The Great Debate

Apparently, the U.S. economy is being held back by massive uncertainty over new regulation, future taxation and the deficit and how it will be handled, a state so frightening and confusing that investors won’t invest, businesses won’t hire and nervous consumers have taken to their beds.

That, at least, is the account of Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher, who, in a speech last week, blamed fear of the arbitrary exercise of power by those in government for slowing the economy and putting those who make, employ and spend in a “defensive crouch.”

“For some time now in internal discussions with my colleagues at the Fed, I have ascribed the economy’s slow growth pathology to what I call ‘random refereeing’ — the current predilection of government to rewrite the rules in the middle of the game of recovery,” Fisher told business leaders in San Antonio.

“Businesses and consumers are being confronted with so many potential changes in the taxes and regulations that govern their behavior that they are uncertain about how to proceed downfield. Awaiting clearer signals from the referees that are the nation’s fiscal authorities and regulators, they have gone into a defensive crouch.”

Saying that businesses and consumers aren’t spending and investing because they are worried about uncertain new regulations and taxes is like saying a man standing on the side of the road next to his wrecked car has stopped driving because his insurance premium is about to go up.

At a time when public spending and deficits are ballooning on both sides of the Atlantic, taxes are rising and governments are enacting far-reaching reforms to financial regulation, healthcare and carbon emissions, it might seem strange to talk about the withering away of the state as an economic and industry regulator.

The past year has seen thousand-page bills on healthcare and banking reform and the greatest-ever increase in government spending outside wartime, prompting small-government conservatives to complain bitterly about over-reaching by the Obama administration and the resulting threat to individual freedom, enterprise and wealth creation.

Advocates for U.S. banks complain heightened capital requirements and compulsory clearing of derivatives will hamper their ability to extend credit and raise costs for customers. In the United Kingdom, retailers have fought a high-profile campaign against higher payroll taxes. Everywhere businesses groan about the burden of complying with an inexorably growing list of government regulations.

– By Rob Nichols is president & COO of the Financial Services Forum. The views expressed are his own. —

Reform of our financial supervisory framework is a top priority for the members of the Financial Services Forum, and should be for our nation. In addition to protecting investors, consumers, and shareholders, bipartisan financial regulatory reform will bring much needed certainty to our capital and credit markets and help to fuel our economy and create jobs.

To maintain a position of financial and economic leadership, the United States needs a 21st century framework of financial supervision that protects the interests of depositors, investors, and consumers, and policy holders; ensures the safety and soundness of financial institutions; ensures financial system stability; and ensures an effective and competitive financial marketplace to fuel economic growth and job creation.  Stated another way, financial reform must minimize the chances of another fire, while providing the means for effectively fighting another crisis should it occur.

Wall Street’s famed army of lobbyists does not seem to have had much success pushing back on the regulatory overhaul bills now being considered by the U.S. Congress.

The Street remains perilously isolated in Washington, deserted even by its normal friends. As a result it has little influence over the course of bills that will have a significant impact reshaping the industry over the next few years and risks being steamrollered.

Isolation is the result of a basic miscalculation about how angry voters are about the financial crisis and its aftermath in terms of lost jobs and income.

– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –

President Barack Obama’s proposed curbs on bank size and proprietary risk-taking will be criticised for being vague, hard to implement, and focusing on issues that were only part of the cause of the recent crisis.

But the president should ignore self-interested counsels of perfection from the industry that aim to preserve the status quo. The plan is good politics, and good policy.
On the political front, the plan is a belated attempt to reposition the administration and congressional Democrats. It aims to channel the popular revolt that washed away Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia last autumn and now in Massachusetts.

A year after Lehman Brothers collapsed, policymakers are still getting to grips with the key question raised by the Wall Street firm's fall: how to ensure that the failure of a large bank does not jeopardise the entire financial system.

After much debate, politicians and central bankers are warming to the idea that banks should make preparations for their own failure. This plan -- memorably dubbed a "living will" by Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England -- would allow regulators to wind down even large, cross-border institutions without putting public money at risk.

Alistair Darling, Britain's chancellor, wants to introduce legislation this autumn to force banks to draw up living wills. Such plans have drawn predictable squeals from bank executives, who claim the idea is hard to implement for large cross-border groups. They have a point. Nevertheless, bankers should embrace the idea, for the simple reason that it is better than any of the alternatives.

The Obama administration's plan for reining in derivatives leaves unchecked one of Wall Street's dirty little secrets: the ability of a derivatives dealer to redeploy cash collateral that gets posted by one of its trading partners.

On Wall Street, this practice of taking collateral and reusing it is called rehypothecation. In essence, it's a form of free money for derivatives dealers to use as they please -- even to repost it as collateral to finance their parent company's own borrowings.

And we're talking big bucks. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association recently reported that derivatives dealers have taken in $4 trillion in collateral from their trading partners. That's an 86 percent increase over the $2.1 trillion in cash collateral those same dealers reported having on their books in early 2008.

If it's not a risk to the financial system, let it fail.

That's the message from the government's reluctance to swoop in and bail out one of the nation's biggest commercial lenders, CIT Group Inc, as it struggles to stay afloat. But even though CIT doesn't have the firepower to take down the global financial system, its failure would certainly be felt by some of the struggling small businesses that rely on its financing.

CIT is negotiating with its regulators to find a solution to its near-term liquidity problems, but speculation that it will file for bankruptcy has intensified after the Wall Street Journal reported that it was preparing for a possible filing.

Not that you can blame the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and the tough-minded Sheila Bair for thinking twice about supporting a junk-rated lender that has already sucked in more than $2 billion of government funds.

The big winner in the Obama administration's financial regulatory reform package is the beaten-up hedge fund industry.

Hedge funds get a particularly "light touch'' when it comes to government oversight in the Obama plan. Essentially, the administration is calling for a reinstatment of a Securities and Exchange Commisison rules that requires managers to register with the agency as investment advisors.  The rule was overturned by the federal courts, but many large hedge funds remained registered with the SEC--even though they weren't required to do so.

The registration requirement would give the SEC the authority to conduct periodic inspections and require hedge funds to report information on trading positions. But the information reported by the hedge fund would remain confidential and not shared with the general public.

– James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

It’s not exactly a wake, but participants at this year’s World Economic Forum have witnessed many of their most cherished beliefs being challenged, upended and sometimes ground in the mud.

Think of it as the “Davos Consensus,” a loose alignment of principles that held sway in this Swiss mountain resort and in large parts of the world over the past decade.