once they have the change in the value of the
total assets of the leveraged sector,they know the change in credit to the end-users.
The next step is the empirical estimation of a correlation between the growth
rate in (real) credit to end-users and the growth rate of real GDP.
There are just too many ways to poke holes in the empirical argument,To start
with,as noted by the authors,the credit variable used domestic non-financial
96 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
debt,includes financing from non-leveraged entities and therefore does not cor-
respond to the credit variable of the theoretical story.
More painfully,the authors seem blithely unaware of the difference between
causation and correlation,or prediction and causation,What they perform is,
effectively,half of what statistically minded economists call a Granger causality
test but should be called a test of incremental predictive content,They run a
regression of real GDP growth on its own past values and on past values of real
credit growth and find that past real credit growth has some predictive power over
future GDP growth,over and above the predictive power contained in the history
of real GDP growth itself,past real credit growth helps predict,that is,Granger-
cause,real GDP growth,Lagged real credit growth is (barely) statistically signifi-
cant at the usual significance level (5%).
When you do this kind of regression for dividends or corporate earnings and
stock values,you find that stock values Granger-cause (help predict) future divi-
dends,Of course,anticipated future dividends determine (cause) equity prices,so
causation is the opposite from Granger causation.
The authors are undeterred and treat the estimate of GPD growth on credit
growth as a deep structural parameter.
The authors recognize the issue but completely fail to address it,They use the
so-called TED spread (the price difference between three-month futures contracts
for US Treasuries and three-month contracts for eurodollars having identical expi-
ration months,a measure of bank default risk) and a survey-based measure of
banks¡¯ willingness to lend as statistical instruments for credit growth.
Instruments are variables that are highly correlated with the variable that you
are trying to purge of endogeneity and simultaneity problems,but independent of
the random disturbance in the equation you are estimating.
It is a well-known but ruthlessly suppressed fact in the econometrics profession
that there are no instruments,there is just implicit theorizing,The correlation
between the instruments and the variable to be instrumented (credit growth in
this case) can of course be tested and reported,but the second key assumption ¨C
independence of the instruments from the disturbance term in the GDP growth
equation ¨C is untestable and simply has to be maintained.
Without boring the readers (if I still have any) with further details of why the
empirical work is,at best,utterly unconvincing,let me report that the 3.0% con-
traction in credit growth ($ 910 billion) to the end-users which the authors assume
will result from the decline in the assets of the leveraged sector,will according to
their instrumented equation reduce real GDP growth by 1.3 percentage point over
the following year,the 44 cents mentioned earlier.
The authors could be right about the effect of deleveraging in the leveraged sec-
tor on real GDP growth,but the paper presents no evidence to support that view.
How do we value the outside assets?
In the case of residential property,house prices (the sum of the value of land and
structures) provide all the relevant information,For physical capital,there is the
problem that part of it (publicly owned infrastructure) is not priced anywhere,For
privately owned capital,the asset should be valued at the present discounted value
Double counting 101,the useful distinction between inside and outside assets 97
of its future earnings,Where the capital is held by unincorporated businesses or
by unlisted companies,it is very hard to get an estimate of their value,When cap-
ital equipment is owned by listed corporations,it will contribute to the market
value of the corporation,but only in conjunction with the goodwill and other
going concern value of this legal person,The stock market value of the firm will
not do either,unless the firm is 100% equity-financed,Otherwise we have to add
the value of the company¡¯s net financial debt to its equity,Valuing human capital
(the present value of current and future labour earnings,either of those currently
alive or of current and future generations) is a bit of a nightmare.
There can be little doubt,however,that net wealth in the United States (and to a
lesser extent in the rest of the North Atlantic region) has taken a beating,The value
of the residential housing stock and of commercial property is down,The value of
corporate debt plus equity is down,With employment falling and subdued wage
growth,the value of human capital is also likely to be down,unless the appropriate
stochastic discount factors act very strangely.
So let us quantify these net wealth effects of changes in the value of outside
assets,Let us also study the distributional effects of the massive changes in the val-
ues of inside assets,But let us not forget that for every loser in the valuation game
for inside assets there is a matching winner,and that the asymmetries do not all
point to a stronger negative effect on demand,Defaulting mortgage borrowers,in
particular,are likely to have high marginal propensities to spend out of current
resources,Not having to service their mortgage debt any longer could give a major
boost to consumer spending.
Conclusion
Things are tough enough without us exaggerating the problems through egregious
double,triple,quadruple and higher multiple counting,Economic prospects for
the United States are poor,but nowhere near as bad as the growing crescendo of
the moans emitted by the losers in the inside asset revaluation game would have
us believe.
98 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
31 March 2008
The current crisis is a modern form of a traditional banking crisis,The 125-year-
old Bagehot¡¯s doctrine tells us how governments should react,lend to solvent but
illiquid financial institutions,While easy to state,the doctrine is hard to apply.
The key question to assess the future consequences of current central-bank policy
is whether the subprime mortgage crisis arises in the context of a moderate or a
severe underlying moral hazard problem.
The present financial crisis poses two main questions,whether it is similar to past
crises and how central banks should intervene to preserve the stability of the system.
The current financial turmoil seems extraordinary because it has unexpectedly
affected the heart of the functioning of our sophisticated money markets,Despite
the Northern Rock episode,the main contours of the current crisis seem very
distant from scenes of crises past where newspapers were full of photos of depositors
queuing to withdraw their money during a panic,Yet this crisis is just a modern-
market form of a traditional banking crisis.
An old-fashioned bank run happened if enough people tried to withdraw their
funds from a bank; even if the bank was solvent,it might not be able to meet all
the withdrawals and thus the fear of bank failure could become a self-fulfilling
prophecy,In the current crisis,participants in the interbank market take the place
of long queues of withdrawers,They have stopped extending credit to other banks
that they suspect to have been contaminated by the subprime loans and which
therefore may face solvency problems,The commercial-bond market and SIVs are
facing similar trouble.
Both the old and new forms of crisis have at their heart a coordination problem.
In the current one,participants in the interbank market and in the commercial-bond
market do not renew their credit because of fear others will not either,Witness the
demise of the investment bank Bear Stearns at the heart of the dealing on SIVs.
In reaction,central banks have intervened massively,injecting liquidity and allow-
ing banks to access fresh cash at the discount window in exchange for collateral that
includes the illiquid packages of mortgage obligations,Have central banks done the
right thing or are they provoking the next wave of excessive risk-taking by bailing out
banks and markets? Is monetary policy the only tool available for the central bank to
address the market crisis?
Bagehot,central banking and the
financial crisis
Xavier Vives
IESE Business School and CEPR
99
Bagehot¡¯s wisdom
Bagehot advocated in 1873 that a lender of last resort in a crisis should lend at a
penalty rate to solvent but illiquid banks that have adequate collateral,The doc-
trine has been criticized as having no place in our modern interbank market,but
this is wrong,Bagehot¡¯s prescription aims to eliminate the coordination problem
of investors at the base of the crisis,It is still a useful guide for action when the
interbank market stalls.
1
It makes clear that discount-window lending to entities
in need may be necessary in a crisis.
Bagehot¡¯s doctrine,however,is easy to state and hard to apply,It requires the
central bank to distinguish between institutions that are insolvent and those that
are merely illiquid,It also requires them to assess the collateral offered,Central
banks,because of information limitations,are bound to make mistakes,losing
face and money in the process,This does not mean they should not try.
Poor collateral versus massive liquidity
The collateral should be valued under normal circumstances,that is,in a situation
where the coordination failure of investors does not occur,This involves a judge-
ment call in which the central bank values the illiquid assets,A central bank that
only takes high-quality collateral will be safe,but will have to inject much more
liquidity and/or set lower interest rates to stabilize the market,This may fuel
future speculative behaviour,Some of this may have happened in the Greenspan
era,in the aftermath of the crisis in Russia and LTCM,and after the crash of the
technological bubble,The ECB and the Federal Reserve have accepted now par-
tially illiquid collateral that the market would not,This seems appropriate and
releases pressure to lower interest rates to solve the problem,something that
should be done only if there are signs of deterioration in the real economy,The
problem is that central banks are extending the lender-of-last-resort facility out-
side the realm of traditional banks to entities,like Bear Stearns,that they do not
supervise and,therefore,on which they do not have first-hand information,How
does the Fed know whether Bear Stearns or other similar institutions are solvent?
It seems that the Fed is not following Bagehot¡¯s doctrine here.
Finally,if banks and investors are bailed out now,why should they be careful
next time? This is the moral hazard problem,help to the market that is optimal
once the crisis starts has perverse effects in the incentives of market players at the
investment stage,The issue is that only when the moral hazard problem is mod-
erate does it pay to eliminate completely the coordination failure of investors with
central bank help,When the moral hazard problem is severe,a certain degree of
coordination failure of investors ¨C that is,allowing some crises ¨C is optimal to
maintain discipline when investing and,amending Bagehot,some barely solvent
institutions should not be helped.
Therefore,a key question to assess the future consequences of current central-
bank policy is whether the subprime mortgage crisis arises in the context of a
100 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
1 See X,Vives and J,C,Rochet (2004)¡¯Coordination Failures and the Lender of Last Resort,Was Bagehot Right
after all?¡¯,Journal of the European Economic Association,
moderate or a severe underlying moral hazard problem,The important extent of
asymmetric information in this market points to a severe problem,Be as it may,
this issue will determine whether current help will plug the hole for good,or only
temporarily,to make a larger one in the future,The challenge for central banks is
to find the right balance between preserving current stability and imposing disci-
pline for the future,Bagehot¡¯s doctrine is still a reference today.
Bagehot,central banking and the financial crisis 101
16 October 2007
The subprime crisis was first characterized as a liquidity crisis,but a month and
billions of dollars of liquidity injections later,the situation has not improved.
Perhaps it was not about liquidity,after all.
Since the month of August,economists have been trying to understand why
something that was supposed to be positive for global growth,namely the diver-
sification of risk through securitization,has turned out to be the source of the
recent crisis,The first reaction was to characterize this as a liquidity crisis,some
banks were having undue difficulties in securing funds in the interbank market,
and thus central banks reacted by providing liquidity through open-market oper-
ations,Many central bankers and academics started smiling with an ¡®I told you so,
there was so much excess liquidity,this was bound to happen¡¯,and adopted a
tough anti-moral hazard stance,More than a month,and many billions of dollars
of extra liquidity injections,later,the situation in money and credit markets has
not improved,Central banks have added liquidity to a situation of already excess
liquidity to tackle an apparent liquidity crunch,and yet nothing has got better.
Perhaps it was not about liquidity,after all.
What we are experiencing is a combination of reduction in the value of global
collateral,deleveraging,reintermediation,and risk aversion,Let us explain these
four items in turn.
The expansion of the US housing market followed the standard stages of a bub-
ble,an initial surge based on some fundamental factors,such as low interest rates,
immigration and a increased desire to invest in housing as a store of value.
Technological improvements in mortgage markets,such as better assessment and
management of risks due to massive computing improvements,facilitated this
expansion,After a few years,the expansion took a life of its own,speculation
increased and both activity and prices deviated heavily from fundamentals,The
last stages become a bubble,with the phenomenon of subprime credit at the heart
of the final acceleration,Many of the mortgages underpinning this housing
expansion were resold,They were securitized,meaning a loan would become a
tradable asset,and packaged,meaning many loans were put together to form a
single asset,The resulting bundles,called credit derivatives,were then sold world-
wide,most of them with high AAA ratings because the large number of loans that
they included meant a very small risk on any single one of them,This was a smart
The financial crisis,why it may last
Angel Ubide
Tudor Investment Corporation
103
idea,as long as many of these individual loans would not sour together,Which is
exactly what happened ¨C and was foreseen to happen ¨C when the whole US hous-
ing market started to slow down,Delinquencies started to rise and the value of
many of these derivatives,especially those packaging the later vintages of
subprime mortgages,had to be revised down,As a result,the holdings of assets of
many financial market participants worldwide were marked down in value,and
their value as collateral declined along the way.
Many of these assets were held by banks,It was a seemingly easy way to bolster
profitability,holding AAA-rated assets that yielded more than government bonds
and could be sold or used as collateral in money markets,In order to further
enhance profitability,many of these assets were held by banks off balance sheet,
so as to lower the capital cost of holding risky assets,in innovative forms (now
well-known as conduits and vehicles),The result was that banks were holding
more risky assets for a given level of capital,When the value of these assets had to
be marked down and the conduits brought into the balance sheets,the prudential
ratios were not met any more and banks had to sell some of these assets,whose
prices declined,With deteriorated balance sheets,banks had to cut down on loans.
The unexpected increase in delinquencies induced many market participants to
think,all of a sudden,that the ratings of many of these instruments were suspect
and that all banks in many countries were potentially at risk,As a result,risk aver-
sion and volatility increased and the demand for risky assets declined,Finally,the
reduced demand for risky assets led to banks being less able to sell their loans and
mortgages,and thus to have to keep them in their balance sheets,The result is
substantial reintermediation of credit,the outdoing of securitization,with three
consequences,first,banks may run into regulatory limits as their balance sheet
suddenly changes; second,banks need more cash to service all these new com-
mitments and they become reluctant to lend just in case further surprises appear;
third,banks become reluctant to lend to other banks because counterparty risk,
the possibility that a fellow bank might be unable to pay back a loan,has
increased,Instead of lending cash to each other as they normally do,banks hoard
cash and liquidity dries up,As central banks inject liquidity,banks just accumu-
late more and more,The system is in a liquidity trap.
What is the right response from a risk management standpoint to a sudden
increase in balance-sheet risk,volatility and uncertainty? Reduce positions dra-
matically ¨C which in the case of banks implies curtailing lending ¨C and,very slow-
ly,start to rebuild leverage only when both uncertainty and volatility decline and
the capital base has been restored,In other words,credit growth and the demand
for risky assets are likely to decline for an extended period of time.
What are the implications for policy of this episode? First,this crisis was not the
result of interest rates being too low,For any given risk-free rate,banks can always
choose which level of risk to take on board,and it is now clear that banks chose,
in some countries,to hold a lot of risk,The way to stop this process would have
been tighter supervisory control,not higher interest rates,In fact the problem has
occurred in countries with very different monetary policy approaches to asset
prices and different monetary policy stances,The phenomenon of subprime mort-
gages was the result of weak underwriting standards and excess demand for the asset
class,not of low interest rates,Whether these exposures were on- or off-balance
sheet is a critical determinant of where the surprises are,This shows that monetary
104 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
policy should deal with two objectives,price stability and financial stability,but we
know that tackling two objectives with one instrument is not an efficient arrange-
ment,Monetary policy should ensure price stability,supervision should ensure
that risk management is appropriate and both should work together,Spain,a
country with one of the most overvalued house markets by some metrics and one
of the loosest monetary-policy stances (it has enjoyed negative real interest rates
for many years now),has little or no subprime problems and its financial sector
has not engaged,as far as is known,in the risk accumulation process that is at the
heart of the current crisis,It probably had the right macro-prudential settings.
Second,the right monetary policy response to a sharp decline in the demand
of risky assets may not be a liquidity injection,but a reduction in the price of risky
assets that offsets,at least in part,the decline in its demand,Liquidity injections
are trying to address the symptoms,not the underlying malaise,which can be
summarized in an increase in the cost of capital as reintermediation becomes
widespread,Central banks must assess whether the increase in the cost of capital
needs to be offset in order to maintain price stability,and cut rates if needed.
Third,moral hazard is better dealt with during the upside than the downside.
It is clear that,from a political standpoint and especially if the asset is housing,it
is very difficult to adopt policies opposed to moral hazard when asset prices are
spiralling downwards ¨C and even more if the poorer classes of the population are
affected,as it is the case with the subprime problem in the United States,It is also
clear that in today¡¯s integrated capital markets,the system is more resilient to
small shocks but more fragile when faced with big shocks,and thus considerations
of ¡®too big or too many to fail¡¯ [[not sure what this means]] soon arise,And expe-
rience shows that,in general,moral hazard becomes secondary when the stakes
are high,Two examples come to mind,The first one is the Asian crisis in 1997,At
the time,the theory was that bank-deposit guarantees should always be limited to
avoid moral hazard,The IMF went to Indonesia and announced the closure of sev-
eral banks,and a bank run ensued,From that moment,the orthodoxy changed:
first declare a blanket deposit guarantee,then announce a bank restructuring
process,One wonders why this lesson was not applied in the Northern Rock case
in the United Kingdom,The second example is the saga of the Stability and
Growth Pact (SGP) in Europe,The attempts to implement the programme of sanc-
tions during a growth slowdown were highly criticized and,at the end,some for-
bearance was applied and the SGP was reformed by strengthening its preemptive
arm,to deal with moral hazard during good times,The same applies to the finan-
cial sector,supervision and regulation have to work towards systems that control
more effectively building up banks¡¯ leverage during good times.
Note,This article appears in English and French on Vox¡¯s Consortium partner¡¯s
site http://www.telos-eu.com.
The financial crisis,why it may last 105
28 September 2007
Economists cannot say,¡®We told you so.¡¯ Economists do not have perfect fore-
sight,But like doctors after the outbreak of a contagious disease,economists can
tell you how the disease might spread,so that you may be better prepared,Here
are some of the possible dangers ahead.
For years economists and policy-makers have worried about the fragility of the US
economy,and particularly about the unsustainability of the US housing boom,
but when the shock finally occurred,everyone ¨C central banks,commercial banks,
hedge funds,private investors - appears to have been unprepared,The big surprise
was the nature of the shock,Suddenly banks stopped lending to one another,
except on punitive terms,Liquidity dried up,threatening the existence of other-
wise well-functioning banks and businesses,The crisis of confidence jumped
across US borders with ease,as the recent run on Northern Rock has shown,How
will this financial turbulence affect the world economy?
Economists obviously do not have perfect foresight; so I will not try to anticipate
the future,But economists can do what doctors do after the outbreak of a contagious
disease,They can tell you how the disease might spread,so that you are prepared.
This is my purpose,not to make a forecast,but to warn of possible dangers.
Expectations inertia
Investors tend to imagine that the world will continue to be approximately like it
is now,Before the US Federal Reserve reduced the benchmark interest rate by one-
half a percentage point on Tuesday 18 September,financial markets were in
despair; afterwards they were euphoric,Such myopia is dangerous,So far,eco-
nomic activity ¨C production,employment,consumption,investment and trade ¨C
has remained largely unaffected by the credit crunch,Many seem to believe this
will continue,Equally dangerous.
If the credit crunch persists,there can be no doubt that economic activity will
suffer,The Fed¡¯s interest rate cut will not prevent US home foreclosures,nor will
it eliminate the glut of unsold homes,If US house prices continue to fall and
unemployment continues to rise,consumers will doubtlessly reduce their spend-
Fallout from the credit crunch
Dennis J,Snower
University of Kiel,Kiel Institute for the World Economy
and CEPR
107
ing,and the fall in demand will aggravate the rise in unemployment,hurt the US
stock market and thus lead to a further fall in spending.
Meanwhile,it is worth keeping in mind that the United States is not the only
country where house prices have risen much faster,on average,than national
incomes,On the contrary,house prices in Australia,Denmark,France,Ireland,
Spain,Sweden and the United Kingdom have all increased faster,over the past ten
years,than in the United States,Of course the United States is a special case on
account of its subprime mortgage lending towards the end of its housing boom.
There,mortgage lenders with poor credit records could buy houses virtually inter-
est-free for a few years,before the rates were adjusted steeply upwards,But the
danger of international contagion remains,The US housing slump may well lead
investors in Europe to reassess the value of their properties,If that happens,then
consumption spending is likely to fall in the countries listed above,leading to
weaker labour markets.
This could happen at a time when the Chinese economy has overheated and
will need to slow down,and when the Japanese economy is stagnating,There are
no other countries to take up the slack,to serve as a motor for the world econo-
my as the United States has done for so long.
Germany
In short,a recession in the United States is possible and this recession could spread
to other countries,primarily through loss of confidence within financial markets
and house price contagion,Germany,needless to say,need not worry about a
housing slump,since its housing market has already been in a state of slump for
over a decade,But that does not mean that Germany is immune from the dangers
of the current financial turbulence,The German economy is heavily dependent
on its exports,and these would clearly suffer if world economic activity declined.
Furthermore,as we have seen,the fallout from the US credit crunch can affect the
balance sheets of German banks.
Of course these dangers may not materialize,just as contagious diseases need
not spread,It is useful,however,to know where the dangers lie.
Even if times ahead are troubled,the long run is likely to look much more set-
tled,In the short run,a housing slump could well make private investors and cen-
tral banks outside the United States less eager to hold dollars,A survey by the US
Treasury Department last year indicates that about one-third of foreign-held US
corporate debt consisted of asset-backed securities and about half of that was
mortgage-related,Petrodollars held in the Middle East and Russia are particularly
mobile,If foreign money leaves the United States,the dollar would fall,In the
longer run,US exports would rise,shrinking the huge US trade deficit,Moreover,
a recession in the United States would lead to lower imports,further reducing the
trade deficit,At the same time,China may well let the yuan rise against the dol-
lar,leading to a rise in its domestic spending relative to its exports,Once US con-
sumers spend less and Chinese consumers spend more,the large global imbal-
ances,which have cast a shadow on the world economy for the past decade,
would begin to disappear.
108 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
30 April 2008
The financial turmoil has been worsening as lagged adjustment processes play out.
This article outlines economic dangers that may arise as they unwind,including a
scenario in which the United States suffers extended stagflation.
Day after day new,alarming news emerges from the world¡¯s financial markets,and
day after day the public is surprised by how bad it is,But instead of wringing our
hands,let us ask ourselves an important,unconventional question,What is more
surprising,that financial markets have turned from bad to worse,or that we con-
tinue to be surprised by each successive piece of adverse news?
I suggest that our repeated surprise should be more surprising,This issue is
important,because if we were better at recognizing the financial risks we face,we
could do more to avoid them,If banks,investment houses and American home-
owners had done a better job in recognizing the risks in the subprime mortgage
market,we could have spared ourselves the current crisis.
Why does the public repeatedly underestimate the repercussions of the present
financial crisis? The answer is simple,most of us are short-sighted; we cannot
imagine a future that is radically different from the present,In particular,most of
us do not understand that economic events often unfold gradually due to the
operation of important lagged adjustment processes embedded in the economy.
The public,the media and politicians would do well to give these lagged adjust-
ment processes close attention,After the Titanic¡¯s hull was punctured,it took
hours for its hull to fill with water; thus the passengers could not imagine that it
would sink.
In my judgement,there are currently four major dangers facing the world econ-
omy,and all of them are obscured by the fact they play themselves out slowly.
Four dangers
The first danger we have witnessed since August 2007,The subprime mortgage
crisis gave rise to a liquidity crisis in the international banking system,due to
uncertainty about who holds the losses,This is leading to reduced lending to firms
and households,But that is not the end of the story,because the reduced lending
will lead to reduced consumption and investment,With a lag,reduced sales of
Four mega-dangers international
financial markets face
Dennis J,Snower
University of Kiel,Kiel Institute for the World Economy
and CEPR
109
goods and services will reduce stockmarket valuations,And,with another lag,the
lower stockmarket prices will ¨C in the absence of any favourable fortuitous events
¨C intensify the banks¡¯ liquidity crisis.
The second danger lies in the dynamics of US house prices,As more and more
US households find themselves unable to repay their mortgages,foreclosures are
on the rise,more houses are put on the market,the price of houses falls further,
with further lags,which leads to more foreclosures and declines in housing
wealth,This dynamic process plays itself out only gradually,as households face
progressively more stringent credit conditions and house sales prices gradually
become lower.
The third danger results from the interaction between wealth,spending and
employment,As US households¡¯ wealth in the housing market and the stockmar-
ket falls,their consumption begins to fall and will continue to do so,again with a
lag,This decline in consumption is leading to a decline in profits,of which more
is on the way,which in turn will lead to a decline in investment,The combined
decline in consumption and investment spending will eventually lead to a decline
in employment,as firms begin to recognize that their labour is insufficiently uti-
lized,The decline in employment,in turn,means a drop in labour income,which,
with a lag,leads to a further drop in consumption.
And that leaves the fourth (and possibly the nastiest) of the dangers,one that
concerns the latitude for monetary policy intervention,As the Fed reduces inter-
est rates to combat the crisis,the dollar is falling,This is leading to higher import
prices and oil prices in the United States,putting an upward pressure on inflation.
The greater this inflationary pressure ¨C which is currently in excess of 4% ¨C the
more difficult it will be for the Fed to reduce interest rates in the future,without
running a serious risk of inflaming inflationary expectations and starting a wage-
price spiral,US firms and households will gradually recognize this dilemma and
the bleak prospect of little future interest rate relief will further dampen con-
sumption and investment spending.
Eventually,of course,the decline in spending will lead to a decline in inflation,
but this will only happen with a lag,The longer the lag turns out to be,the longer
the period over which the US economy will endure stagflation,that is,a cruel com-
bination of rising prices and falling aggregate demand,Much hinges on how per-
sistent US inflation is,More persistent inflation will inevitably give rise to higher
inflationary expectations,leading gradually to higher inflation and so on,It took
central banks over a decade,in the 1980s and early 1990s,to get inflationary expec-
tations under control,and the fruits of this battle are now in danger of being lost.
Global implications
The international financial crisis and the decline in the US economy will
inevitably have an adverse effect on the growth of the world economy,Europe and
the emerging markets of Latin America and the Far East cannot fill the gap that
the US economy leaves,There exists no economic mechanism whereby a drop in
the US aggregate demand will be matched by a correspondingly large increase in
aggregate demand elsewhere,Germany and other European economies highly
exposed to the vagaries of international trade will certainly feel the pinch.
110 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
In the longer run,the prospects for the world economy look much brighter.
Eventually US house prices will stabilize,rising exports will help the US economy
recover,the fall in world demand for goods and services will reduce the price of raw
materials,US households will learn the importance of saving and global imbalances
will correct themselves,These rosy prospects lie in the mists of the future.
Meanwhile,however,we are well advised to stay focused on the four dangers.
Four mega-dangers international financial markets face 111
10 April 2008
The nature of the ongoing financial turmoil that began in August 2007 has ren-
dered traditional monetary policy responses ineffective,This article summarizes
the US Federal Reserve¡¯s response to the crisis.
Central bankers are conservative people,They take great care in implementing
policy; they speak precisely; they explain changes completely; and they study the
environment,trying to pinpoint where the next disaster looms,Good monetary
policy is marked by its predictability,but when the world changes,policy-makers
change with it,If a crisis hits and the tools at hand are not up to the job,then cen-
tral-bank officials can and will improvise,In August 2007,the world changed and
the traditional instruments of monetary policy were not up to the task.
For some time now,there has been a consensus among monetary economists
on the fundamentals of policy design,These agreed principles of best practice
extend from central-bank design to operational policy,central banks should be
independent but have clearly defined policy objectives for which they are held
accountable; the policy-makers¡¯ operational instrument should be an interest rate;
and officials need to be transparent and clear in communicating what they are
doing and why they are doing it,Furthermore,there is agreement that the central
bank is the right institution to monitor and protect the stability of the financial
system as a whole.
An important part of the consensus has been that central banks should
provide short-term liquidity to solvent financial institutions that are in need.
But,as events in 2007 and 2008 have shown,not all liquidity is created equal,And
critically,the consensus model used by monetary economists to understand
central-bank policy offers no immediate way to organize thinking about this sort
of problem.
The crisis
By the beginning of 2007,the stage was set for a crisis,Prices of homes in the
United States were at unprecedented levels and borrowing by the owners (as a frac-
tion of the inflation-adjusted value) was higher than ever before,The quality of
newly originated mortgages was declining substantially,And,most importantly,
Federal Reserve policy responses to
the crisis of 2007¨C8,a summary
Stephen G,Cecchetti
Bank for International Settlements and CEPR
113
the securitization of these mortgages ¨C where they were put into large pools that
formed the collateral for what are known as mortgage-backed securities ¨C had
spread well beyond the government-sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac) that traditionally engaged in this task.
On 9 August 2007,the crisis hit and central banks swung into action,supply-
ing large quantities of reserves in response to stresses in the interbank lending
market,The spread on 3-month versus overnight interbank loans exploded,And,
as problems worsened into the winter,the spread between US government agency
securities ¨C those issued by Fannie Mae,Freddie Mac and the like ¨C and US
Treasury securities of equivalent maturity rose as well,Investors shunned any-
thing but US Treasury securities themselves.
As the crisis deepened,it became painfully clear that traditional central-bank
tools were of limited use,Reductions in the target federal funds rate,the objective
of Federal Reserve policy in normal times,had little impact on interbank lending
markets,And while the purchase of securities through open-market operations
enabled policy-makers to inject liquidity into the financial system,they could not
ensure that it went to the institutions that needed it most.
The policy response
In response to intensifying financial-sector problems,Fed officials created new
lending procedures in the form of the term auction facility (TAF) and the primary
dealer credit facility (PDCF),and changed their securities lending programme,cre-
ating the term securities lending facility (TSLF),The TAF offers commercial banks
funds through an anonymous auction facility that seeks to eliminate the stigma
attached to normal discount borrowing,The PDCF extends lending rights from
commercial banks to investment banks (technically to the 19 primary dealers with
whom the Fed does its daily open-market operations),And the TSLF allows invest-
ment banks to borrow Treasury bills,notes and bonds using mortgage-backed
securities as collateral,All of these programmes offered funding for terms of
roughly one month at relatively favourable interest rates.
Beyond creating these new facilities,the Fed made adjustments to existing pro-
cedures,First,it extended the term of its normally temporary repurchase agree-
ments to 28 days and accepted mortgage-backed securities rather than the normal
Treasury securities,Second,the Fed extended swap lines to the ECB and the Swiss
National Bank that allowed them to offer dollars to commercial banks in their cur-
rency areas,And third,they provided a loan that allowed an investment bank,
Bear Stearns,to remain in operation and then be taken over by JP Morgan Chase.
These new programmes are very different from the ones that had been in place
prior to the crisis,To understand the difference,it is important to realize that a
central bank¡¯s contact with the financial system is through its balance sheet,and
there are two general principles associated with managing these assets and liabili-
ties,First,policy-makers control the size of their balance sheet,that is,the quan-
tity of what is commonly known as the monetary base,By changing the level of
the monetary base (really commercial-bank reserve deposits at the central bank),
Fed officials keep the market-determined federal funds rate near their target.
114 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Second,the central bank controls the composition of the assets it holds,Given
the quantity of assets it owns,the Fed can decide whether it wants to hold
Treasury securities,foreign-exchange reserves,or a variety of other things,Each of
the new programmes implemented by the Fed involved changes in the assets the
Fed holds,And in nearly every case,officials provided either reserves (cash) or
Treasury securities in exchange for low-quality collateral,By the end of March
2008,the Fed had committed more than half of its nearly $1 trillion balance sheet
to these new programmes:
$100 billion to the TAF
$100 billion to 28-day repo of mortgage-backed securities
$200 billion to the TSLF
$36 billion to foreign-exchange swaps
$29 billion to a loan to support the sale of Bear Stearns
$30 billion so far to the PDCF
Changes in the composition of central-bank assets are intended to influence the
relative price a financial assets,that is,interest rate spreads,So,by changing its
lending procedures,Fed officials hoped that they would be able to reduce the cost
of 3-month interbank loans and the spread between US agency securities and the
equivalent maturity Treasury rate,At this writing,these programmes have met
with only modest success.
Federal Reserve policy responses to the crisis of 2007¨C8,a summary 115
17 August 2007
The Fed move,to cut the discount rate while keeping the federal funds rate
unchanged,is both innovative and shrewd,It allows banks to liquefy discredited
mortgage assets at low cost while leaving open the decision on monetary policy.
It also leaves in the Fed¡¯s hands the more powerful tool of cutting the federal funds
rate if its action does not succeed in quieting market fears.
The Fed has moved smartly and ahead of the crowd,While markets and analysts
have debated whether the Fed,the ECB and the Bank of Japan should change their
policy orientation,the Fed has invented a new response,lower interest-rate costs
while keeping the policy stance unchanged,
What did the Fed do? The Fed provides liquidity to the banking system mostly
through its regular sales on the open market,These sales,in effect renewable very
short-term loans,are designed to keep the open-market rate ¨C the so-called feder-
al funds rate ¨C at the Fed¡¯s pre-announced target level,The Fed did not change this
target level,so it remains at 5.25%,just where it has been for more than a year.
The federal funds rate,however,is not the only game in town,While the open
market is where normally banks and other eligible financial institutions go to find
the cash they need,or to download temporarily excess cash,the Fed stands ready
to lend cash on an emergency basis through its discount window,The rate at
which it does this emergency lending is called the discount rate.
To make sure that the discount window is not used to bypass the open market,
the interest rate charged at the discount window is higher than the open-market
federal funds rates,normally by a full percentage point,Also,the list of collateral
assets that must be deposited with the Fed as a guarantee is more restrictive than
those commonly required in the open market,
On 17 August,the Fed lowered the discount rate from 6.25% to 5.75%,But it
did not change its target for the federal funds rate; that remained at 5.25%,In
essence,it made recourse to the emergency-lending discount window less expen-
sive without changing its target for what the market interest rate should be,It also
announced that it would accept as collateral a wider range of assets,including the
troubled mortgages,and that it would lend for longer periods,up to 30 days.
What is smart about this is that the Fed has in one stroke relieved pressure on
the credit market without changing the federal funds rate and,simultaneously,
While the ECB ponders,the Fed
moves ¨C and cleverly at that
Charles Wyplosz
Graduate Institute,Geneva and CEPR
117
has kept its options open for its next decision due 18 September,The Fed has had
its cake and eaten it too,
The thing to fear is fear itself
Whether the current crisis is a temporary hiccup or the beginning of a serious
financial meltdown remains very much an open question,In my recent Vox col-
umn ¡®Subprime crisis,observations on the emerging debate¡¯,I argue that the sub-
prime crisis is perfectly digestible without wider trouble,but that panicky market
reactions could well drive financial markets down worldwide,We are now in one
of these delicate moments when potentially irrational market expectations drive
outcomes,which then make expectations look rational ex-post,Breaking this
vicious circle is a necessary step in stopping the stampede,Only central banks can
do this; the Fed is first in line do so.
The Fed,however,faces a delicate balancing act,It has been worried about a
resurgence of inflation and this is why it has kept the federal funds rate at 5.25%
(a rather high level) for more than a year,Before the crisis picked up speed,it obvi-
ously intended to wait and see before embarking on a path of declining rates,Most
observers thought that this caution made a lot of sense,If the crisis now subsides,
such a stance still makes sense,This is why the Fed does not want to rush in and
cut the federal funds target rate,But if the crisis persists and/or deepens,the Fed
can shift its concerns away from inflation and towards a possible recession,It is of
the essence,then,still to wait and see,
It is also essential to do everything that is humanly possible to significantly
reduce the very real possibility that the crisis deepens,By reducing the discount
rate and accepting the infamous mortgage-linked assets as collateral,the Fed is
offering markets a very strong reassurance,They can now find cash,and use the
hot potato as collateral,in virtually unlimited amounts,at a cost,of course,but a
very moderate one,The odds of a meltdown have now decreased,
The ECB¡¯s next move
Attention will now move to the ECB,The debate on whether the ECB should give
up its long-held plan to raise its interest rate at its 6 September meeting is swelling.
Some argue that changing its mind would be a loss of face,a very silly view since
the situation has radically changed,but silliness is part of life,Others call for a
pause before the next step ¨C basically a wait-and-see stance,Yet others want to see
the ECB completely reverse tack and lower the interest rate to deal with the crisis.
For the ECB,too,this is a catch-22 situation,An innovative reaction is required.
It might be difficult to do better than follow what the Fed did today,
Central-bank legend has it that governors earn ¨C or destroy ¨C their reputations
in times of crisis,For months,Fed watchers had tried to gauge Bernanke,All they
had to chew upon was what he was saying and not saying,not what he was doing
because there was nothing particularly challenging in his actions,The elegant
solution just adopted will undoubtedly kickstart the Bernankemania that was
becoming overdue and dispel the long shadow of the maestro,his larger-than-life
predecessor,A good omen for these troubled times,
118 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Section 3
What Can Be Done?
119
The subprime crisis,who pays and
what needs fixing
Marco Onado
Bocconi University
121
19 August 2007
The market participants who profited from creating the faltering debt instruments
are not the ones who will pay most of the cost of the crisis; the losses will fall on the
shoulders of final investors,Three things need fixing,credit ratings,evaluations of
asset marketability and transparency in the retail market for financial assets.
The rollercoaster swings of the financial markets that have been sending shivers
down the investors¡¯ spines since February are much more than the unavoidable
correction after a five-year bull period.
The Economist wrote that this is a good time for a credit squeeze and praised
the benefits of tighter conditions,following the conventional wisdom that down-
falls are helpful because they lead to a more correct pricing of goods and financial
assets,There is,however,a peculiar feature of the last crises (and particularly of
this one) that makes this position less acceptable,at least from the point of view
of who bears the losses and who pocketed the gains during the boom.
There are four characteristics of the present financial system that are worth
remembering.
The dramatic rise of financial assets and derivatives all over the world,At the
end of 2005 (IMF,Global Financial Stability Report,April 2007,total financial
assets stood at an astonishing level of 3.7 times world GDP,The notional amount
of total derivatives was double than the volume of total financial assets,which
means 11 times global GDP,Remember that financial derivatives did not exist
only 30 years ago.
The historical low level of interest rates over the last years,since the mid-1990s
(as an effect of Greenspan¡¯s monetary policy and his attempt to feed the growth
of the stockmarket),As a consequence of favourable monetary conditions,the
price for risk required by the market also stood at very low levels,Figures 1 and 2
give clear evidence of the abnormal situation prevailing in the last years.
The growing weight of stocks and bonds as a percentage of total financial assets
(therefore the decrease of loans by banks and other financial intermediaries),At
the world level (and in the EU),bank loans account for 50% of total financial
assets,but in the United States and Japan the ratio is much lower,In the United
States,only $1 dollar out of $5 is borrowed from a bank.
The decrease of government bonds (i.e,risk-free assets) on total debt securities.
While the average ratio at the world level is 50%,in Europe it is 35% and in
North America 26%,with a downward trend,The last two points mean that
households¡¯ portfolios are more and more made of securities bearing both market
and credit risk.
These are the ingredients of the magic of financial innovation of the last
decades,in a nutshell,banks created an astonishing volume of debt,packaged it
into various kinds of securities,with different degrees of guarantees,These securities
have been purchased by a wide range of smaller banks,pension funds,insurance
companies,hedge funds,other funds and even individuals,who have been encour-
122 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Figure 1 USA,Yields on corporate and treasury bonds
Figure 2 USA,Yield differentials with 10-year US treasury bonds
Scource,Thomson Reuters,Lehman Brothers,Merrill Lynch.
Scource,Thomson Reuters,Lehman Brothers,Merrill Lynch.
83 85 87 89 91 93 95 97 99 01 03 05 07
83 85 87 89 91 93 95 97 99 01 03 05 07
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Yi
e
l
d
s
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
¨C2
Y
i
elds differ
e
ntials (per
cent)
Baa
Baa
High Yield
High Yield
Aaa
Aaa
T-Bond 10v
aged to invest by the generally high ratings given to these instruments,According
to an important school of thought,this arm¡¯s-length financing is the most effi-
cient way to allocate resources,Others can recall Charles Dickens,who defined
credit as a system ¡®whereby a person who cannot pay gets another person who
cannot pay to guarantee that he can pay¡¯,
As a matter of fact,the global financial systems proved to be very resilient to
real and financial shocks in the last two decades,but what mostly worries central
banks is that,unlike in the old bank-based times,they simply do not know where
the risk is,Witness this statement in the June 2007 Report of the Bank for
International Settlements (p,145),¡®Assuming that the big banks have managed to
distribute more widely the risks inherent in the loans they have made,who now
holds these risks,and can they manage them adequately? The honest answer is
that we do not know.¡¯ Honest,but frightening.
The only thing we know is that the losses will fall on the shoulders of final
investors,and will not be shared with banks,as happened in more intermediated
forms of finance,The point is that banks¡¯ profits in the last 20 years have stood at
historical high levels,Returns on equity have been normally at two-digit levels
(the first being preferably two) and probably will only be dented by the forth-
coming market correction,In other words,the credit madness is over,a diet was
overdue,but those that will have to follow a rigid diet are not those who put on
weight in the past years,The allocative efficiency of the arm¡¯s-length financing
deserves at least a second judgement.
The policy implications of what is under our eyes are at least threefold.
First,once again,a rating problem has emerged,Credit-risk assessments have
been made on too optimistic assumptions,using data not always statistically sig-
nificant and systematically ignoring tail events,When banks do not take risks on
their books,but only sell them,the fragmentation of responsibilities leads to what
The Economist has defined as ¡®too much money [being] lent too cheaply and too
easily to too many people¡¯,Banks should not skip risks so easily,a portion of the
risk (e.g,using capital requirements) should remain on banks¡¯ balance sheets.
Second,the securities issued were much less marketable than banks pretended.
Most sophisticated bonds were infrequently traded; some were tailored by invest-
ment banks for specific clients and were never traded,Mark-to-market was there-
fore only a subjective valuation involving complex computer models and assump-
tions,both directly made by the investment bank itself,The much vaunted ¡®price
discovery¡¯ by the market,the very heart of a securitized world,was simply an illu-
sion,Final investors are barely protected when their securities are traded in such
over-the-counter (unregulated) thin markets.
Third,there is a problem of transparency in the retail market for financial
assets,As financial products are becoming more and more sophisticated,a great
majority of investors are not aware of the risks that they are actually taking,There
are two hypocritical reactions that are emerging,to ask for more disclosure and/or
for more financial literacy,The first one should lead only to an increase of sophis-
ticated prospectuses,which can be read only by those holding a PhD in finance
(possibly of a very recent vintage),The second one is even more absurd (not sur-
prisingly immediately backed by President Bush),as it is simply impossible to fill
the gap between the current level of financial education and the level of rocket-
science finance involved in current financial products,The only solution is to use
The subprime crisis,who pays and what needs fixing 123
regulation (and particularly the conduct of business rules) to make it more con-
venient for retailers to sell simple financial products,A wide body of research (par-
ticularly in the United Kingdom,sponsored by the Treasury and the FSA,the
financial supervisor) proves that the present regulatory philosophy creates a
strong bias towards sophistication and opacity,Time has come to change course
and to create incentives for financial intermediaries to sell easier products to the
final investors,Only at that point will a higher level of financial education be
effective,Time has also come for finance economists to look more closely and in
a more Dickensian way at what happens at the last step of the magic of credit cre-
ation.
This article comes from Vox¡¯s Consortium partner,www.LaVoce.info,You can find
an Italian-language version there.
124 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
5 November 2007
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Basel II framework were
intended to mitigate or prevent crises like the subprime mess,The valuation prac-
tices and market transparency recommended by the committee fall short of what
is needed.
The midsummer blues are not quite over yet,with subprime default rates still on
the rise,3-month interbank rates stay abnormally high,credit conditions remain
tight,gross issues of mortgage-backed bonds and commercial paper are all but
dried up,and banks lick their wounds and attempt to set up emergency vehicles
to dispose of the backlog of illiquid assets left in their books,The system remains
vulnerable,Still,as the worst fears for financial stability have subsided,the debate
now shifts from the central banks¡¯ ex-post emergency reactions to the preventa-
tive reforms needed for the future,Unfortunately,given the nature of this crisis,
there is no quick fix this time.
The textbook paradigm
In its unfolding,this crisis conforms to the textbook paradigm,In a financial
system where intermediaries hold illiquid assets against liquid liabilities,there are
two possible equilibria,When only those agents subject to liquidity shocks require
the service from intermediaries,the latter are able to carry out maturity transfor-
mation and allow society to earn superior returns,When instead,as a result of a
shock,all agents,simultaneously but independently,seek liquidity,the interme-
diaries¡¯ balance sheets go under stress,there is no demand for less liquid assets and
disruptive liquidations may threaten financial stability,a succinct description of
what has happened between July and September.
As noted by Mervyn King,
1
the ¡®most unusual nature¡¯ of this crisis was the dis-
proportion between the shock (¡®a relatively small size of ¡­ bad loans compared
with the total assets of the banks¡¯) and its widespread systemic consequences.
Echoing King,Bernanke wondered how the impact could be so large,comparing
the US subprime mortgage market with ¡®the enormous scale of global financial
Filling the information gap
Alberto Giovannini and Luigi Spaventa
Unifortune SGP SpA and CESAME; University of Rome
and CEPR
125
1 Speech at the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry,Belfast,9 October 2007.
markets¡¯.
2
True,also in the textbook model,crisis equilibria may be triggered by
potentially insignificant events,But according to the textbook prescriptions,
undesirable outcomes can be avoided through informed supervisory action,super-
visors possessing the relevant information on potential exposures to shocks are
better able to prevent a crisis,thereby reassuring all market participants that
threats to financial instabilities can be contained,When,on the other hand,mar-
ket participants not only do not know how serious and widespread the impact of
a dislocation is,but also become aware that the supervisory authorities are no less
ignorant,they rationally cut their risk positions by more than would be warrant-
ed if they possessed greater information and could rely on the presence of a bet-
ter-informed coordinating agent,The surge in volatility and the drying-up of liq-
uidity make the worst scenario self-fulfilling.
This is,in our view,what has happened this time,A generalized lack of infor-
mation multiplied the effects of the initial shock.
The information gap
The information gap was wide and deep,Mortgage brokers had an incentive to
provide the raw material by quantity,regardless of quality,The valuation of the
structured and complicated financial instruments pooling credit risks rested on
rating agencies¡¯ models,biased by observations limited to a relatively short span
of very benign history,Those products were issued and (rarely) traded over the
counter,marked to model,as there was no proper market assessing their liquidi-
ty,By the very nature of the CRT (Credit Risk Transfer),nobody had a clue where
the credit risks had ended up.
This would have mattered less if the ultimate risk recipients had been only the
usual suspects,hedge funds,pension funds,and insurance and reinsurance
companies,The systemic consequences of the collapse of a few of those would be
confined to the counterparty risks assumed by some intermediaries in their lending
or broker¨Cdealer activities,But it turned out that there were many banks among
those more heavily exposed to the direct risk of credit products,through off-bal-
ance sheet liquidity commitments granted to vehicles investing in those illiquid
assets,equity tranches in the CDOs,own portfolio investment and reputational
commitment to proprietary mutual funds engaged in ABSs,The authorities in
charge of stability supervision were seemingly unaware of this exposure,certainly
they appeared to be caught by surprise by the consequences of the subprime insol-
vencies on the banking system,ignorant of where the losses were located and
therefore unable to deal selectively with the problem,The consequence was wide-
spread mutual mistrust causing the hoarding of banks¡¯ liquidity and the hike of
interbank rates.
Filling the multidimensional information gap that was responsible for transform-
ing a spate of subprime defaults into a fully-fledged crisis should be a priority of any
reform effort,Unlike in earlier crises,however,there are no obvious solutions to this
126 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
2 ¡®The Recent Financial Turmoil and its Economic and Policy Consequences¡¯,Economic Club of New York,15
October 2007.
problem,We confine ourselves to drawing a list,in order of importance,of what we
believe to be the more relevant issues.
Filling some gaps
At the origin there is a purely American problem,a crowd of unlicensed non-
bank brokers,governed by wrong incentives,offering mortgage loans to all and
sundry,irrespective of any assessment of the debtor¡¯s potential solvency,Though
the party is over by now,the problem remains and will have to be addressed by
Congress.
Next,when credit risks are pooled and repackaged,comes the role of the rating
agencies whose decisions affect the allocation of risks in different investors¡¯ portfo-
lios,Apart from their conflicts of interest from their semi-monopolistic,officially
sanctioned status,
3
a major information problem arises from the suitability of the
statistical models used to provide the ratings on which many investors rely blind-
ly,The spate of downgradings affecting them in recent months is evidence of
serious flaws,Some propose that the rating agencies should be treated as under-
writers,with the attendant responsibilities; at the very least their models should
be subjected to an independent inquiry and,as it were,be themselves rated.
4
A deep and wide secondary market ensuring at least post-trade transparency is
an essential provider of information; over-the-counter transactions instead remain
opaque and known only to the parties concerned,The heterogeneity of structured
products (each with idiosyncratic features) is an obstacle to the supply of a public
good,An agreement prompted by industry associations in consultation with the
supervisors to standardize the most diffuse classes of instruments,as was done for
some derivative contracts,would be a step towards the creation of a market.
There is then the question of the bank-sponsored investment vehicles (SIVs)
and of the treatment of the liquidity facilities provided to them by banks,which
under Basel I are exempt from capital requirements (and hence from disclosure) as
long as the commitment is for less than 365 days,The somewhat more stringent
prescriptions of Basel II are still short of achieving adequate transparency,This,
however,is only a part of a more general issue,that of designing an efficient struc-
ture of information flows in order to fill those gaps prejudice stability.
A wider problem,Basel II?
Ideally the authorities in charge of stability should be empowered to acquire all
the information needed to assess the system¡¯s (and not only an individual agent¡¯s)
vulnerabilities from all financial entities whose actions may have systemic effects.
They would thus be better equipped to prevent the eruption of dislocations as well
Filling the information gap 127
3 On the role and the shortcomings of ratings agencies see J,R,Mason and J,Rossner (2007),¡®Where Did the Risk
Go? How Misapplied Bond Ratings Cause Mortgage Backed Securities and Collateralized Debt Obligation
Market Disruptions¡¯,mimeo (May).
4 Credit ratings agencies have themselves ¡®acknowledged the need to review the information they receive from
originators and they provide to investors in structured credit products¡¯ (Financial Stability Forum,Working Group
on Market and Institutional Resilience,15 October 2007).
as to provide guidance to market participants on the risks present in the system.
In the view of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision,the implementation
of the Basel II capital framework,by improving ¡®the robustness of valuation prac-
tices and market transparency for complex and less liquid products¡¯,¡®would have
gone some distance¡¯ to alleviate the present crisis,We believe that the distance
would have been very short,as the Basel II framework represents only a small
approximation to a satisfactory solution.
First,disclosure belongs to the third pillar of the accord (market discipline),
which is recognized as by far the weakest,in terms of both prescriptions and
enforcement.
5
Second,Basel II disclosure is required in order to assess an individ-
ual bank¡¯s capital adequacy,That is not enough,a strong bank capital base,while
essential to avoid the collapse of any major financial institution,was not sufficient
to prevent the systemic effects of the subprime crisis,Third,any disclosure obli-
gation imposed by the accord only concerns banks,But all the entities having liq-
uidity mismatches between assets and liabilities may produce systemic effects,
either directly with counterparties or through the structure of their balance sheets:
not only traditional intermediaries,but also broker-dealers,non-thrift financial
institutions borrowing wholesale in the market,any kind of vehicle with the same
characteristics,as well as hedge funds.
Finally,designing an efficient structure of information flows meets institution-
al obstacles,In a closely connected financial world,where cross-border entities
prevail,information on global stability is the more valuable the less its gathering
and processing are fragmented,There are natural limits to this and cooperation
between bank supervisors helps,But there are obvious steps to be taken to
improve the situation,At the national level,the single regulator model,whereby
banking supervision is not a responsibility of the lender of last resort,has shown
important flaws,at least in Germany and the United Kingdom,More important-
ly,similar faults are present in the euro area,where the ECB,which,though not a
lender of last resort,is responsible for providing liquidity,has no supervisory com-
petence and must rely on the information voluntarily provided by the national
central banks.
Adequate,reliable and timely information is essential to ensure financial sta-
bility,Filling the information gap,however,has so far been a slow and hesitant
process,Do we need more crises to move forward at a faster pace?
128 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
5 It has been alleged that Basel II has a ¡®bias in favour of nondisclosure¡¯,strengthened by the opposition of the
banks (Institutional Risk Analytics,Comments to the proposals,October 2006).
19 December 2007
What caused the current North Atlantic financial crisis,how can it be fixed and
how can the likelihood of future crises be reduced? This article introduces a new
CEPR Policy Insight,¡®Lessons from the 2007 Financial Crisis¡¯,which addresses
these issues at length.
The crisis is the product of a perfect storm,bringing together a number of micro-
economic and macroeconomic pathologies,Among the microeconomic systemic
failures were,wanton securitization,fundamental flaws in the rating agencies¡¯
business model,the procyclical behaviour both of leverage in much of the finan-
cial system and of the Basel II capital-adequacy requirements,privately rational
but socially inefficient disintermediation and competitive international deregula-
tion,Reduced incentives for collecting and disseminating information about
counterparty risk were a pervasive feature of the new financial world of securiti-
zation and off-balance sheet vehicles,what Paul Tucker,Executive Director,
Markets for the Bank of England,has called vehicular finance,So was lack of trans-
parency about who owned what and about who owed what and to whom.
The proximate local drivers of the specific way in which these problems mani-
fested themselves were regulatory and supervisory failures in the US home loan
market.
Solutions to the microeconomic pathologies will be partly market-driven,part-
ly imposed by regulators,They include the following nice ¡®do¡¯s¡¯:
Insist on simpler financial structures and products,instead of financial
engineering masterpieces that cannot be priced even by their designers,
let alone by buyers and sellers in the secondary markets.
Require the retention of the equity tranche (or first-loss tranche) by the
originator of loans,to mitigate the adverse impact of principal¨Cagent
chains on the incentive for information-collecting and monitoring of
ultimate borrowers.
Eliminate the quasi-regulatory role of the rating agencies in Basel II.
Require rating agencies to sell nothing but ratings,to reduce conflict of
interest.
End the payment of individual rating agencies by the individual issuers
of securities they rate.
Lessons from the North Atlantic
financial crisis
Willem Buiter
London School of Economics,University of Amsterdam
and CEPR
129
Subject all off-balance sheet vehicles that act like banks to the same
regulatory requirements and fiscal regime as banks (a principles-based
¡®duck test¡¯ for banks).
Encourage greater international cooperation between regulators.
Create a single EU-wide regulatory regime for banks,other financial
intermediaries and financial markets,Have one European regulator for
all European financial institutions and markets in a given class and/or
category.
Have an international crackdown on regulators of convenience and reg-
ulatory havens (alongside a long-overdue crackdown on tax havens).
Among the macroeconomic pathologies that contributed to the crisis were,
first,excessive global liquidity creation by key central banks and,second,an ex-
ante global savings glut,brought about by the entry of a number of high-saving
countries (notably China) into the global economy and by the global redistribu-
tion of wealth and income towards commodity exporters that also had,at least in
the short run,high propensities to save.
The Fed,the ECB and the Bank of England did not exactly cover themselves
with glory in addressing the global shutdown of the financial wholesale markets
and the continuing crunch and illiquidity in the interbank markets,The ECB
probably did best,followed by the Fed,with the Bank of England coming in a
well-beaten third.
All three central banks are now injecting fair amounts of liquidity not just in
the overnight interbank markets,but also at longer maturities,especially at one
and three months,The Bank of England was most reluctant to tackle the very large
spreads between,say,3-month Libor and the market¡¯s expectation of the official
policy rate over a 3-month horizon (as measured by the fixed leg of the Overnight
Indexed Rate Swap or OIS),It believed (against the evidence and the odds) that
this reflected largely market perceptions of counterparty default risk,rather than
liquidity risk,The Bank also only recently widened its list of eligible collateral in
3-month repos (sale and repurchase operations) to assets beyond the high-grade
sovereign-debt instruments it had insisted on before,For the December 2007 and
January 2008 auctions it announced,that it also,for the first time,was willing to
do repos against this wider range of collateral at market-determined rates,rather
than insisting on a penalty floor for the rate,as it did in September.
The ECB immediately threw very large amounts of liquidity at the longer-matu-
rity interbank markets and the Fed pumped in moderate amounts,Interestingly,
except in the very short run,the effect on the interbank spread over the OIS rate
did not respond very differently for sterling,the euro and the US dollar,Before one
concludes from this that open-market operations at these longer maturities have
no influence on the spreads,one has to recognize that the need for liquidity may
not have been the same in the three interbank markets,For starters,many UK
banks with subsidiaries in the eurozone (and some with subsidiaries in the United
States) obtained liquidity through these subsidiaries,Other indicators of liquidity
of the interbank market,such as the volume of private transactions,suggest that,
even with comparable spreads,UK banks continue to face especially tight liquidi-
ty conditions.
130 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
In the UK,failures of the tripartite financial stability arrangement between the
Treasury,the Bank of England and the FSA,weaknesses in the Bank of England¡¯s
liquidity management,the regulatory failure of the FSA,an inadequate deposit
insurance arrangement and deficient insolvency laws for the banking sector all
contributed to the financial disarray.
Despite this,it may well be possible to contain the spillovers from the crisis
beyond the financial sectors of the industrial countries and the housing sectors of
the United States and a few European countries,The reason is that the credit boom
that came to an end in 2007 did not give rise to major excesses in physical capi-
tal formation (fixed investment),except in the financial sectors just about every-
where and in the residential construction sectors of a few countries,including the
United States,Spain,Ireland,the Baltic states and Bulgaria,The saving-investment
balances and balance sheets of non-financial corporates remain healthy,The
financial imbalances are mainly in the financial sector (excessive leverage,
deficient liquidity,insufficient capital and the need for massive write-downs of
assets,that is,specialty CDOs and other complex securitized structures) and to a
lesser extent in the household sector (financial deficits,excessive mortgage debt,
unsecured consumer debt and the need to take large hits on the valuation of key
assets,especially residential property),While a slowdown is unavoidable ¨C and,in
the case of the United States,necessary and desirable for the restoration of exter-
nal balance ¨C a recession is not.
Lessons from the North Atlantic financial crisis 131
4 March 2008
The UK Treasury Committee recently released a report on the lessons from the
plight of Northern Rock,In the first of a two-article series,Willem Buiter analyses
the shortcomings of the report¡¯s recommendations for reducing problems in the
banking and shadow banking sectors.
Two highly readable reports on the lessons learnt from the Northern Rock debacle
have been published recently,The first is the Treasury Committee Report ¡®The Run
on the Rock¡¯ published on 26 January 26,The second is ¡®Financial Stability and
Depositor Protection,Strengthening the Framework¡¯,published jointly by HM
Treasury,the FSA and the Bank of England on 30 January,The publication of the
latter document launches a consultation on the proposals contained in it for
domestic and international action to enhance financial stability,The Treasury
report covers five areas,first,strengthening the financial system through domes-
tic and international actions; second,reducing the likelihood of banks failing;
third,reducing the impact of failing banks; fourth,deposit insurance; and fifth,
strengthening the Bank of England and improving the operation of the tripartite
arrangement,This article analyses the first two parts.
Strengthening the financial system
There is nothing substantive regarding unilateral or coordinated international
action to strengthen the financial system,just some pious platitudes about the
need to strengthen risk management by banks and to improve the functioning of
securitization markets by beefing up valuation methods and the performance of
credit rating agencies,This is a missed opportunity,as the current financial crisis
has reminded us that when finance is global and regulation is national,accidents
are much more likely to happen,Regulatory arbitrage and competitive deregula-
tion to gain or retain footloose financial businesses within national jurisdictions
have been important contributors to the excesses committed by financial institu-
tions and to the mispricing and misallocation of risk by credit markets and other
financial markets since (at least) 2003,The proliferation of opaque complex finan-
cial instruments traded by opaque off-balance sheet financial vehicles calls for
global action,Coordination between multiple institutions,especially in a crisis,is
Lessons from Northern Rock:
banking and shadow banking
Willem Buiter
London School of Economics,University of Amsterdam
and CEPR
133
always problematic,panic moves at the speed of light and even well-intentioned,
cooperatively minded parties will find it hard to engage in synchronized swim-
ming while piranhas and sharks lurk at their tender extremities.
The United Kingdom¡¯s light-touch regulatory approach has been found wanting
and exposed as little more than soft-touch regulation,No doubt it has been suc-
cessful in attracting financial sector activity to London,that is,it has been an effec-
tive competitor in the socially negative-sum global deregulation game,It has made
a material contribution to the regulatory race to the bottom,which has left much of
the shadow banking sector outside the regulatory net altogether,and has reduced
both the information available to the regulator and the power of the regulator to
prescribe or proscribe behaviour in those market segments that remain regulated.
1
At the European level,the need for the creation of a single EU regulator for any
given market segment,responsible for all financial institutions engaged in signif-
icant cross-border activity (including foreign subsidiaries and branches) is now
paramount,At the global level,a greater sense of urgency as regards the activities
of the Financial Stability Forum is key,The IMF is waved around briefly in the
Treasury report,but what role it would play in the prevention of crises (enhanced
multilateral surveillance,anyone?) or in their mitigation is not developed.
It is also clear that Basel II has to go back to the drawing-board,While some of
the excesses of the recent past would not have been possible had Basel II been in
effect (especially the ability of banks to make economic exposure disappear for
reporting purposes through the creation of off-balance sheet vehicles),Pillars I and
2 of Basel II have three flaws which are,I believe,collectively fatal,One is the
procyclicality of the capital requirements directive,The second is the reliance on
internal models of banks to mark-to-model (i.e,mark-to-myth and mark-to-the-
short-term-requirements-of-the-banks¡¯-profit-centres) illiquid and often complex
financial instruments and structures,The third is the reliance of the risk weight-
ings on the ratings provided by discredited rating agencies.
The Report also mentions the need to improve the functioning of securitization
markets,including improvements in valuation and credit-ratings agencies,but it
offers very little beef in these areas,It is clear that the credit rating agencies will
have to be unbundled and that the same legal entity should not be able to sell
both ratings and advice on how to structure instruments to get a good rating,The
conflict of interest is just too naked,Rating agencies will have to become single-
product firms,selling just ratings.
The only two proposals for improving the operation of the securitization mar-
kets I have seen are not discussed in the report,The first is for the originator of the
assets (home loans,say) underlying the securitization process to be required to
retain the equity or first loss tranche of the securities issued against the underly-
ing assets,This strengthens the incentives for delegated monitoring and reduces
the severity of the principal¨Cagent problem in the securitization process,The sec-
134 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
1 The shadow banking sector consists of the many highly leveraged non-deposit-taking institutions that lend long
and illiquid and borrow short in markets that are liquid during normal or orderly times but can become illiquid
when markets become disorderly,They are functionally very similar to banks but are barely supervised or regulat-
ed,They hold very little capital,are not subject to any meaningful prudential requirements as regards liquidity,
leverage or any other feature of their assets and liabilities,They also have very few reporting obligations and have
to meet few governance standards,as many are privately or closely held,Examples are hedge funds,private equity
funds,money-market funds,monolines,conduits,SIVs and other special-purpose,off-balance sheet vehicles.
ond prescribes a ¡®gold standard¡¯ for simple and transparent securitization,as pro-
posed recently by the UK Treasury,but ¨C unlike the Treasury proposal ¨C one with
teeth,In a revised collateral framework,the Bank of England would only accept as
collateral at the standard lending facility (discount window) or in open-market
operations through repos,asset-backed securities conforming to the ¡®gold stan-
dard¡¯.
One of the key drivers of the excesses of the most recent (and earlier) financial
booms has been the myopic and asymmetric reward structure in many financial
institutions,including banks and commercial banks,Clearly not all is well when
the CEO of Citigroup,after marching his institution to the edge of the abyss,is let
go with a golden handshake worth in excess of $130 million,If that is the
punishment for failure,what could be the reward for success? And this is just an
extreme example of poorly structured reward systems that encourage excessive
risk-taking and the pursuit of short-term profits,Where action to prevent such
outrages in the future should be focused is not clear,It is fundamentally a prob-
lem of general corporate governance,not restricted to the financial sector,where
were the shareholders of Citigroup? But there clearly is an urgent need for intelli-
gent design here.
Reducing the likelihood of banks failing
There are some sensible proposals for enhancing the ability of the FSA to demand
information at short notice.
Provision and disclosure of liquidity assistance
This part of the report is hamstrung by a failure to distinguish clearly between
funding liquidity and market liquidity,Funding liquidity,which refers to the cost
and availability of external finance (including the speed with which it can be
accessed) is a property of economic agents and institutions,Market liquidity,
which refers to the speed and ease with which an asset can be sold at a price close
to its fair value and with low transaction costs,is a property of assets or financial
instruments and of the markets in which they are traded,Funding liquidity and
market liquidity are not independent; the funding liquidity of a market-maker or
trader will influence the liquidity of the market he makes; the funding liquidity of
a trader will depend on the market liquidity of the assets he holds or the liquidi-
ty of the markets in which he intends to borrow,secured or unsecured,There are
private and public sources of both funding and market liquidity,When push
comes to shove,only the public sector can provide instruments with unques-
tioned liquidity,Funding liquidity is provided by the authorities at the discount
window (on demand against suitable collateral) and,in extreme circumstances,
through lender-of-last-resort facilities,Market liquidity is provided by the author-
ities through open-market operations,both repos/reverse repos and outright
purchases/sales,and,when markets become illiquid,by the authorities acting as
market-maker of last resort,buying normally liquid but temporarily illiquid
instruments at punitive prices and discounts.
Lessons from Northern Rock,banking and shadow banking 135
Funding liquidity and market liquidity need not be provided by the same
agency of the government,both in normal times and in extraordinary times,Only
the central bank can realistically provide market liquidity,but the central bank
need not be the active party deciding on the provision of funding liquidity,even
if it is likely to be the (passive) source of such liquidity.
Covert operations,James Bond at the Central Bank
Quite a lot is made of proposals to allow the authorities (specifically the Bank of
England),to provide covert liquidity assistance or other good offices,There are
three sets of conditions under which covert assistance may be desirable.
First,there may be a use for secrecy surrounding assistance provided by the
authorities during short-term windows of extreme vulnerability,say,just after a
major fraud has been discovered,Of course,with the sophisticated control systems
in place since at least Nick Leeson¡¯s destruction of Barings,a fraud that threatens
a major institution is surely a thing of the past.
Second,there may be a use for secrecy surrounding the authorities¡¯ involve-
ment in attempts to find a private-sector solution for a troubled or failing bank.
Under the current UK takeover code,such covert assistance is problematic.
Third,there could be a need for secret lender of last resort assistance,Although
the Bank of England¡¯s belief that covert lender-of-last-resort assistance would fall
foul of the United Kingdom¡¯s transposition of the EU Market Abuse Directive,this
turns out to have been a chimera,In any case,with effective deposit insurance and
an effective special resolution regime (SRR) for troubled or failing banks,the need
for both the second and the third kind of covert operation would vanish.
When safeguards fail
My recommended policies would likely strengthen the banking and financial sec-
tors,reducing the risk of failure,But such a likelihood is impossible to eliminate.
In my next article,I will address how the UK government could best prepare for a
non-trivial bank failure.
136 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
5 March 2008
This second article on the Treasury Committee¡¯s report on lessons from Northern
Rock discusses the institutional arrangements needed to cope should a bank of
non-trivial size fail.
In the article above,I examined proposals for preventing financial crises in the UK
Treasury Committee Report ¡®The Run on the Rock¡¯,Here I look at mechanisms
that might reduce the impact of failing banks,provide appropriate deposit insur-
ance and coordinate the three institutions responsible for financial stability.
Dealing effectively with failing banks
The authorities are effectively proposing to put in place the kind of legal and regu-
latory arrangements currently found in the United States and a number of other
countries,A special resolution regime (SRR) would be created,led by a new author-
ity (I shall call it the special resolution regime authority or SRRA,not to be confused
with the antidepressant drug SSRIs,lest we get some very depressed bankers),who
could take control of a troubled bank before it hit the normal insolvency buffers,
that is,inability to service its debt,The assets of the pre-failing bank,or any of its
activities and business,could be transferred to one or more healthy banks or some
other third party; a ¡®bridge bank¡¯ could be created to allow the SRRA to take control
of all or part of a bank or of its assets and liabilities; a restructuring officer could be
appointed by the SRRA to carry out the resolution; and finally,if the judgement is
reached that pre-insolvency resolution is not feasible,a special bank insolvency pro-
cedure could be invoked to facilitate the swift and efficient payment of insured
depositors,Public ownership of all or part of a bank as a last resort is also part of the
package,The Treasury document refers to it as temporary public ownership,but
unless this means that a fixed timetable has to be provided,the word ¡®temporary¡¯
only indicates hope or intent and is not operational.
The government proposes that the FSA would be the SRRA,and I agree with
that,It should not be the Bank of England (because the job of the SRRA is too
political) or the Treasury (because the Treasury is too political for the job of the
SRRA),A new separate entity would be possible,but further balkanization of the
Lessons from Northern Rock:
how to handle failure
Willem Buiter
London School of Economics,University of Amsterdam
and CEPR
137
responsibility for financial stability in the UK would seem undesirable (anyone
really want a quadripartite arrangement?).
The key issue is the specification of the circumstances under which the SRRA
would be able to impose the SRR on a bank,What will be the threshold conditions
or triggers (quantitative or qualitative) that would cause the SRRA to compel a bank
to enter the SRR? If the threshold is set too low,competition is distorted,If the
threshold is set too high,there may be risk of systemic instability,Of course,with
adequate deposit insurance and an appropriate bank insolvency procedure,conta-
gion effects and other systemically destabilizing manifestations of panic ought not
to happen,Even the failure of a large bank should not be of greater public interest
than the failure of a ball-bearings manufacturer in Coventry with equal value added.
The Treasury believes the decision on whether and when a bank should be
ordered into the SRR should be based on a regulatory judgement exercised by the
FSA after consultation with the Bank of England and the Treasury,Provided it is clear
that the ultimate decision lies with the FSA,I would agree with this proposal.
Deposit insurance
I believe that the new deposit insurance arrangements should be located in the
same institution that has the SRRA,that is,the FSA,The existing Financial Services
Compensation Scheme should either be moved into the FSA or wound up,In its
current form it is useless.
As regards the limits of the insured amount,the current UK figure of ¡ê35,000
(since 1 October 2007,the idiotic run-inducing 10% deductible after the first
¡ê2,000 has been abolished) appears to be in the middle of the figures for 19 coun-
tries reported in the Treasury document,Eyeballing the charts,it looks as though
about 97% of all retail deposit accounts hold less than ¡ê35,000,At the same time,
the top 3% of deposit accounts hold about 50% of total deposits in the UK,This
means that an increase in the limit would raise the value of the deposits covered
by significantly more than it would raise the number of depositors covered,I can-
not see a strong case for raising the limit,and no case for raising it above ¡ê50,000.
What matters is the speed with which insured deposits can be paid out should a
bank get into trouble.
Strengthening the Bank of England
It is apparent that the Bank of England,since it became operationally independ-
ent for monetary policy and lost banking supervision in 1997,has done a much
better job on its monetary policy mandate of price stability than it has on its
financial stability mandate,There has been really only one serious test of the UK¡¯s
tripartite arrangement for financial stability between the Bank,the FSA and the
Treasury,It failed the test,Much of the blame lies with current and past Treasuries
and with the FSA,but the Bank contributed to the problems through its misman-
agement of market liquidity,The Treasury report does not address this issue at all.
It is key that the Bank of England should follow the example of the ECB and
extend its list of eligible collateral at the standing lending facility and in open-
138 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
market operations to include routinely private securities,including asset-backed
securities,It should also extend the maturity of its standing lending facility loans
from overnight to up to one month,taking a leaf from the Fed this time,Finally,
it should extend the list of eligible counterparties at the standing lending facility
and in its repo operations to include not just banks and similar deposit-taking
institutions,Currently,open-market operations are open to non-cash ratio
deposit-paying banks,building societies and securities dealers that are active inter-
mediaries in the sterling markets,Access to the standing facilities is restricted to
participants in the Bank of England¡¯s Reserves scheme and a few others,Both
open-market operations and standing facilities should be accessible to all financial
institutions regulated in a manner approved of by the Bank.
While in a first-best world,the Bank would not be the active player in lender-
of-last-resort operations,it will always be involved in funding liquidity matters
through its standing facilities,It is therefore key that the use of the standard
lending facility be de-stigmatized,This can be achieved by abolishing the unbe-
lievably complex operational procedures for setting the official policy rate or bank
rate (official policy sets the target for the overnight unsecured sterling interbank
rate) and managing short-term liquidity.
The current framework has three main elements,rather plain-vanilla standing
facilities and open-market operations and a mysterious and pointless reserves-
averaging scheme (from the Bank¡¯s Redbook),¡®UK banks and building societies
that are members of the scheme undertake to hold target balances (reserves) at the
Bank on average over maintenance periods running from one MPC decision date
until the next,If a member¡¯s average balance is within a range around their target,
the balance is remunerated at the official Bank Rate.¡¯
The reserves-averaging scheme should go,There should be no reserve require-
ment at all,The Bank should stand ready to repo (against eligible collateral) or
reverse repo any amount at any time at the official policy rate,That,after all,is
what it means to set the official policy rate,Anything else is an attempt to set both
price and quantity ¨C and is doomed to failure.
Commercial banks would therefore be borrowing from the Bank of England all
the time,as a matter of routine,and no stigma would be attached to such opera-
tions,This would also keep the overnight interbank rate closer to the official
policy rate than it is under current procedures,decoupling the MPC¡¯s interest-rate
decision from the liquidity policy not managed by the MPC but by the Bank¡¯s
executive,The Bank still could retain its standing lending facility by accepting a
wider range of assets as collateral at the standing lending facility than it accepts in
repos to peg the official policy rate.
In its open-market operations,the Bank should act as market maker of last
resort,by standing ready to purchase,at a properly conservative/punitive price,
normally liquid assets that have become illiquid through a systemic flight to
quality and liquidity caused by fear,panic and other contagion effects,As for the
securities acceptable for rediscounting at the standing lending facility,there
should be a positive list of securities (including private securities and indeed
private ABS) that are acceptable as collateral by the Bank,This would help con-
centrate the minds of (the supervisors of) those maniacal financial engineers gen-
erating ever more complex and opaque financial structures,which would be
unlikely to figure on the list of eligible collateral.
Lessons from Northern Rock,how to handle failure 139
What becomes of the tripartite arrangement?
It is obvious that,whenever taxpayers¡¯ money is put at risk,the Treasury must be
consulted and should have a veto over the operation,The Treasury document
makes this clear,The Treasury is also in charge of the whole arrangement,
although it appears obvious that there are certain things it cannot instruct the two
other parties to do without risking damaging resignations,I doubt whether it
could give the Bank instructions on its collateral policy,open-market operations
and standing facilities operations,In my view it ought not to be able to do so,It
is also unclear whether the Treasury expects to be in a position to instruct the
SRRA (that is,the FSA) to invoke or not to invoke the SRR for a particular bank,I
would hope it would not be able to do so,What the role of the Treasury would be
in the decision to invoke the new bank insolvency procedure remains unclear.
Obviously,nationalization could only be authorized by the Treasury.
In the proposals of the Treasury,the FSA continues to be the regulator and
supervisor of the banking sector (and of most other financial institutions),It
remains responsible for the default risk (solvency),the funding liquidity of the
institutions it supervises and other risks,including operational and reputational
risk,It will lead the SRR and act as the SRRA,I assume it would also be responsi-
ble for the management of the deposit insurance scheme,although the Treasury
document is not clear on this,The Bank of England does get its nose into the tent
for most of these activities and responsibilities,however,To my mind this further
troubles the allocation of responsibility and authority.
The financial cost of the deposit insurance scheme can only be borne by the
participating institutions (either through pre-funding or ex-post funding) if the
banking-sector trouble causing the scheme to be called upon for a payout is a local
problem affecting only a minority of the banks,When there is a systemic bank run
(or bank default),only the Treasury can credibly meet the insurance claims,This
should be recognized,Any serious deposit-insurance scheme represents a contin-
gent claim on the Treasury.
The Bank of England remains responsible for market liquidity,both in normal
times and,under disorderly market conditions,by acting as market-maker of last
resort,It is involved in funding liquidity through the (on demand against the
proper collateral) standing lending facility,The Treasury report (and even more
strongly the Treasury Committee report) favours an enhanced role of the Bank of
England in the lender-of-last-resort process,The Treasury report wants the Bank to
spend time and resources becoming and remaining informed of the liquidity situ-
ations of individual UK banks,This clearly would also require it to be aware of the
solvency-related aspects of the balance sheet and operations of individual banks.
The Bank and the FSA would effectively become joint supervisors with shared
responsibility for funding liquidity and solvency,I doubt whether such an
arrangement would work well.
As far as I can tell,the Treasury Committee wants all banking supervision and
regulation to be returned to the Bank of England,with the FSA taken completely
out of the game,A new deputy governor and head of financial stability would take
the lead in all financial stability matters,and could even order the FSA around.
It is clear that the Treasury Committee¡¯s proposal would put strains on the Bank
of England¡¯s independence in monetary policy,The committee therefore raises the
140 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
possibility that the new deputy governor/financial stability czar might not be a
member of the MPC,I still cannot see it,What would be the authority relation-
ship between the new deputy governor/financial stability czar and his/her notion-
al boss,the governor? If the Bank of England is to be put in charge of (the opera-
tional end of) financial stability,better not to appoint a new deputy governor but
to give the job to the governor and to take the MPC out of the Bank of England.
The governor of the Bank would,under this model,not necessarily be the chair of
the MPC or even a member of it.
A different solution
Rather than putting money and individual bank-specific information together in
the same institution by making the Bank of England responsible for banking
supervision again,I would move in the opposite direction,The lender of last resort
(which would not be the Bank of England although the lender of last resort,if it
is not the Bank of England should have an open-ended uncapped credit line or
overdraft facility with the Bank of England,guaranteed by the Treasury) should be
the SRRA,that is,the FSA,It would make liquidity available to a troubled bank
that could no longer fund itself in the interbank markets,the repo markets or at
the standing lending facility,The collateral that would be accepted,the terms on
which it would be accepted,and the other terms and conditions attached to
lender-of-last-resort funds would be decided by the SRRA (the FSA) on a case-by-
case basis.
The current tripartite arrangement is sketched in Figure 1,The Treasury
Committee¡¯s proposal is in Figure 2,the Treasury¡¯s proposal in Figure 3 and
my own proposal (for a minimalist central bank) in Figure 4,Finally,Figure 5
shows how,under my proposed arrangement,a potentially troubled bank would
be handled.
With effective deposit insurance and a sensible insolvency regime for banks,all
proposals share the feature that it could,at last,become conceivable that a non-
trivially small bank in the UK might fail,That would be the best guarantor of
greater future financial stability.
Lessons from Northern Rock,how to handle failure 141
142 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
The Current Tripartite Arrangement
Financial Stability
Solvency
Liquidity
Funding
Liquidity
Regulator (FSA)
Central Bank
(BoE)
Treasury
a22
a22
(Discount window
& LoLR)
a22
(Solvency of LoLR only)
a22
(Solvency of MMLR only)
a22
(Regular OMOs
& MMLR)
a22
Market
Liquidity
Figure 1
The Treasury Committee¡¯s Proposal
Financial Stability
Solvency
Liquidity
Funding
Liquidity
Regulator (FSA)
Central Bank
(BoE)
Treasury
a22
a22
a22
(Discount window & LoLR)
a22
(Solvency of LoLR only)
a22
(Solvency of MMLR only)
a22
(Regular OMOs & MMLR)
Deputy Governor of BoE and
Head of Financial Stability
a22
Market
Liquidity
Figure 2
Lessons from Northern Rock,how to handle failure 143
The Treasury¡¯s Proposal
Financial Stability
Solvency
Liquidity
Funding
Liquidity
Regulator (FSA)
Central Bank
(BoE)
Treasury
a22 a22
a22
a22
(Discount window
& LoLR)
a22
(Solvency of LoLR only)
a22
(Solvency of MMLR only)
a22
(Regular OMOs
& MMLR)
a22
Market
Liquidity
Figure 3
The Tripartite Arrangement with a
minimalist central bank
Financial Stability
Solvency
Liquidity
Funding
Liquidity
Regulator
(FSA)
Central Bank
(BoE)
Treasury
a22
a22
(LoLR)
a22
(Discount window only)
a22
(Solvency of LoLR only)
a22
(Solvency of MMLR only)
a22
(Regular OMOs
& MMLR)
a22
Market
Liquidity
Figure 4
144 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Don¡¯t
know
No
How to handle troubled banks
when there is effective deposit insurance & bank insolvency regime
Is bank illiquid?
Is bank insolvent?
Is bank systemically important?
Be happy!
Bank fails
OMOs &
MMLR & Discount
Window with BoE
Special LoLR credit
line with FSA
Go to FSA special
insolvency regime
(or nationalisation)
Figure 5
22 January 2008
Recent financial market troubles highlight a number of problems with the credit-rat-
ings agencies,This article argues that only a few of the proposed policy solutions are
likely to be both feasible and helpful.
The recent financial-market turbulence has brought credit-ratings agencies under
fire,Finance ministers from the United Kingdom,France,Germany and Italy met
last Thursday to discuss the financial turmoil and strengthening government reg-
ulation,There are indeed problems with the agencies,but many suggested policy
remedies are equally problematic.
The agencies
Ratings agencies exist to deal with principal¨Cagent problems and asymmetric
information.
1
Company managers or sovereign finance ministers may seek to
mislead investors,Requiring a minimum rating can limit the risk for asset owners
and guarantors if an asset manager would otherwise invest principals¡¯ funds in
high-risk assets,The agencies help investors overcome their lack of information
about the variables that will determine whether a borrower will service debt,The
agencies are gatekeepers,like auditors,investment analysts and journalists,But
they are more profitable and have higher price-to-earnings ratios and more acute
conflicts of interest.
There are so few ratings agencies
2
partly because of network effects,in so far as
investors want consistency of ratings across issuers,But the natural monopoly
characteristics are enhanced by the dependence of regulators on ratings,as (for
example) formalized in the ¡®national recognized statistical rating organizations¡¯
(NRSRO) status created in the United States in the mid-1970s and in the Basel II
regulations,A wide range of investors are required not to hold securities whose rat-
ings are below investment-grade,and ratings affect the risk weightings of banks¡¯
Ratings agency reform
Richard Portes
London Business School and CEPR
145
1 See R,Levich,G,Majnoni and C,M,Reinhart,eds (2002),Ratings,Rating Agencies and the Global Financial
System,New York,Kluwer Academic Press.
2 The big three (S&P,Moody¡¯s and Fitch) take an estimated 95% of the market (Variances 32,ENSAE,December 2007).
assets in calculating capital adequacy ratios,The regulators determine whether an
agency holds this regulatory licence,and this is a barrier to entry.
3
The problems
There are several problems associated with the agencies,in terms of both the incen-
tives they face and the performance of their roles,There is an apparent conflict of
interest most acute with structured finance instruments,in so far as an agency may
first advise on how the construction of a security would affect its rating and then
issue a rating that confirms its advice,earning two separate fees in the process,This
problem has grown hugely,44% of Moody¡¯s revenues in 2006 came from its struc-
tured finance activities,Moreover,there is an apparent incentive (in)compatibility
issue,the issuer pays for the rating and may shop around for the best deal (a
favourable rating),while the agency may be inclined to reward an issuer that choos-
es it over the other agencies.
The agencies¡¯ performance is also problematic,They are blamed for reacting ex-
post rather than anticipating; the ratings are lagging indicators,Ratings changes
may be procyclical (an effect that might be accentuated by Basel II) and may cre-
ate herd effects,magnifying instability,Both were strong criticisms during and
after the Asian crisis,and Fitch,for example,accepted their validity in their mea
culpa of February 1998.
4
The agencies¡¯ data and their models are suspect,In rating residential mortgage-
backed securities involving subprime mortgages,for example,the agencies used
data from an extended period of rapidly rising house prices,during which doubt-
ful mortgages had been validated as householders¡¯ equity grew,And rating com-
plex structured finance instruments on the basis of model simulations may not be
helpful when markets become disorderly,tail risk materializes,actual correlation
risk far exceeds the models¡¯ parameters and the models blow up,Moreover,it may
be inappropriate to use the same metric to evaluate sovereign risk,corporate-bond
risk and complex instruments like CDOs,In each context,the rating reflects the
agency¡¯s estimate of the probability of default over a given period ¨C nothing more.
It ignores,for example,the possibility that the market for the security may
become illiquid; and it ignores the likely recovery rate if the security defaults.
Most importantly,a significant literature finds that the agencies simply do not
add value,the quality of information they provide is often no better than that
which a good analyst could extract from publicly available data,Detailed studies
cast doubt on their ability to assess credit quality better than measures based on
market spreads or to predict major changes.
5
146 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
3 See F,Partnoy (2006),¡®How and Why Credit Rating Agencies are not like Other Gatekeepers¡¯,Legal Studies
Research Paper No,07¨C46,University of San Diego School of Law,Some argue that the agencies are now just a
whipping-boy or scapegoat,Sophisticated investors,it is said,should have recognized the dangers in the new,
complex financial instruments,and others should not have invested in them,But the regulatory licence exists
precisely because the regulators do not accept these arguments.
4 Financial Times,13 February 1998.
5 There are several such papers in Levich et al,(2002).
Market characteristics
There is a number of identifiable sources of these problems,They suggest some
directions for policy and some constraints on policy,There is a clear public-good
aspect of the information that the agencies provide,Hence there is a free-rider
problem,and payment by the user of the information will be either suboptimal or
unenforceable,(Nevertheless,until the early 1970s,it was in fact the users of the
ratings who paid,by subscription.) This aspect gives an efficiency argument for
market concentration,which eliminates duplication of effort in generating infor-
mation that will be available to all.
The agencies do not take full responsibility for their ratings,In fact,they have
successfully (so far) maintained legal immunity from malfeasance claims on the
ground that they are only financial journalists publishing their opinions,which
are protected free speech,That Moody¡¯s is much more profitable than the
Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal may suggest,however,that they are in
fact earning some rents,In addition to a return on their reputational capital,
which is what they claim to sell,
6
they are also selling the regulatory licence con-
ferred by their roles in the regulatory regime,Doesn¡¯t this status make their
¡®speech¡¯ rather different from that of a securities analyst or an FT columnist? One
might also infer rents attributable to the regulatory licence from the profitability
of CDOs,After all,these just repackage existing securities; the apparent source of
¡®value¡¯ is the rating gain.
Potential policy solutions
Academics and policy-makers have considered numerous proposals,from nation-
alizing the agencies to abolishing official recognition of their ratings,The under-
lying incentive difficulties create a classic mechanism design problem,but there is
so far no formal analysis that could inform policy,And there are no easy answers.
Officials often support a voluntary code of conduct,since the market partici-
pants will lobby heavily against anything stronger,But the International
Organization of Securities Commissions already promulgated a code of conduct at
the end of 2004,According to the French Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF),
by early 2007 it had been implemented in a ¡®globally satisfactory¡¯ manner,But the
AMF still expressed concerns at that time about the roles and performance of the
agencies in the structured finance markets ¨C and rightly so,because the code has
no teeth,Voluntary codes cannot solve the incentive problems.
Some have argued that public goods should have public funding,But there are
obvious dangers in effectively nationalizing the agencies,A feasible alternative
may be reviving subscription,a levy on users (investors).
7
Some observers suggest
that standardization of ratings across agencies would be helpful,If that just means
using the same notation for a given probability of default,it is trivial,Anyone can
Ratings agency reform 147
6 It is argued that the recent fall in Moody¡¯s share price indeed reflects a downgrading of its reputation,More likely,
however,it is due to the collapse of the structured finance business.
7 A newly certified NRSRO,Egan-Jones,operates with a subscription model,giving subscribers immediate access to
new ratings information and releasing it publicly with a lag (John Dizard,Financial Times,14 January 2008).
convert a Moody¡¯s rating into an S&P rating,If it means standardizing valuation
models,it would eliminate competition,but not entirely,because the agencies
might feed different data into the same model,but one would then like to know
why the data differ.
Regulators could require the agencies to provide more information than just a
specific rating,an assessment of the liquidity characteristics of the instrument,of
the likely volatility of its market price etc,But the agencies do not seem well
equipped for this,¡®As a result of unprecedented price volatility,Moody¡¯s has
adapted its methodology [for rating structured investment vehicles].¡¯
8
That does
not say much for Moody¡¯s data analysis,in fact,by all measures,volatilities dur-
ing August 2007 were not significantly higher than in May 2006 (for example) and
were much lower than in autumn 1998,But the analytical problems here are for-
midable,The extensive academic literature on liquidity risk and market risk gives
little guidance on how to estimate them quantitatively,And the underlying con-
ditions change more rapidly than the fundamentals governing default risk,so the
corresponding ratings would have to adjust frequently,That might confuse
investors and add to market volatility.
The agencies should at least,however,provide a range for the risk of each
instrument rather than a point estimate; or they should develop a distinct rating
scale for structured finance products.
9
Some propose introducing explicit legal liability for negligence or malfeasance.
But this is likely to lead to the demise of the agencies,and they would get sued
out of business.
Separating rating from consultancy and advisory functions seems obviously
desirable,and Chinese walls will not do,But forcing the agencies to give up the
highly remunerative advisory work will be extremely difficult politically.
Resistance might weaken if the structured finance business disappears,as some
suggest it will,but then the problem disappears too.
There should be more competition among agencies,new entrants,Of course we
all believe in competition,or at least market contestability,but as noted,there are
aspects of the industry that suggest natural monopoly,And with more agencies,
we might see a race to the bottom as issuers seek the agency that will rate them
most favourably,Some observers report that investment banks shopped around
for higher ratings in securitizing subprime mortgages.
Could not the regulators substitute market valuations (spreads,say) for ratings?
The agencies maintain that these are too volatile,but one could use a smoothed
moving average,More important is that many securities effectively have no mar-
ket,they are bought by buy-and-hold investors,And many others are fairly illiq-
uid,the average number of trades per day for a UK corporate bond is two (three
for a euro-denominated bond).
10
Credit default swap prices might deal with that
problem,but that will not help in the primary market,which is where the impact
of the ratings has been so pronounced in the recent period.
148 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
8 Moody¡¯s ¡®Update¡¯,5 September 2007.
9 R,Ferguson,P,Hartmann,F,Panetta and R,Portes (2007),International Financial Stability,CEPR and ICMB.
10 B,Biais et al.,2006,European Corporate Bond Markets,Transparency,Liquidity,Efficiency,CEPR.
Some suggest eliminating the regulatory licence by abolishing recognition,that
is,removing the NRSRO designation and merely requiring agencies to register
with the regulators,This would confer no official status on the ratings,It would
also vastly increase the burden on the regulators,but with increased budgets,they
could hire people from the agencies (Moody¡¯s has just announced layoffs),This
proposal would also suppress the role of the ratings in Basel II,After all the effort
put into Basel II,however,the regulators as well as the agencies have strong vest-
ed interests in it.
Conclusion
Perhaps recent experience will give enough support to the critics to override the
political and lobbying obstacles to some of the more promising proposals.
Without policy changes,the structural problems will surely persist.
Ratings agency reform 149
19 October 2007
Uneven supervision gave an edge to risk- takers in some countries on the up side,
but the pain is being felt all around Europe on the down side,To avoid future crises,
all mortgage originators should be regulated,banks should have to retain their equity
or first loss risk,the ratings agencies should be more transparent and independent,
and Europe¡¯s coordination failure among national supervisors should be fixed.
The US banking authorities and the EU finance ministries,central banks and
supervisory authorities are trying to design a roadmap to strengthen financial
stability and crisis prevention after experiencing the effects of the present confi-
dence crisis,In principle,the best way to try to avoid another credit confidence
crisis is just to learn from what went wrong in the present one,to make the
necessary changes and to develop new policies,By now,it seems clear that some
market,regulatory and supervisory failures have taken place in the last few years
of low interest rates and leveraging euphoria that need to be addressed.
Subprime mortgage lending is not new,It has existed for a long time in con-
sumer finance both in the United States and Europe,although subprime mortgage
finance is much more important in the United States,The key to successful sub-
prime lending is to develop a very good credit scoring based on data concerning
the historical behaviour of borrowers,both collectively and individually,These are
then applied to interest rates for every type of borrower and marked high enough
to more than compensate for their expected levels of non-performing loan losses.
The main problems with subprime mortgage lending in the United States have
been the following,First,half of their originators are agents and brokers,which are
not part of a banking group and thus fall outside federal banking regulation.
Moreover,these agents and brokers get paid by commissions based on the number
of mortgage loans that they are able to sell to households,so that their incentives
have nothing to do with the default risk involved in the loan,but,on the contrary,
the higher the risk of the borrower,the larger the commission.
Second,the other half of the originators are banks,which sometime ago tend-
ed to hold the mortgage for some years in their books,so as to have an incentive
to be careful about its non-performing risks,But today,both brokers and banks
which originate these loans sell them very quickly either directly or through
another financial intermediary,which then securitizes and sells them to investors,
thus losing their traditional incentive to monitor their risk,The way these mort-
How to avoid further credit and
liquidity confidence crises
Guillermo de la Dehesa
Banco Santander,Goldman Sachs and CEPR
151
gages are securitized is based on pooling thousands of mortgages and other loans
in an off-balance sheet vehicle which issues marketable CDOs or CLOs
(Collateralised Loan Obligations) representing shares in the pool.
Third,unlike in most countries in Europe,in the US legal system subprime
mortgage loans carry a much higher risk for the lender because there is no legally
binding property register; the loan does not give the lender the right to repossess
the property,regardless of who owns the house,and the repossessing system varies
from one state to another.
Fourth,there are always risk-hungry investors who are ready to invest in high-
er risk-higher-yield financial products like the CDOs,but the problem this time is
that these products are so complex that either they were not able to understand
fully what they were buying or did not wanted to invest enough on disentangling
their supporting models before purchasing them,The fact is that even the more
sophisticated risk-hungry investors (as the hedge funds) did not really know well
enough how to value these assets and eventually they had to trust the rating given
by the independent ratings agency involved in the securitization.
Fifth,although securitization is a great innovation which makes it possible for
banks to extend affordable mortgages to many more households (mainly the low-
income ones) and to small and medium-sized firms,such complex financially
structured products are extremely difficult to value and also to rate,In the old
times,a triple or double ¡®A¡¯ rating was usually given to security issued by a highly
stable and solvent country or company which was quoted daily in an organized
market,Today,one of these CDOs can achieve a triple or double A rating,when
they are composed of blocks of different ratings,from ¡®senior¡¯ (double or triple A)
and ¡®mezzanine¡¯ (triple B) to ¡®equity¡¯ (triple B-,triple C or less).
It looks like alchemy but sophisticated mathematical models were supporting
these ratings based on the fact that,given the large number of loans pooled,their
probability of default was much less correlated than in the case of one single or
several loans,since,in principle,it is more unlikely that all default at the same
time,Moreover,these structured products do not trade and are not quoted in
organized markets,They are mostly customized to suit different investors,so that
they are only sold over the counter,As such,their price transparency and market
liquidity tend to be extremely low.
Sixth,the rating agencies have been classifying these products and their differ-
ent tranches with their own models without any apparent problem,However,
since last June,they have started to downgrade them quickly,given the accelerat-
ing rate of non-performing subprime loans and the progressive falling of average
house prices in the United States,This general and fast downgrading has had a
detonating negative effect on the investor¡¯s confidence in the real value of these
products,This,in turn,has triggered the present situation of general uncertainty
and lack of liquidity for these and other related products collateralized with mort-
gages and even of other medium- and long-term loans.
Credit-ratings agencies,charges and countercharges
The ratings agencies have come under attack for their role in all this,They have a
conflict of interest (they are paid by the issuer of these products and not by the
152 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
buyer) and their ratings do not seem to have got it right,at least according today¡¯s
market,Even if nowadays there are still few transactions,the ABX.HE indexes
(January = 100) show that,on average,some triple-A rated asset-backed mortgage-
structured securities are being sold with a loss of 6 percentage points,that double
A show a loss of 20 percentage points,that single A sell at a loss of 50 percentage
points,that triple B show a loss of 65 percentage points and that triple B trade at
a loss of 70 percentage points.
The ratings agencies have counterattacked by showing that,at the demand of
the sellers,their ratings were made only on the default risks of these securities,
which have been downgraded accordingly to the new information appearing in
the marketplace,but not on their market and/or liquidity risks,which are even
more complex (and expensive) ratings,They argue that it is the present lack of liq-
uidity that makes those securities lose value,and not so much their probability of
default which was rightly captured by their ratings.
The curious geographical transmission of the crisis
Another problem is how is it possible that a relatively minor and expected issue
(with present losses of about $200 billion) arising in the subprime mortgage mar-
ket in the United States has been able to contaminate so many US and European
banks and markets,The answer is that it is because of the large proliferation of
conduits and SIVs created by them off-balance sheet,in order to avoiding regula-
tory capital consumption,to invest in long-term assets,financing them by issuing
commercial paper backed by these assets.
Their basic aim was to borrow short and invest long (as banks always do) in a
way that was more profitable since it allowed them to lend without consuming
their regulatory capital,that is,without having the investment on balance sheet
and therefore counting in their loans-to-capital requirements,The volume of con-
duits created is large (around $600 billion in the US banks and around $500 bil-
lion in European banks).These banking conduits did invest in CDOs and CLOs
issued by US and other European banks which had subprime loans among other
better-rated corporate and mortgage securities.
Nevertheless,the main problem with banks in the United States and Europe is
not only that their conduits invested in subprime and other low-quality credit-
structured products,(when their assets were meant to be of higher grades) but
that,when their asset-backed commercial-paper market financing dried up,the
borrow-short-lend-long wheel stopped,The conduits have to pay off their short-
borrowing positions,but have problems selling off their long-lending positions.
This left the banks with two options,take them into their balance sheets,pro-
voking a credit crunch,or get enough temporary liquidity from a central bank to
refinance them ¨C to keep the wheel turning,as it were,The credit crunch in the
case of the euro-area banks would not be very large,but it would be substantial.
The average ratio of regulatory capital to total loans is 8% in euro-area banks,The
total volume of conduits needed to be taken into their balance sheets would
absorb only 0.7 percentage points of that ratio,that is,on average,they would
have to reduce total lending by 8.75% to absorb them,But for some banks with
lower capital levels the impact would be fairly large.
How to avoid further credit and liquidity confidence crises 153
Avoiding future crises
Regulators,supervisors and central banks should try to solve these perverse incen-
tives and problems with conflict of interest that have led to the crisis,Here are
some of the measures they should take,besides continue to inject liquidity until
some confidence is regained.
First,the US banking authorities should regulate all US agents and brokers
which are originating these mortgage loans in order to avoid their perverse incen-
tives when dealing with their potential borrowers and to try to standardize their
property registration and collateral execution systems across states.
Second,all banking supervisors should oblige all banks,which originate and
sell loans and mortgages,to retain their equity or first loss risk block,as it happens
today in some European countries,in order to make them share part of the risk
when they sell them to intermediaries or final investors and,therefore,to be much
more careful when monitoring their credit risks and when choosing the mortgages
to be pooled for sale.
Third,the banks and financial institutions,which structure and securitize these
loans,should be extremely transparent about their package processes,their sup-
porting models and their associated risks,Moreover,they should try to increase
the standardization of these products up to making them suitable to be traded in
an organized and transparent market.
Fourth,the ratings agencies should try to regain credibility by showing that
they are truly independent and that their rating process is fully transparent and
reliable,mainly for these complex structured products.
Fifth,in the case of conduit proliferation there has been a major supervisory
coordination failure,at least in Europe,given that some central banks (as in Spain)
have not allowed their supervised banks to create these conduits while other
supervisors have done so at large,It is clear that these conduits have been created
mainly by sophisticated wholesale banks and not so much by more traditional
retail banks,but it is even clearer that in those countries where the banking super-
vision is not done by the central bank,but by another government agency or insti-
tution,the problem created by conduits has been much larger in size and risk
involved,The main examples are Germany,the United Kingdom and the United
States (with the Netherlands the main exception to this rule),The case in point is
probably the United Kingdom,where the tripartite division of responsibility
between the Treasury,the Bank of England and the FSA has complicated to the
extreme an,in principle rather easy,sale of Northern Rock to another bank,which
eventually has ended in an expensive bank run and a bailout.
This issue is extremely important for two reasons,First,some supervisors in the
euro area,without coordinating with their other euro-area colleagues or even with
their central banks,have allowed their supervised banks to develop a competitive
advantage over other competing euro-area banks,in the same single market,by
allowing them to create large and highly profitable (but risky) conduits,Second,
now,when such decisions have proved to be wrong and the conduits are on the
verge of producing a credit crunch unless they are refinanced by the ECB system,
all the rest of the banks without conduits in the euro area are also suffering the
consequences of that decision,Something needs to be done about these supervis-
ing structures to avoid this lack of coordination in the future.
154 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
1 May 2008
Financial regulation never works the way it should,Here one of the world¡¯s most
experienced analysts of the global financial system presents some remarkably clear
thinking on why we should not just do more of the same,An alternative model
for policy action is proposed.
I have had the misfortune or fortune of being up close and personal with seven
major financial crises in my banking career,from the US savings and loans crisis
of the late 1980s to today¡¯s credit crunch,In each crisis I have observed a cycle in
the response to the crisis,In the middle of a crisis,when circumstances look dire
and chunks of the financial system are falling off,proposals get radical,I recall in
December 1992,with the United Kingdom and Italy having already been ejected
from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and Spain and Portugal looking
vulnerable,some European policy-makers flirted with capital controls,But a few
months after each crisis is over,these radical plans are tidied away and we are left
with three things,And they are always the same three things,better disclosure,
prudential controls and risk management.
These measures are the regulatory version of apple pie and ice cream,Who
would say no? The thing is that we have been investing heavily in these areas for
the past 20 years and do not have much to show for it in terms of financial
stability,Over the past 11 years we have had the Asian financial crisis,LTCM,the
¡®dotcom bezzle¡¯ and now the credit crunch,While more disclosure,controls and
risk management are generally good things and necessary fraud-reducing meas-
ures,there are few crises I have known from the inside that would not have hap-
pened if only there had been more disclosure,People knew that subprime was a
poor risk ¨C it is called subprime,after all.
Regulatory shortcomings
The problem is more fundamental,and,unless we address these fundamental issues,
we will be condemned to repeat the cycle of boom and bust,Lying close to the heart
of the problem in all these recent crises,from today¡¯s credit crunch to the savings
and loans debacle and beyond,is the inappropriateness of financial regulation.
The inappropriateness of
financial regulation
Avinash Persaud
Intelligence Capital
155
My own view of banking regulation would be considered quaint next to today¡¯s
practice,I consider the primary objective of intervening in the banking market to
be mitigating the substantial systemic consequences of market failure in banking.
It is therefore puzzling to me that market prices are now placed at the heart of
modern financial regulation,whether in the form of mark-to-market accounting
or the market price of risk in risk models,It is not clear to me how we can rely on
market prices to protect us from a failure of market prices,I have discussed this
before many times,so I will focus on the secondary objective,which is to avoid
the discouragement of good banking.
A good bank is one that lends to a borrower that other banks would not lend
to because of its superior knowledge of the borrower or one that would not lend
to a borrower to which everyone lends because of its superior knowledge of the
borrower,Modern regulators believe this is too quaint,and,to be fair,many banks
were not any good at it,But instead of removing banking licences from these
banks,regulators decided to do away with relationship banking altogether and
promoted a switch away from bank finance to market finance where loans are
securitized,given public ratings,sold to many investors including other banks and
assessed using approved risk tools that are sensitive to publicly available prices.
Now,bankers lend to borrowers that everyone else is lending to,the outcome of a
process where the public price of risk is compared with its historic average and a
control is applied based on public ratings.
Market finance
This switch to market finance improved search liquidity in quiet times,Credit risk
that was previously bundled with market and liquidity risk was separated,priced
and traded,This has improved the transparency and tradability,but it comes at
the expense of systemic liquidity in noisy times.
Almost every economic model will tell you that if all the players have the same
tastes (reducing capital adequacy requirements) and have the same information
(public ratings,approved risk models using market prices),the system will sooner
or later send the herd off the cliff edge (Persaud,2000),And no degree of greater
sophistication in the modelling of the price of risk will get round this fact,In this
world,where falling prices generate more sell orders from price-sensitive risk mod-
els,markets will not be self-stabilizing but destabilizing and the only way to short-
circuit the systemic collapse is for a non-market actor,like some agent of the tax-
payer,to come in and buy up assets to put a floor under their prices,(I wrote about
this liquidity tradeoff with some colleagues,Laganá et al.,2006.)
Now this is a legitimate model,the marketization of finance and the resulting
improvement in search liquidity in quiet times,coupled with direct state inter-
vention in the crisis,It is the model we have today,But I venture that it is a high-
ly dangerous model,It is expropriation of gains by bankers and socialization of
costs by taxpayers,Paying for a decade of bank bonuses can be very expensive for
the taxpayer and the opportunities for moral hazard are enormous.
156 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
An alternative approach
The alternative model rests on three pillars,The first recognizes that the biggest
source of market and systemic failure is the economic cycle and so regulation can-
not be blind and deaf to the cycle,it must put it close to the centre,Charles
Goodhart and I have proposed contra-cyclical charges,capital charges that rise as
the market price of risk falls,as measured by financial market prices,and a good
starting point for implementation of such charges is the Spanish system of
dynamic provisioning (Goodhart and Persaud,2008).
The second pillar focuses regulation on systemically important distinctions,
such as maturity mismatches and leverage,and not on outdated distinctions
between banks and non-banks,Institutions without leverage or mismatch should
be lightly regulated ¨C if at all ¨C and in particular would not be required to adhere
to short-term rules such as mark-to-market accounting or market-price risk sensi-
tivity that contribute to market dislocation,Bankers will argue against this,saying
that it creates an unlevel playing field,but financial markets are based on diversi-
ty,not homogeneity,Incentivizing long-term investors to behave long-term will
mean that there will be more buyers when banks are forced to sell.
The third pillar is requiring banks to pay an insurance premium to taxpayers
against the risk that the taxpayers will be required to bail them out,If such a mar-
ket could be created,it would not only incentivize good banking and push the
focus of regulation away from process to outcomes,but it would also provide an
incentive for banks to be less systemic,Today,banks have an incentive to be more
systemic,as a bailout is then guaranteed,The right response to Citibank¡¯s routine
failure to anticipate its credit risks is not for it to keep on getting bigger so that it
can remain too big to fail,but for it to wither away under rising insurance premi-
ums paid to taxpayers.
References
Goodhart,Charles and Avinash Persaud (2008),¡®How to Avoid the Next Crash¡¯,
Financial Times,30 January.
Laganá,Marco,Martin Per
ina,Isabel von K?ppen-Mertes and Avinash Persaud
(2006),¡®Implications for Liquidity from Innovation and Transparency in the
European Corporate Bond Market¡¯,ECB Occasional Paper No,50 (August).
Persaud,Avinash (2000),¡®Sending the Herd off the Cliff Edge¡¯,World Economics
1 (4),pp,15¨C26,
The inappropriateness of financial regulation 157
14 November 2007
Inflation targeting proponents view central banks¡¯ responsibilities as minimalist,But
the subprime crisis shows that central banks cannot avoid taking responsibilities
that include the prevention of bubbles and the supervision of all institutions that
are in the business of creating credit and liquidity.
The credit crisis that hit the world economy in August teaches us many lessons
about the workings of integrated financial markets,It also teaches us a lesson
about the responsibilities of central banks.
1
Until the eruption of the credit crisis,the consensus view was that central banks
should target inflation,and that is pretty much all they should do.
2
In this view,
central banks should not target (or try to influence) asset prices,either ¨C as was
stressed by Greenspan ¨C because bubbles cannot be recognized ex-ante,or ¨C if they
can ¨C the macroeconomic consequences of bubbles and crashes are limited as long
as central banks keep inflation on track,Inflation targeting,we were told,is the
new best-practice central banking that makes it unnecessary for central bankers to
try to influence asset prices.
3
The credit crisis has unveiled the fallacy of this hands-off view,If the banking
system were insulated from the asset markets,the view that monetary policies
should not be influenced by what happens in asset markets would make sense,In
that case,asset bubbles and crashes would only affect the non-banking sector,and
a central bank is not in the business of insuring private portfolios.
The problem that we have seen in the recent crisis is that the banking sectors
were not insulated at all from movements in the asset markets,Banks were heav-
ily implicated both in the development of the bubble in the housing markets and
There is more to central banking
than inflation targeting
Paul De Grauwe
University of Leuven and CEPR
159
1 This is an expanded version of a Financial Times column published on 2 November 2007.
2 An influential paper making the case that central banks should not try to influence asset prices is B,Bernanke
and M,Gertler (2001),Should Central Banks Respond to Movements in Asset Prices?,American Economic
Review (May),pp,253¨C7,Although this has become the consensus view,there are prominent dissenting views
also,An example is S,Cecchetti,H,Genberg,J,Lipsky and S,Wadhwani (2000),Asset Prices and Central Bank
Policy,Geneva Report on the World Economy 2,CEPR and ICMB [[check details]],Among the major central
banks it is remarkable that the ECB has defended the view that central banks should lean against the wind when
asset bubbles arise (see Monthly Bulletin,April 2005).
3 Proponents of this view have argued that flexible inflation targeting that takes a sufficiently long-term perspective
is sufficient to deal with asset bubbles,i.e,flexible inflation targeting can be tailored in such a way that the
longer-run consequences of asset prices are taken into account when setting interest rates (see Charles Bean,
2003,Asset Prices and Monetary Policy,Federal Reserve Bank of Australia,November).
in its subsequent crash,And since the banking system was heavily implicated,the
central banks were also heavily involved by the very fact that they provide insurance
to the banks in the form of the lender of last resort,Some may wish that central banks
would abstain from supplying this insurance,Economic theory,however,tells us that
central banks should intervene to provide liquidity if the liquidity crisis risks
disrupting the payments system,thereby hurting many innocent bystanders,In
addition,reality ensures that central banks are forced to provide liquidity when a
crisis erupts,as they are the only institutions capable of doing so.
Thus,when asset prices experience a bubble,it should be a matter of concern
for the central bank because the bubble will be followed by a crash,and that is
when the balance sheet of the central bank will inevitably be affected,It is not rea-
sonable for a central bank to argue that asset bubbles and crashes should not be a
source of concern and therefore that it should not try to intervene when a bubble
arises,when it knows that the bubble will have large implications for its future bal-
ance sheet and its profits and losses.
There is a second reason why the hands-off approach has been shown to be
wanting,During the last few years,a significant part of liquidity and credit cre-
ation has occurred outside the banking system,Hedge funds and special conduits
have been borrowing short and lending long,and as a result,have created credit
and liquidity on a massive scale,thereby circumventing the supervisory and reg-
ulatory framework,As long as this liquidity creation was not affecting banks,it
was not a source of concern for the central bank,However,banks were heavily
implicated,Thus,the central bank was implicitly extending its liquidity insurance
to institutions outside the regulatory framework,It is unreasonable for a central
bank to insure activities of agents over which it has no oversight,very much as it
would be unreasonable for an insurance company selling fire insurance not to
check whether the insured persons take sufficient precautions against the out-
break of fire.
Policy implications
So what can be done about this? There are two possible solutions,The first one is
for the central bank to recognize that asset bubbles are a source of concern and
that it should act upon their emergence,The argument that a bubble can never be
recognized ex-ante is a very weak one,One had to be blind not to see the bubble
in the US housing market or the internet bubble,And this is the case for most asset
bubbles in history,When asset prices increase at a rate of 20% or more per year,
and when credit aggregates increase by similar percentages in a sustained way dur-
ing several years,one can be pretty sure that a bubble is on the move,and that a
crash is imminent.
It has been argued that even if central banks can detect bubbles,they are pret-
ty much powerless to stop them,This argument is not very convincing,It is not
inherently more difficult to stop asset bubbles than it is to stop inflation,And cen-
tral banks have been very successful at stopping inflation.
This is not an argument to target asset prices,Few economists today would
make that argument,What is possible,however,is a leaning against the wind
approach,whereby the emergence of a bubble leads the central bank to tighten
160 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
policy more than it would do otherwise,This was in fact proposed by the ECB in
its Monthly Bulletin of April 2005.
Second,central banks should be involved in the supervision and regulation of
all institutions that create credit and liquidity,The UK approach of dissociating
monetary policy from banking supervision has not worked,Central banks are the
only insurers against liquidity risks,Therefore they are the ones who should con-
trol those who create credit and liquidity,Failure to do so will continue to induce
agents to create excessive amounts of liquidity,endangering the financial system.
The fashionable inflation-targeting view is a minimalist view of the responsibilities
of a central bank,The central bank cannot avoid taking more responsibilities beyond
inflation targeting,These responsibilities include the prevention of bubbles and the
supervision of all institutions that are in the business of creating credit and liquidity.
There is more to central banking than inflation targeting 161
1 The views expressed are our own and are not necessarily shared by the Swiss National Bank.
2 Technically,we discuss the results from estimates of a panel VAR,The working paper contains information about
the choice of data and the estimation approach.
12 March 2008
Many observers have argued that central banks should use monetary policy to pre-
vent the rise of asset price bubbles,Recent research shows that monetary policy is too
costly and too slow to serve such a role.
The subprime crisis and falling property prices in the United States and elsewhere
have put central banks back in the firing line.
1
Many commentators are noting
that asset price booms,in particular those affecting residential property prices,
have triggered many previous episodes of financial instability (Ahearne et al.,
2005; Goodhart and Hofmann,2007),Thus,the argument goes,the most recent
developments provide additional evidence that central banks should react proac-
tively to asset prices movements,and do so over and beyond what these imply for
aggregate demand and inflation (Borio and Lowe,2002; Cecchetti et al.,2000).
Of course,conducting monetary policy in this way is not easy,In addition to the
fact that the central bank must form a view of whether a particular asset price
increase is dangerous or not,it requires monetary policy to have predictable effects
on asset prices,Furthermore,the size of interest-rate movements required to prevent
a bubble from developing must not be so large as to cause output and inflation to
fall substantially below the central bank¡¯s objectives for them (Bean,2004;
Bernanke,2002; Kohn,2006),Finally,the effects of monetary policy on different
asset prices must occur at about the same speed,since otherwise policy-makers will
have to choose between which precise asset prices they wish to stabilize.
While these issues are all eminently empirical,somewhat surprisingly they do
not appear to have a prominent role in policy discussions of this issue,In a forth-
coming CEPR discussion paper,we seek to address them by studying the respons-
es of real residential property prices and real equity prices,the price level and the
level of real GDP to monetary policy shocks,using a panel of 17 OECD countries
¨C Australia,Belgium,Canada,Denmark,Finland,France,Germany,Ireland,Italy,
Japan,the Netherlands,Norway,Spain,Sweden,Switzerland,the United Kingdom
and the United States ¨C over the period 1986¨C2006,In our paper we disregard dif-
ferences across countries and focus instead on the average responses of the
economies to an unexpected tightening of monetary policy.
2
Can monetary policy really be used
to stabilize asset prices?
Katrin Assenmacher-Wesche and Stefan Gerlach
Swiss National Bank; Johann Wolfgang Goethe University
Frankfurt and CEPR
163
Responses to monetary policy
Of course,it is important to be clear about what we mean by such a monetary pol-
icy shock,There is much agreement that in setting interest rates,central banks
react to current inflation and the current state of the business cycle,By contrast,
and barring exceptional circumstances,monetary policy responds to asset prices
only over time if they are seen to diverge from the levels with which the central
bank feels comfortable,We therefore view contemporaneous co-movements
between interest rates and the price level,and interest rates and real GDP,as
reflecting reactions by the central bank to these variables,and contemporaneous
co-movements in interest rates and asset prices,as reflecting market reactions to
monetary policy news.
Figure 1 analyses the effects of a 100 basis points¡¯ increase in interest rates,Note
that after about eight quarters interest rates have declined but remain about 35
basis points above their initial level,After 12 quarters,they have fallen further to
a level some 10 basis points above the starting point,Overall,the increase in inter-
est rates will dissipate in about three years.
Turning to real property prices,we note that these start to fall in response to the
tightening of monetary policy,After 16 quarters,they reach a bottom of about
2.6% below the initial level and then start to return gradually to their starting
level,Overall,property prices react quite slowly to monetary policy actions.
Next we consider the responses of real GDP.
3
The figure shows that it also reach-
es a trough after 16 quarters,when it is some 0.8% below its initial level.
4
Thus,
the responses of real GDP are almost exactly one-third of those of real property
prices.
5
This is an important finding,To see why,suppose that monetary policy-
164 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
¨C0.008
¨C0.006
¨C0.004
¨C0.002
0
0.002
0.004
0 4 8 1216202428323640
Interest rate (divided by 100) GDP Real property prices Real equity prices
Figure 1 Responses to a monetary policy shock
Can monetary policy really be used to stabilize asset prices? 165
makers come to believe that a real property price bubble of 15% has developed,
and decide to tighten monetary policy in order to bring down asset prices,In
doing so,the average central bank in the 17 countries we study should also expect
to depress the level of real GDP by 5%,a truly massive amount.
Finally,we consider the responses of real equity prices,Interestingly,these fall
by about 2% ¨C or almost as much as real property prices ¨C but do so immediately.
After 16 quarters,when real property prices reach their trough,real equity prices
are less than 0.5% below their initial level,The finding that property and equity
prices react at very different speeds is important since it implies that central banks
cannot stabilize both,This is yet another reason why we believe that the idea of
using interest-rate policy to forestall asset prices bubbles is not practicable.
Conclusions
Whatever merits such a stabilization policy has in theory,our research suggests
that in practice monetary policy is too blunt an instrument to be used to target
asset prices,The effects on real property prices are too small,given the responses
of real GDP,and they are too slow,given the responses of real equity prices,In par-
ticular,there is a risk that setting monetary policy in response to asset price move-
ments will lead to large output losses that exceed by a wide margin those that
would arise from a possible bubble burst.
References
Ahearne,Alan G.,John Ammer,Brian M,Doyle,Linda S,Kole and Robert F,Martin
(2005),¡®House Prices and Monetary Policy,A Cross-Country Study,¡¯ Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve System,International Finance Discussion
Papers No,841.
Bean,Charles (2004),¡®Asset Prices,Monetary Policy and Financial Stability,A
Central Banker¡¯s View,¡¯ speech given at the American Economic Association
Annual Meeting,San Diego.
Bernanke,Ben S,(2002),¡®Asset-Price,Bubbles¡± and Monetary Policy¡¯,remarks
before the New York Chapter of the National Association for Business
Economics,New York.
Borio,Claudio and Philip Lowe (2002),¡®Asset Prices,Financial and Monetary
Stability,Exploring the Nexus,¡¯ BIS Working Paper No,114,BIS.
3 We do not discuss the impact on policy on the level of prices (which is negative but small) since it is well
known that the econometric technique we use is likely to underestimate the impact of policy on prices,This
could occur because the way in which we identify monetary policy shocks,which is standard,neglects any reac-
tions by central banks to forecasts of future inflation.
4 The responses of output are somewhat more persistent than those typically found in the literature but compara-
ble to those obtained when estimating individual country VARs on the same data set,The higher persistence is
likely due to the fact that panel estimates are less susceptible to idiosyncratic noise in the data.
5 We emphasize that the finding that real GDP responds one-third as much as real property prices does not
depend on the exact assumptions we made about monetary policy when constructing the graph.
Cecchetti,Stephen G.,Hans Genberg,John Lipsky and Sushil Wadhwani (2000),
¡®Asset Prices and Central Bank Policy,¡¯ Geneva Report on the World Economy 2,
CEPR and ICMB,
Goodhart,Charles A E,and Boris Hofmann (2007),¡®House Prices,Money,Credit,
and the Macroeconomy¡¯,Financial Markets Group,London School of
Economics,mimeo.
Kohn,Donald L,(2006),¡®Monetary Policy and Asset Prices¡¯,speech at ¡®Monetary
Policy,A Journey from Theory to Practice,¡¯ European Central Bank Colloquium
held in honour of Otmar Issing,Frankfurt,
166 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
18 August 2007
The Fed¡¯s move on 17 August 2007 was a missed opportunity,It should have effec-
tively created a market by expanding the set of eligible collateral,charging an
appropriate ¡®haircut¡¯ or penalty interest rate,and expanding the set of eligible bor-
rowers at the discount window to include any financial entity that was willing to
accept appropriate prudential supervision and regulation.
In response to the credit and liquidity crunch that has recently spooked global
financial markets the Federal Reserve reduced,on Friday 17 August 2007,its pri-
mary discount rate from 6.25% to 5.75%,The discount rate is the rate that the Fed
charges eligible financial institutions for borrowing from the Fed against what the
Fed deems to be eligible collateral,It is normally 100 bps above the target federal
funds rate,which is the Fed¡¯s primary monetary policy instrument and which is
currently 5.25%,We believe that this cut in the discount rate was an inappropri-
ate response to the financial turmoil.
The market failure that prompted this response was not that financial institu-
tions are unable to pay 6.25% at the discount window and survive (given that they
have eligible collateral),The problem is that banks and other financial institutions
are holding a lot of assets which are suddenly illiquid and cannot be sold at any
price,That is,there is no longer a market that matches willing buyers and sellers
at a price reflecting economic fundamentals,Lowering the discount rate does not
solve this problem; it just provides a 50 bps subsidy to any institution able and
willing to borrow at the discount window,
What the Fed should have done
Instead of lowering the price at which financial institutions can borrow,provided
they have suitable collateral,the Fed should have effectively created a market by
expanding the set of eligible collateral and charging an appropriate ¡®haircut¡¯ or
penalty,Specifically,it should have included financial instruments for which there
is no readily available market price to act as a benchmark for the valuation of the
instrument for purposes of collateral.
A missed opportunity for the Fed
Willem Buiter and Anne Sibert
London School of Economics,University of Amsterdam
and CEPR; Birkbeck College and CEPR
167
There is no apparent legal impediment to doing this.
1
Allowable collateral
includes a wide range of government and private securities,including mortgages
and mortgage-backed securities,Indeed,the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 allows the
Federal Reserve to lend,in a crisis,to just about any institution,organization or indi-
vidual,and against just about any collateral the Fed deems fit,Specifically,if the
board of governors of the Federal Reserve system determines that there are ¡®unusu-
al and exigent circumstances¡¯ and at least five out of seven governors vote to author-
ize lending under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act,the Federal Reserve can
discount for individuals,partnerships and corporations (IPCs) ¡®notes,drafts and bills
of exchange,.,indorsed or otherwise secured to the satisfaction of the Federal
Reserve bank¡¯,The combination of the restriction of ¡®unusual and exigent circum-
stances¡¯ and the further restriction that the Federal Reserve can discount only to
IPCs ¡®unable to secure adequate credit accommodations from other banking institu-
tions¡¯,fits the description of a credit crunch/liquidity crisis like a glove.
How to avoid planting the seeds of the next crisis
It is of course essential that moral hazard be minimized,This bailout of the illiq-
uid by the Fed should be sufficiently costly that those paying the price will still
remember it during the next credit boom,and act more prudently,Second,where
no market price is available,the Fed should base its valuation on conservative
assumptions about the creditworthiness of the counterparty and the collateral
offered by the counterparty,The counterparty should not expect to get 90 cents
on the dollar for securities that it could not find a willing private taker for at any
price,Third,the highest ¡®liquidity haircut¡¯ in the Fed¡¯s arsenal should be applied
to this conservative valuation,
The Fed should also enlarge the set of eligible counterparties at the discount
windows,This should not just be banks and other depository institutions,but any
financial entity that is willing to accept appropriate prudential supervision and
regulation,The nature of the supervision and regulation required will differ
depending on the nature of the institution,Hedge funds or private-equity funds
need different prudential regulation from depository institutions,investment
banks and pension funds,At the very minimum,however,transparency ground-
ed in comprehensive reporting obligations should be required of any institution
eligible to use the discount window.
The wisdom of leaving the monetary policy rate untouched
At least the Fed did not cut the monetary policy rate (the federal funds target
which remains at 5.25%),A cut in the federal funds target is warranted only if the
168 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
1 See our 13 August 2007 Vox column for details,Also see David H,Small and James A,Clouse (2004),¡®The
Scope of Monetary Policy Actions Authorized under the Federal Reserve Act¡¯,Board of Governors of the Federal
Reserve System Research Paper Series - FEDS Papers 20004-40 (July),at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=622342.
2 One definition of moral hazard is at http://www.thefreedictionary.com/moral+hazard.
Fed were to believe that the recent financial market kerfuffles are likely to have a
material negative effect on real activity in the United States or on the rate of infla-
tion,There is no evidence as yet to support such a view,If and when it happens,
the Fed should act promptly,But addressing the problem of illiquid financial
markets using the blunt instrument of monetary policy,a cut in the monetary
policy rate,would be clear confirmation that the Fed is concerned about financial
markets over and above what these markets imply for the real economy,Such
regulatory capture would effectively redirect the ¡®Greenspan put¡¯ from the equity
markets in general to the profits and viability of a small number of financial insti-
tutions,It would not be a proper use of public money,
A missed opportunity for the Fed 169
13 August 2007
Last week¡¯s actions by the ECB,the Fed and the Bank of Japan were not particularly
helpful,It was a classic example of trying to manage a credit crisis or liquidity
squeeze using the tools suited to monetary policy-making in orderly markets.
Monetary policy is easy; preventing or overcoming a financial crisis is hard; manag-
ing the exit from a credit squeeze without laying the foundations for the next
credit and liquidity explosion is harder still,Central bankers should earn their keep
by acting as market-makers of last resort.
When banks were the main providers of credit,the financial stability mandate of cen-
tral banks could be summarized as their lender-of-last-resort function,in times of cri-
sis,lend freely,at a penalty rate and against collateral that would be good in normal
times but may be impaired in times of crisis,The counterparties of the central bank
in these lender-of-last-resort operations were commercial banks (shorthand for
deposit-taking institutions whose main liabilities were deposits withdrawable on
demand and subject to a sequential service (first come,first served) constraint,Their
main assets were illiquid loans,This financial structure invited bank runs when con-
fidence in the banks was undermined,for whatever reason,In the days when banks
were the dominant intermediaries,a credit crunch or liquidity squeeze manifested
itself in the inability of banks to borrow; a lender of last resort that targeted banks was
the right vehicle for dealing with liquidity crises and credit squeezes in that set-up.
These days are gone in the globally integrated modern financial systems
characterizing all advanced industrial countries and an increasing number of
emerging markets,
Today,external finance to non-financial corporations and to financial institu-
tions is increasingly provided not through banks but through the issuance of
tradable financial instruments directly to the financial markets or indirectly to the
financial markets through banks and other financial institutions whose assets are,
thanks to securitization and similar techniques,liquid in normal times,Now that
financial markets (and non-bank financial institutions) have increasingly taken
over the function of providing credit and all forms of finance to deficit spending
units,a credit crunch or liquidity crunch manifests itself in a different way from
the world described by Walter Bagehot¡¯s lender of last resort (see Walter Bagehot
(1873),Lombard Street,A Description of the Money Market,
The central bank as the market-maker
of last resort,from lender of last
resort to market-maker of last resort
Willem Buiter and Anne Sibert
London School of Economics,University of Amsterdam
and CEPR; Birkbeck College and CEPR
171
Today,a credit crunch or liquidity squeeze manifests itself as disorderly finan-
cial markets,Because of pervasive Knightian uncertainty (risk that is perceived as
immeasurable and not possible to calculate or quantify),fear and in the limit,
panic,little or no trade occurs in certain classes of financial instruments (say sub-
prime mortgage-backed CDOs) because there is no market-maker with both the
knowledge to price these financial instruments and the deep pockets to credibly
post buying and selling prices,The precise way in which such micro-market fail-
ure (the failure to match willing buyers and sellers at prices acceptable to both)
occurs differs for exchange-traded instruments and over-the-counter financial
instruments (instruments for which bilateral bargaining over a deal is the normal
exchange mechanism),but the solution is the same,the central bank has to
become the market-maker of last resort,The market-maker of last resort function
can be fulfilled in two ways,first,outright purchases and sales of a wide range of
private-sector securities; second,acceptance of a wide range of private-sector
securities as collateral in repos,and in collateralized loans and advances at the
discount window,
Outright purchases and sales of illiquid private-sector securities
The first and most direct way to discharge the market-maker of last resort function
is through open-market operations in a much wider range of financial instru-
ments,especially private-sector securities,than central banks normally are willing
to trade in,Open-market operations here means outright sales and purchases of
financial instruments (i.e,not collateralized loans or advances),
As regards making markets in private-sector securities during times of crisis,
central banks appear to have moved in the opposite direction to what the logic of
financial system development would suggest,Since 1933,¡®the Federal Reserve has
gradually narrowed the scope of securities that it purchases (or with which it con-
ducts repurchase agreements in the open market¡¯ (David H,Small and James A.
Clouse (2004),¡®The Scope of Monetary Policy Actions Authorized under the
Federal Reserve Act¡¯,Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Research
Paper Series - FEDS Papers 20004-40,July; this is also the source from which the
information on the Fed¡¯s eligible counterparties and eligible securities is taken; see
also the Federal Reserve Act itself),There have been no purchases of state or local
government debt since 1933 and of bankers¡¯ acceptances since 1977,Repos using
bankers¡¯ acceptances were discontinued in 1984,Outright purchases of US agency
debt ceased in 1981,Effectively,outright purchases and sales in the open market
have in recent decades been restricted to gold and foreign exchange,and securities
issued or guaranteed by the US federal government and certain US government
agencies.
For outright sales and purchases in the open market to be effective instruments
with which to address a credit crunch,the Federal Reserve should be able to buy
and sell outright a range of private-sector credit instruments,The private instru-
ments explicitly authorized for outright purchase and sale by the Federal Reserve
Act are bankers¡¯ acceptances and bills of exchange that meet certain real bills cri-
teria,derived from a now defunct,at best irrelevant,and in most of its versions
internally inconsistent theory of credit and money,However,while the Federal
172 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Reserve Act contains no language authorizing the Federal Reserve to purchase cor-
porate bonds,bank loans,mortgages,credit-card receivables or equities,it also
does not forbid it,After all,the Federal Reserve Act also does not authorize the sale
or purchase of options,yet the Fed of New York sold options on overnight repo
transactions with exercise dates around the 1999 year-end,to forestall any Y2K
problems,
The history of the ECB,which did not start operations until 1 January 1999,is
short,Its legislative mandate and operating practices are less encumbered by his-
tory than those of the Fed,
The ECB accepts,in principle,a very wide range of both marketable and non-
marketable assets both for outright purchase and as collateral in repos or collater-
alized loans (see European Central Bank (2006),The Implementation of Monetary
Policy in the Euro Area,September 2006; General Documentation on Eurosystem
Monetary Policy Instruments and Procedures),The list of eligible instruments for
outright open-market operations (and the criteria for establishing that list) is effec-
tively the same as that for instruments eligible as collateral in repos and discount-
window operations,
Among the marketable instruments it accepts are,for instance,many asset-
backed securities (ABS) and mortgage-backed securities (MBS),As counterparties,
it accepts central banks,public-sector entities,private-sector entities,and interna-
tional and supranational institutions,The issuer must be established in the
European Economic Area (EEA) or in one of the non-EEA G10 countries (includ-
ing the United States,Canada,Japan and Switzerland),
There are some strange restrictions,For instance,in the case of ABS,the ¡®cash
flow-generating assets backing the asset-backed securities must ¡®not consist,in
whole or in part,actually or potentially,of credit-linked notes or similar claims
resulting from the transfer of credit risk by means of credit derivatives.¡¯ (ECB,
2006),Why credit risk,or derivatives based on credit risk,would be treated differ-
ently from market risk,and derivatives based on market risk,is a deep mystery.
Functionally,risk is risk; as long as it can be priced,it is fungible.
There is also the rather wimpish restriction that the debt instrument must be
denominated in euro,which means that it cannot be helpful to BNP Paribas in
establishing a market for the (presumably dollar-denominated) CDOs backed by
pools of US subprime mortgages,Why would the ECB wish to avoid collateral
denominated in currencies other than the euro? Exchange rate risk can be
hedged,Whether it ought to be hedged,or to what extent,should depend not on
the currency composition of the balance sheet of the ECB,but on the contribution
of the currency risk of the entire financial system of the eurozone to the optimal
risk-return combination of that financial system,of which currency risk and return
are but one component,Clearly,the ECB should accept collateral denominated in
currencies other than the euro if it takes its systemic stability role seriously.
The minimum credit rating it requires for eligible securities is A (that is,noth-
ing below A¨C),This could be quite restrictive in a liquidity crunch/credit crisis,But
if the three leading ratings agencies could convince themselves (and the markets)
that the higher tranches of CDOs secured against a pool of subprime home mort-
gages could be rated AAA,there might be no lower bound to the creditworthiness
of instruments rated A,Even so it would seem desirable to permit central banks,
under exceptional and extreme circumstances,to accept as collateral for redis-
The central bank as the market-maker of last resort,from lender of last resort to market-maker of last resort 173
counting,loans,advances or repos,financial instruments with any credit rating or
unrated (junk) securities,provided they are appropriately priced and have appro-
priate haircuts applied to them.
Fortunately,the list of eligible counterparties and eligible instruments for the
ECB and the European system of central banks (ESCB) is not fixed by law,It is
decided by the ECB¡¯s governing council and can be changed at the drop of the col-
lective hat,We would argue that the hat has dropped and that,in extremis,the
ECB should consider the broadest possible set of counterparties and the most
unrestricted possible set of eligible financial instruments,
The practical implementation of the market-maker of last resort function can be
done in many different ways,In the simplest case,the central bank could announce
that for the next N trading hours or days,it would buy at least X amount of a given
type of credit-impaired,illiquid security with a risk-free price P,at a price P1 < P
and/or sell at most Y amount of that security at a price P2 > P1,The discount relative
to the risk-free price and bid-ask spread P2 ¨C P1 would reflect the central bank¡¯s assess-
ment of the risk fundamentals and of the penalty required to avoid moral hazard.
Note that both the selling price and the buying price set by the central bank would
be set without the benefit of a contemporaneous market price for the security,
Acceptance of illiquid private securities as collateral for repos and
at the discount window
The second way for the central bank to act as a market-maker of last resort is to accept
illiquid private securities as collateral for repos and at the discount window,This,indi-
rectly,requires the central bank to establish a valuation of these securities.
By engaging in both repos and reverse repos for the same illiquid private financial
instruments,the central bank could establish the same implicit buying and selling
prices P1 and P2 as it can through outright purchases and sales of these instruments.
In the case of repos,which would,in the simplest case,be at the policy rate of
interest set by the central bank,the penalty component of the contract would be deter-
mined both by the relationship of P1 and P2 to the risk-free price,and by the ¡®hair-
cuts¡® (additional liquidity discounts) applied to these valuations by the central bank,
For the ECB,this should be but a small step,because it already accepts non-mar-
ketable assets as collateral in repos and collateralized loans,specifically credit
claims and non-marketable retail mortgage-backed debt instruments,Extending
the scope of assets eligible as collateral to assets that are marketable under normal
conditions but have become non-marketable owing to the disorderly markets
characteristic of extreme credit crunches and liquidity crises should be simple,
It is clear the Federal Reserve Act permits the Fed,under unusual and exigent
circumstances,to lend or repo against any collateral,including dead dogs and
illiquid CDOs backed by subprime mortgages,
The lender-of-last-resort function and the discount window
While the market-maker of last resort function is a defining function of the mod-
ern central bank,the traditional lender-of-last-resort function can also be relevant
174 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
in the resolution of a crisis,Repos are collateralized open market operations; we
define the lender-of-last-resort function as bilateral transactions between the central
bank and a private counterparty at the discount window,With the diminished
importance in the financial system of banks and similar deposit-taking institutions,
it is important that the central bank be able to exercise this function also vis-a-vis a
wider range of counterparties,and against a richer array of collateral than that tra-
ditionally offered by commercial banks,
Eligible counterparties and eligible securities in a crisis
Fortunately,the Federal Reserve Act (1913) allows the Federal Reserve to lend,in
a crisis,to just about any institution,organization or individual,and against any
collateral the Fed deems fit,Specifically,if the board of governors of the Federal
Reserve System determines that there are ¡®unusual and exigent circumstances¡¯ and
at least five (out of seven) governors vote to authorize lending under Section 13(3)
of the Federal Reserve Act,the Federal Reserve can discount for individuals,part-
nerships and corporations (IPCs) ¡®notes,drafts and bills of exchange indorsed or
otherwise secured to the satisfaction of the Federal Reserve bank ¡­¡¯,The combi-
nation of the restriction of ¡®unusual and exigent circumstances¡¯ and the further
restriction that the Federal Reserve can discount only to IPCs ¡®unable to secure
adequate credit accommodations from other banking institutions¡¯,fits the
description of a credit crunch/liquidity crisis like a glove,
It is,of course,key that such (re)discounting be at a penalty rate and against
collateral deemed adequate by the central bank,The Fed¡¯s discount window has
three different facilities and associated rates,The benchmark primary credit rate
currently stands at 6.25%,1.00% above the federal funds target rate,The second-
ary and seasonal credit rates exceed the primary rate,The ECB¡¯s marginal lending
facility currently charges a 5.00% rate,also 1.00% above the ECB policy rate,the
main refinancing operations minimum bid rate,which stands at 4.00%,Financial
instruments eligible for collateral in discount operations (or repos) are valued at
their market prices and a ¡®haircut¡¯ is applied to them.
The combination of the 100 bps extra cost of the discount window over the pol-
icy rate and the haircut would be a sufficient incentive not to abuse the discount
window if there were a meaningful market price at which the securities offered as
collateral could be valued,Of course,in a crisis,such market prices cannot be found.
This is where the job of the central bank becomes difficult,politically contentious
and of vital importance,In its discount-window operations during crisis times,that
is,when acting as lender of last resort to some institution or IPC,the central bank
will also often have to act as market-maker of last resort because it will have to value
financial instruments for which no meaningful market price is available.
How have central banks managed liquidity crises and credit
crunches?
When acting as market-maker of last resort,as when acting as lender of last resort,
the central bank inevitably plays a central role in assessing and pricing credit risk;
The central bank as the market-maker of last resort,from lender of last resort to market-maker of last resort 175
through this,the central bank will have a profound influence on the allocation of
credit in the economy (see Small and Clouse,2004),While the central bank
should not be in this business during ordinary times,when markets are orderly
and price formation and price discovery proceed without the direct intervention
of the central bank,it cannot avoid being in this business when markets are dis-
orderly and fail to match buyers and sellers of securities,
Central banks have not been doing the job of market-maker of last resort effec-
tively,indeed they have barely been doing it at all,Following the stockmarket
collapse of 1987,the Russian default of 1998 and the tech bubble crash of 2001,all
that the key monetary authorities have done is lower the short risk-free interest rate
and provide vast amounts of liquidity against high-grade collateral only,and noth-
ing against illiquid collateral,The result has been that the resolution of each of these
financial crises created massive amounts of high-grade excess liquidity that was not
withdrawn when market order was restored and provided the fuel that would
produce the next credit boom and bust,By focusing instead on illiquid collateral,it
should have been possible to achieve the same effect with a much smaller injection
of liquidity.
The incipient financial crunch of mid-2007 has not,thus far,been met with
interest-rate cuts by any of the key central banks,the Fed,the ECB,the Bank of
Japan and the Bank of England,That is just as well,because there is,as yet,noth-
ing excessive about the level of the (default-) risk-free short nominal interest-rate
levels in the United States,the eurozone,Japan or the United Kingdom,A credit
crunch is the time for central banks to start worrying about the next credit
boom,Lowering the risk-free rate is not the solution to any credit crunch/liquidity
crisis problem,It only encourages further borrowing and leverage by those already
excessively prone to such acts.
The problems we are seeing today are the result of four or five years of exces-
sively low risk-free interest rates at all maturities in the United States,Euroland
and Japan,and ludicrously low credit risk spreads across the board (not just in the
subprime mortgage markets).
These two asset market anomalies resulted in many highly leveraged open posi-
tions that were predicated on the persistence of low risk-free rates and low spreads.
Regulatory and supervisory failures compounded the magnitude of the debt and
credit-risk bubble that had been created,The supervisory and regulatory failures
in the US mortgage markets (and not just at the subprime end of the spectrum)
are so manifest that those on whose watch they occurred ought to be called to
account,
When the great normalization finally came (starting with rising risk-free real
and nominal long-term rates and rising risk-free nominal short-term rates,and
picking up steam with the normalization of credit-risk spreads,starting from the
US subprime residential mortgage markets and derivatives based on them),a grow-
ing number of these highly leveraged open positions went belly up,At the junk
end of the market,realized default rates began to be recorded that exceeded those
that had been priced into the primary and derivative securities issued in past years
in these markets.
Some funds heavily invested in these mispriced subprime mortgage-based secu-
rities went bankrupt,That is as it should be,Others,as in the case of three BNP
Paribas funds exposed to the US subprime mortgage market,suspended the abili-
176 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
ty of investors to withdraw their investments from the funds,because the funds¡¯
managers and their BNP Paribas owners argued they had no way to value the fund-
s¡¯ assets,which had become illiquid in the turbulent asset market conditions of
the past week,
It is possible,indeed quite likely,that more funds that made highly leveraged
bets whose success depended on the continuation of low risk-free rates and low
credit spreads will go bankrupt ¨C and not only funds exposed to the US subprime
mortgage market; the problem of financial hubris was much more widespread
than that,Financial institutions heavily exposed to such funds and insufficiently
diversified in other ways may also go bankrupt,Among the ranks of the potential
victims could be investment banks and deposit-taking institutions,That again is
as it should be,and does not call for intervention,It certainly does not call for
lower central-bank policy rates,Charles Darwin must have his pound of flesh also
in the financial markets,lest the central banks create a credit-risk put that would
put Greenspan¡¯s equity puts in the shade,
What is not as it should -be is that fear and panic cause financial markets to dry
up,making it impossible for firms that need to raise cash to do so either by sell-
ing assets that would have realizable value in orderly markets,or by borrowing
using these assets as collateral,Even if the assets are impaired,there should still be
a market to sell them at a discount appropriate to the central bank¡¯s assessment of
its risk of default and of the orderly market price of risk,Collateralized borrowing
against such impaired assets should likewise be possible at the same default-risk-
appropriate discount (as assessed by the central bank),If the markets for selling
impaired assets or for borrowing using impaired assets as collateral seize up and
cease to function,the central bank must step in to perform its market-maker of
last resort function,
During the past week,the ECB,the Fed and the Bank of Japan have injected
well over $200 billion worth of liquidity into the markets to stop the relevant pri-
vate benchmarks from rising above their policy-rate targets (in the United States,
the federal funds rate was threatening to rise sharply above 5.25%; in Euroland,
the overnight interbank rate was threatening to rise above 4.00% and in Japan the
overnight rate likewise was threatening somewhat less convincingly to rise above
0.50%),We consider this action not to have been particularly helpful,even where
the open-market purchases were collateralized against mortgage bonds,the central
banks chose high-grade mortgage bonds for which there still was a private market
and price rather than illiquid mortgage bonds for which the market had stalled
and no market price was available,This was a classic example of central banks try-
ing to manage a credit crisis or liquidity squeeze using the same tools and routines
they use to make monetary policy in orderly markets,
A credit crunch and liquidity squeeze is instead the time for central banks to get
their hands dirty and take socially necessary risks which are not part and parcel of
the art of central banking during normal times when markets are orderly,Making
monetary policy under conditions of orderly markets is really not that hard,Any
group of people with IQs in three digits (individually) and familiar with (almost)
any intermediate macroeconomics textbook could do the job,Dealing with a liq-
uidity crisis and credit crunch is hard,Inevitably,it exposes the central bank to
significant financial and reputational risk,The central banks will be asked to take
credit risk (of unknown) magnitude on to their balance sheets and they will have
The central bank as the market-maker of last resort,from lender of last resort to market-maker of last resort 177
to make explicit judgements about the creditworthiness of various counterparties.
But without taking these risks the central banks will be financially and reputa-
tionally safe,but poor servants of the public interest,
So,monetary policy is easy; preventing or overcoming a financial crisis is hard;
managing the exit from a credit squeeze without laying firm foundations for the
next credit and liquidity explosion is harder still,Our central bankers should earn
their keep by acting as market-makers of last resort,Covering the central bank¡¯s
posterior is less important than preventing avoidable financial instability.
178 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
8 May 2008
The global financial system may be caught in a downward spiral as market and
funding illiquidity reinforce each other,The author of CEPR Policy Insight 22 pres-
ents a radical proposal that would break the feedback loop by not valuing illiquid
assets at market prices under crisis conditions.
Prolonged financial distress,which has now lasted for almost a year,is debilitating the
financial system and risking a fully-fledged crisis,Central bank interventions have
thus far prevented worst-case outcomes,but they have alleviated symptoms rather
than the underlying causes,Financial intermediaries are still in the process of
shrinking their balance sheets,thus activating a channel of transmission of finan-
cial distress to the real economy.
The recent turmoil is a product of deep flaws in banks¡¯ new business model and
recent financial innovations,Many proposed reforms may reduce the risk of these
events repeating,but most cannot undo the effects of the present crisis and ensure
a smooth transition,The immediate problem is a spiral of forced deleveraging and
illiquidity,as the link between market and funding illiquidity strains balance
sheets,Proposed remedies are either insufficient or unsatisfactory,which means
that more radical interventions may be required,In CEPR Policy Insight 22,I pro-
pose a bold alternative.
Structural problems and medium-term solutions
The current turmoil can be attributed to a business model in which banks would
pool and securitize credits that they originated to distribute them and transfer
their risks to a myriad of investors,Though the new model promised benefits in
credit allocation,new risk-return investment opportunities and financial stability,
it is now known to have suffered from a catalogue of problems,These range from
excessive credit due to permissive monetary policies to flaws in ratings agencies¡¯
risk models,from perverse incentives guiding the agencies and bank managers to
regulatory failures,While mending those fault lines is an important task that will
require international cooperation,it will at best take care of the future,not the
present.
Avoiding disorderly deleveraging
Luigi Spaventa
University of Rome and CEPR
179
Forced deleveraging and the liquidity spiral
The immediate problem is the disorderly reaction to the unprecedented growth of
the financial system¡¯s leverage and its exposure to risk,As demand for asset-backed
securities has disappeared,prices have collapsed without finding a floor,Banks are
reporting losses that strain their capital positions,The loss of market liquidity
affecting all classes of debt securities directly or indirectly owned by intermediaries
has translated into a sharp decline of funding liquidity,the more so because short-
term debt issued on wholesale markets has become a major component of banks¡¯
funding,The forced adjustment of banks¡¯ balance sheets could,in the worst case,
result in a credit crunch with painful consequences for the real economy.
Can we break the link between the illiquidity of banks¡¯ securitized assets,which
prevents their orderly liquidation,and the shortage of funding liquidity,which is
the driving force of the negative feedback originating from the process of delever-
aging?
For funding liquidity,emergency liquidity support from central banks has
helped lower the temperature in the worst moments,but it is not a long-term solu-
tion,Setting a collateral value of illiquid securities does not provide a market for
them and hence does not set a floor to their market prices; the collateralized secu-
rities remain on the intermediaries¡¯ books,affecting the quality of their balance
sheets,Capital increases are also insufficient to break the spiral,as injections of
capital may prove inadequate only a few weeks after their announcement.
For market liquidity,suggested remedies are equally inadequate,Mandated full
disclosure of losses might reduce uncertainty,but unless market liquidity is
instantly restored,full disclosure of the situation at time t offers no guarantee that
it will be the same at time t + 1,Similarly,retreating from marking financial prod-
ucts to market or model during this time of crisis would face a number of diffi-
culties.
More radical solutions
The feedback between market and funding liquidity problems demands more rad-
ical pre-emptive solutions,As long as ¡®there is no immediate prospect that markets
in mortgage-backed securities will operate normally¡¯,¡®the situation will improve
only if the overhang of illiquid assets on the banks¡¯ balance sheets is dealt with¡¯
(Bank of England,2008),In creating its special liquidity scheme,the Bank of
England has moved to serve as the market-maker of last resort.
The scheme allows banks and building societies to swap some of their illiquid
assets,including debt securities rated no less than triple A,for specially issued
Treasury bills for up to three years,Eligible securities will be valued at market
prices,if available,or,if not,at a price calculated by the Bank,with ¡®haircuts¡¯ for
private debt securities,Changes in market prices or in valuations will require re-
margining,The credit risk will remain with the banks,so that there will be a loss
for the lender only if the borrower defaults and the value of the collateral falls
below that of the bills originally acquired in the operation.
Is the initiative bold enough? The scheme does not set a floor for assets¡¯ mar-
ket prices and uses market prices to value collateral,despite the fact that during a
180 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
negative bubble they do not reflect fundamentals,Downward instability may,
moreover,occur if ¡®haircut¡¯ discounted collateral values trigger a convergence
process for market prices requiring repeated re-margining.
In CEPR Policy Insight 22,I recommend the creation of a publicly sponsored
entity that could issue guaranteed bonds to banks in exchange for illiquid assets,
drawing on the US Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady¡¯s solution to the Latin
American sovereign debt crisis in 1989,This new entity,preferably multilateral,
would value assets based on discounted cashflows and default probabilities rather
than crisis-condition market prices.
As a firm floor is set to valuation and illiquid assets otherwise running to waste
are replaced by eminently liquid Brady-style bonds,funding difficulties and,at the
same time,the market liquidity problems besetting the banks¡¯ balance sheets
would be removed,Shielding the banks¡¯ assets from the vagaries of disorderly mar-
kets is a necessary condition to dispel the uncertainty that prevents a proper work-
ing of credit markets.
Reference
Bank of England (2008),¡®Special Liquidity Scheme¡¯,Information,Market Notice,
21 April.
Avoiding disorderly deleveraging 181
28 December 2006
Ownit Mortgage Solutions files for bankruptcy.
7 February 2007
US Senate Banking Committee holds hearing on predatory lending in subprime
sector.
22 February 2007
HSBC losses top $10.5 billion,Head of HSBC US mortgage-lending business is
fired,
7 March 2007
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation issues a cease-and-desist order against
subprime lender Fremont Investment & Loan,which had been ¡®operating without
adequate subprime mortgage loan underwriting criteria¡¯.
8 March 2007
Donald Tomnitz,the CEO of D,R,Horton,the largest US homebuilder,tells
investors,¡®I don¡¯t want to be too sophisticated here,but ¡®07 is going to suck,all
12 months of the calendar year.¡¯
12 March 2007
Lenders to New Century Financial,a large subprime lender,cut off its credit lines.
Trading in its shares is suspended by the New York Stock Exchange,
16 March 2007
Subprime lender Accredited Home Lenders to sell,at a heavy discount,$2.7 bil-
lion of loans,The New York Attorney General announces an investigation of sub-
prime lending.
2 April 2007
New Century Financial files for bankruptcy.
24 April 2007
The National Association of Realtors announces that existing home sales fall 8.4%
during March,the greatest drop in 18 years.
Chronology
183
3 May 2007
GMAC,the finance arm of General Motors,reports losses of $1 billion,UBS clos-
es its US subprime business,First comprehensive plan to help homeowners avoid
foreclosures presented in US Senate,
6 June 2007
The Bank of England reduces the overnight bank rate by 25 basis points to 5.5%.
22 June 2007
Bear Stearns injects $3.2 billion into two of its hedge funds hurt by falling CDO
prices,
4 July 2007
UK authorities take action against five brokers selling subprime mortgages,
10 July 2007
All three major credit-ratings agencies announce review of subprime bonds.
13 July 2007
General Electric to sell WMC Mortgage,its subprime lending business,
18 July 2007
US housing starts down 20% from the previous year.
31 July 2007
The two Bear Stearns hedge funds that were under stress file for bankruptcy pro-
tection.
6 August 2007
American Home Mortgage,one of the largest US home-loan providers,files for
bankruptcy,
9 August 2007
BNP Paribas suspends three investment funds hit by subprime crisis,An insurance
company,AIG,warns that mortgage defaults are spreading beyond subprime sec-
tor.
10 August 2007
The ECB provides €61 billion of funds for banks,The Fed said it would provide as
much overnight money,The interest rate on 15-day AAA asset-backed commercial
paper hits 6.14% for a historic high,
13 August 2007
Goldman Sachs to pump $3 billion to rescue a hedge fund,The ECB and central
banks in the United States and Japan continue supplying liquidity to markets,
16 August 2007
Countrywide draws down its $11.5 billion credit line.
184 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
17 August 2007
The Federal Reserve cuts the discount rate to 5.75%.
23 August 2007
Bank of America purchases 16% of Countrywide Financial for $2 billion,Four
large US banks announce coordinated borrowing of $2 billion from the Federal
Reserve¡¯s discount window.
28 August 2007
German bank Sachsen Landesbank is sold to Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg.
The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index for second quarter 2007 is down 3.2%
from a year earlier,the greatest drop in the 17-year history of the index.
31 August 2007
Subprime lender Ameriquest files for bankruptcy.
1¨C3 September 2007
The Federal Reserve¡¯s annual Jackson Hole conference focuses on the link between
housing and monetary policy.
3 September 2007
IKB,a German regional lender,records $1 billion loss due to US subprime market
exposure,
4 September 2007
Bank of China reveals $9 billion in subprime losses.
6 September 2007
The delinquency rate on 1¨C4 family mortgages reaches 5.1% in the US,according
to the Mortgage Bankers Association,
13 September 2007
Global Alpha,a hedge fund managed by Goldman Sachs,reveals that it lost 22%
during August.
14 September 2007
A run on the deposits of British mortgage lender Northern Rock begins.
18 September 2007
The Federal Reserve cuts the discount rate by 50 basis points to 4.75%,This is the
first cut since 2003.
1 October 2007
UBS and Citigroup announce losses of $3.4 billion and $3.1 billion respectively,
9 October 2007
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 14,164,its all-time high.
Chronology 185
10 October 2007
The US government teams up with mortgage servicers and investors to launch the
HOPE NOW alliance,to encourage the voluntary modification of adjustable-rate
mortgages to fixed-rate.
14 October 2007
Citigroup,JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America,with the support of the Treasury
Department,announce a plan to form a Master-Liquidity Enhancement Conduit
(M-LEC) that would purchase asset-backed commercial paper from liquidation SIVs.
15 October 2007
Citigroup and the Japanese bank Nomura announce subprime losses of $5.9 bil-
lion and $621 million,respectively,
16 October 2007
The National Association of Home Builders confidence index hits 19,the lowest
since the series began in 1985.
26 October 2007
Countrywide Financial reports a loss of $1.2 billion for third-quarter 2007,This is
its first loss in 25 years.
30 October 2007
Merrill Lynch announces losses of $7.9 billion and the resignation of the CEO,
Stan O¡¯Neal,
31 October 2007
The Federal Reserve cuts the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 4.5%.
Deutsche Bank reveals a $2.2 billion loss,
1 November 2007
Credit Suisse discloses a $1 billion loss,Fed injects $41 billion.
5 November 2007
Citigroup announces that its $55 billion portfolio of subprime-related investments
has declined in value between $8 billion and $11 billion,The CEO,Charles Prince,
resigns.
8 November 2007
Morgan Stanley and BNP Paribas disclose mortgage losses of $3.7 billion and €197
million,respectively,AIG writes down $2 billion of mortgage investments.
9 November 2007
Wachovia announces $1.7 billion loss,
13 November 2007
Bank of America announces $3 billion subprime loss,
186 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
14 November 2007
Japan¡¯s second largest banking group,Mizuho,reports full-year operating profit
fell 13%,HSBC reports losses of $3.4 billion,
15 November 2007
Barclays reveals $2.7 billion loss,The US House of Representatives passes the
Predatory Lending and Mortgage Protection Act,
16 November 2007
Goldman Sachs forecasts financial losses due to subprime crises at $400 billion.
19 November 2007
The reinsurance company,Swiss Re,to lose $1 billion on insurance of clients hit
by subprime crises,
20 November 2007
Freddie Mac reports a $2 billion loss,
27 November 2007
Freddie Mac and Citigroup raise $6 billion and $7.5 billion of capital respectively.
US house prices record biggest quarterly drop in 21 years,
5 December 2007
The New York Attorney General sends subpoenas to major investment banks to
investigate subprime mortgage securitization.
6 December 2007
Royal Bank of Scotland to write off ¡ê1.25 billion due to subprime crisis,The Bank
of England cuts UK interest rates,
10 December 2007
UBS and Lloyds TSB report $10 billion and ¡ê200m losses due to bad debts in the
US housing market.
11 December 2007
The Federal Reserve lowers the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 4.25%.
Washington Mutual subprime losses to reach $1.6 billion.
12 December 2007
The Federal Reserve announces the creation of the term auction facility (TAF),
which will auction a fixed amount of funds to the banking system,initially set at
$20 billion,The Federal Reserve,the ECB and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) also
announce that they will engage in currency swaps of up to $20 billion to the ECB
and $4 billion to the SNB,The Bank of England and Bank of Canada also
announce that they will increase their liquidity facilities.
14 December 2007
Citigroup takes $49 billion worth of SIV assets back on its balance sheet,
Chronology 187
17 December 2007
Federal Reserve makes $20 billion available to commercial banks.
18 December 2007
The Federal Reserve Bank tightens rules on subprime lending,The ECB lends
European commercial banks $500 billion,The Bank of England makes ¡ê10 billion
available to UK banks,
19 December 2007
As subprime losses reach $9.4 billion,Morgan Stanley sells 9.9% stake in the com-
pany,
21 December 2007
The spread of 15-day AAA asset-backed commercial paper over equivalent duration
AAA non-financial commercial paper hits 173 basis points as banks scramble for
funding through the end of the year,The spread is usually less than 10 basis points.
22 December 2007
The M-LEC plan to rescue struggling SIVs is abandoned by the sponsoring banks.
4 January 2008
US job losses in residential construction and mortgage lending for the year 2007
estimated at 35,000,
9 January 2008
Bear Stearns reveals subprime losses of $1.9 billion,The CEO,James Cayne,steps
down,The World Bank says that world economic growth will slow in 2008 due
to subprime crisis credit crunch,
11 January 2008
Bank of America buys Countrywide for $4 billion after its shares plunge 48%.
Merrill Lynch doubles projection of subprime losses to $15 billion.
15 January 2008
Citigroup reports a $9.8 billion loss for the fourth quarter,including $18 billion
loss in mortgage portfolio.
17 January 2008
Lehman Brothers retires from wholesale mortgage lending and will cut 1,300 jobs.
19 January 2008
Fitch Ratings lowers the rating of Ambac,the second-largest monoline insurer
after MBIA,from AAA to AA,This is the first downgrade of a large monoline.
22 January 2008
In a surprise move between regularly scheduled meetings,the Federal Reserve cuts
the federal funds rate by 75 basis points to 3.50%.
188 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
24 January 2008
The French bank Société Générale announces that it lost €4.9 billion due to the
unauthorized activity of one of its traders,While the bank closed out the trades dur-
ing a holiday weekend in the United States,stockmarkets plunged round the world.
30 January 2008
The Federal Reserve cuts the federal funds rate by 50 basis points to 3.00%.
Regularly scheduled auctions for municipal debt of the state of Nevada and
Georgetown University fail due to lack of bidders and uncertainty about monoline
insurers,The debt issuers are forced to pay a penalty rate.
13 February 2008
President Bush signs the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008,The Act provides approx-
imately $100 billion of tax rebates to be distributed during summer 2008 and $50
billion of investment incentives.
14 February 2008
UBS announces fourth-quarter 2007 loss of CHF12.4 billion ($12 billion),
15 February 2008
Problems in the auction-rate securities market continue to spread; over 1,000 auc-
tions fail this week,Investment banks do not allow investors to withdraw funds
invested in those securities.
28 February 2008
AIG announces fourth-quarter 2007 losses of $5.3 billion due to more than $11
billion of losses on its credit-default swap portfolio.
6 March 2008
The delinquency rate on family mortgages was 5.82% during the fourth quarter of
2007,up 87 basis points from a year earlier,according to MBA¡¯s National Delinquency
Survey.
11 March 2008
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York announces the creation of the term securi-
ties lending facility (TSLF),which lets primary dealers swap AAA-rated securities
for Treasury securities,The Federal Reserve,the ECB and SNB increase the size of
their dollar swap lines to $30 billion and $6 billion respectively.
14 March 2008
The investment firm,Carlyle Capital,defaults on $17 billion of debt,The fund is
leveraged more than 30:1 and invests mostly in agency-backed residential mort-
gage-backed securities (RMBS).
16 March 2008
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York announces the creation of the primary deal-
er credit facility (PDCF),which essentially opens the discount window to primary
dealers,including non-depository institutions.
Chronology 189
17 March 2008
The investment bank Bear Stearns is acquired by JPMorgan Chase for $2 per share.
Bear Stearns stock had been trading at $60 the previous week before a run pushed
it to near insolvency,The Federal Reserve Bank of New York agrees to guarantee
$30 billion of Bear Stearns assets,mostly mortgage-related.
18 March 2008
The Federal Reserve cuts the federal funds rate by 75 basis points to 2.25%.
24 March 2008
JPMorgan Chase raises its bid for Bear Stearns to $10 per share and agrees to
indemnify the Federal Reserve Bank of New York against the first $1 billion of loss-
es on the $30 billion that it guaranteed.
8 April 2008
Washington Mutual,one of the largest US mortgage originators,raises $7 billion
from TPG,a private equity firm,The IMF¡¯s Global Financial Stability estimates that
the total credit losses will be $1 trillion.
15 April 2008
Alpha magazine reports that hedge-fund owner John Paulson was the highest-paid
trader in 2007,His fund,Paulson & Co.,rose more than $20 billion in value dur-
ing the year by shorting the mortgage market.
18 April 2008
Citigroup announces another $12 billion of losses related to subprime mortgages,
leveraged loans,exposure to monoline insurers,auction-rate securities and con-
sumer credit.
21 April 2008
National City Corporation,a large regional US bank,announces a $7 billion cap-
ital infusion from Corsair Capital,a private-equity firm.
22 April 2008
Royal Bank of Scotland announces that it will raise about ¡ê16 billion from
investors by selling assets.
30 April 2008
The Federal Reserve lowers the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 2.0%.
6 May 2008
UBS AG announces CHF11.5 billion ($11.1 billion) loss during first-quarter 2008.
12 May 2008
Monoline insurer MBIA announces a $2.4 billion loss during first-quarter 2008.
190 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
ABX.HE Index,an index produced by Markit that tracks prices on credit-default
swaps on tranches of selected asset-backed securities composed of residential
mortgages.
Alternative-A (or Alt-A),a category of mortgage borrower,generally with FICO
(see below) scores that qualify them for prime rates but that are not eligible for
prime for other reasons,such as lack of income documentation.
Asset-backed security (ABS),a security collateralized by financial assets,such
as mortgages.
Asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP),see Commercial paper.
Auction-rate security,a municipal bond whose interest rate is set at specified inter-
vals,often two weeks,at auction,In early 2008 a large number of auctions failed
due to lack of bidders,causing the municipalities to pay high penalty rates.
Basel II,a revision to the international rules governing bank capital allocation.
Coordinated by the Bank for International Settlements,It was designed to lessen
the amount of regulatory arbitrage that occurred under its predecessor,Basel I.
European banks were supposed to implement Basel II rules by 2008,while US
banks implementation may occur in 2009.
Commercial paper (CP),bonds with maturity of less than 270 days,CP can be
issued by corporations,banks or trusts holding securities,The last is usually
referred to as asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP),ABCP was one of the first
casualties of the crisis,starting to decline rapidly in August 2007 as the SIVs
unwound,
Collateralized debt obligation (CDO),a structured finance product composed
of debt instruments such as corporate and consumer loans,mortgages and bonds.
The cash flows from the underlying debt are paid out to the tranches of the CDO
according to their seniority,CDO issuance averaged $500 billion in 2006 and 2007.
Conduit,a financial entity whose purpose is to buy financial assets from corre-
spondents,repackage them and sell interests in the new securities to other entities.
Glossary
191
Credit-default swap (CDS),a type of insurance against a firm defaulting on its
debt,According to the Bank for International Settlements,the notional amount of
CDS outstanding was $43 trillion as of June 2007.
Discount window,the mechanism through which the Federal Reserve lends
directly to banks,thrifts and other chartered depository institutions,The PDCF
essentially extended the discount window to primary dealers.
Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac,US government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that
enhance the flow of credit to the mortgage market,The GSEs purchase mortgages
from banks and thrifts and either keep the mortgages or package them into RMBS
(see below) and sell them to the secondary market.
FICO score,a numerical rating of the credit history of individuals,developed by
the Fair Isaac Corporation.
LIBOR,London interbank offered rate,the interest rate that banks charge each
other to borrow money,Denominated in various currencies,US dollar LIBOR is
usually tied closely to the federal funds rate but diverged beginning in August
2007 due to a combination of credit and liquidity risk.
Monoline insurer,An insurance company that specializes in insuring the per-
formance of financial instruments,usually mortgage-related,Most offer private
mortgage insurance,which is used to insure payments on mortgages with high
loan-to-value ratios,Many also insure AAA-rated portions of CDOs.
Mortgage-backed security (MBS),a security that is composed of mortgages.
Often separated into MBS backed by residential mortgages (RMBS) and commer-
cial mortgages (CMBS),Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dominated MBS issuance in
the United States until 2004 when private-label MBS,often of subprime mort-
gages,became more prevalent,Payments of interest and principal on the under-
lying mortgages can be paid pro-rata (pass-through MBS) or in a ¡®waterfall¡¯ fash-
ion,with ¡®tranches¡¯ getting paid in order of seniority,
Primary dealer credit facility (PDCF),A new policy introduced by the
Federal Reserve that essentially opens the discount window to primary dealers.
Normally only banks and other depository institutions have access to the discount
window,The PDCF was introduced by the Federal Reserve the same weekend that
Bear Stearns was acquired by JPMorgan Chase.
Residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS),see Mortgage-backed security.
Securitization,the practice of bundling securities into new securities,Used by
financial institutions as a way of moving assets off their balance sheets in order to
lend more,Mortgages are most commonly securitized but other debt instruments
can also be included,In the United States,Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac actively
promote mortgage securitization.
192 The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century
Structured investment vehicle (SIV),a fund that holds long-term securities
(such as mortgages) and funds its investments with commercial paper.
Subprime,borrowers whose poor credit history does not qualify them for prime
interest rates,In the United States,about 20% of mortgage originations totalling
over $1 trillion in 2005 and 2006 were subprime,far above historical levels.
Term auction facility (TAF),an auction held by the Federal Reserve for a set
quantity of money,The TAF was introduced in December 2007 in response to pres-
sures for short-term lending in the money markets,
Term securities lending facility (TSLF),The TSLF is an arrangement by the
Federal Reserve to lend to Treasuries and accept other AAA-rated financial instru-
ments as collateral.
Tranche,a method of apportioning cashflows in a structured finance product,
such as an asset-backed security,Senior tranches are paid principal and interest
first,and junior tranches are paid with whatever cash is left,Senior tranches have
more security and consequently earn lower interest rates than junior tranches.
Several tranches may be rated AAA,The most senior of the AAA tranches is often
called ¡®super-senior¡¯.
Glossary 193