MacroScope

The problem of a “democratic deficit” that might arise from the process of European integration has always been high on policymakers’ minds. The term even has its own Wikipedia entry.

As Cypriots waited patiently in line for banks to reopen after being shuttered for two weeks, the issue was brought to light with particular clarity, since the country’s bailout is widely seen as being imposed on it by richer, more powerful states, particularly Germany.

Luxembourg has accused the Germans of trying to impose “hegemony” on the euro zone.  The country, whose banking system, like Cyprus’, is very large relative to the economy’s tiny size, fears that similarly harsh treatment could be imposed on its depositors.

Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, says the broader point about the need for popular buy-in of economic policies is a crucial one:

Cyprus 2.0 was constructed in a way that allows an end-run around parliament. This is a shame and ultimately counter-productive. The lack of democratic legitimacy means that it will always taste like foreign imposition. It means that parliament will not take ownership for the program. It also shows that European officials to be still tone deaf, seemingly failing to realize monetary union is an elitist project and without strong public support is vulnerable to various populist movements from both the right and left.

The Cypriot saga has thrown the spotlight on Slovenia, which is also a small euro zone country struggling with an over-burdened banking sector.

Slovenia’s mostly state-owned banks are nursing some 7 billion euros of bad loans, equal to about 20 percent of GDP, underpinning persistent speculation that the country might have to follow other vulnerable euro zone countries in seeking a bailout.

According to Standard Bank’s head of emerging market research Tim Ash:

The latest crisis in the euro zone, this time in Cyprus, continues to raise questions as to possible contagion effects throughout the region, and in particular which economies could be next.

Breaking with previous EU practice that depositors’ savings are sacrosanct, Cyprus and international lenders agreed at the weekend that savers would take a hit in return for the offer of 10 billion euros in aid.

Cypriot ministers are now scrambling to revise a plan to seize money from bank deposits before a parliamentary vote on Tuesday that will either secure the island’s financial rescue or threaten its default.

Whatever the final result, analysts say the genie is out of the bottle and the mere consideration of making savers pay for bailouts sets a dangerous precedent for the euro zone.

In the wake of a historic housing crisis that has just recently begun showing signs of a turnaround, foreclosure counseling services are coming under strain. The foreclosure mess may be over for big banks, which recently settled with regulators for $8.5 billion.

Not so for homeowners, who continue to face a bureaucratic morass in dealing with lenders and servicers. According to a new report from the Philadelphia Fed, the city of Philadelphia’s already weak infrastructure for dealing with the fallout from the foreclosure crisis is fraying at the edges.

The report’s conclusion:

Foreclosure counseling in Philadelphia is in high demand, but the city’s housing counseling agencies have limited resources with which to meet that need. There is a high degree of reliance on public funding for operations, which is particularly problematic in the current environment of increased concern over budget deficits and public debt. Counselors are being asked to provide services to numerous clients, and agencies have to meet multiple sets of requirements to access and to maintain funding from the primary funding sources. In recent years, these pressures have led to a reduction in the number of agencies offering such counseling in Philadelphia and may continue that trend without new sources of funding to bolster service provision.

Not everyone agrees that using high-speed machines to trade stocks in less time than it takes the average person to blink is a bad thing, but the people who do might be heartened by the letter a congressman sent the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has waged a decades-long struggle against computerized trading sent the SEC a hint: The power to curb high-frequency trading has been within its grasp all along.

In his letter, Markey described a law he co-sponsored in 1989 to increase the agency’s power to regulate computerized trading, a precursor to HFT that employed computer programs to make trading decisions without the participation of conscious humans. The law lets the SEC “limit practices which result in extraordinary levels of volatility,” according to Markey’s citation.

Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever before. But top regulators tell us not to worry. They say the problem has been diminished by financial reforms that give the authorities enhanced powers to wind down large financial institutions. Moreover, supervisors say, the new rules discourage firms from getting too large in the first place by forcing them to raise more equity than they had prior to the financial meltdown of 2007-2008.

New York Fed President and former Goldman Sachs partner William Dudley said in a recent speech:

There has already been considerable progress in forcing firms to bolster their capital and liquidity resources. On the capital side, consistent with the Dodd-Frank Act, Basel III significantly raises the quantity and quality of capital required of internationally active bank holding companies. This ensures that the firm’s shareholders will bear all the firm’s losses across a much wider range of scenarios than before. This should strengthen market discipline. Meanwhile, to the extent that some of the specific activities that generate significant externalities are now subject to higher capital charges, this should cause banks to alter their business activities in ways that reduce both the likelihood and social cost of their failure.

It was kind of a big deal coming from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s influential president William Dudley. The former Goldman Sachs partner and chief economist has offered a fig leaf to those who say the problem of banks considered too-big-to-fail must be dealt with more aggressively. Some regional Fed presidents have advocated breaking up these institutions. But Dudley and other powerful figures at the central bank have maintained recent financial reforms have already laid the groundwork for resolving the issue.

At a gathering of financial executives in New York last week, Dudley said he prefers the existing approach of making it costlier for firms to become big in the first place. Still, he left open the possibility of tackling the mega-bank problem more directly:

Should society tolerate a financial system in which certain financial institutions are deemed to be too big to fail? And, if not, then what should we do about it?

Here’s a snapshot of FDR & Co. in 1933 as they signed Glass-Steagall, which separated the financial sector into safer, deposit-taking commercial banks and risk-taking investment banks – Wall Street.

And here’s a photo of Bill Clinton & Co. repealing Glass-Steagall in 1999, with the passage of the Graham-Leach-Bliley act known as the Financial Services Modernization Act. 

Regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents who oppose quantitative easing have made little way in convincing the central bank’s dovish core. Apparently, not so on the cause célèbre of policymakers like Richard Fisher at the Dallas Fed, who have called for too big to fail banks to be broken up.

In a speech this week, Fed board governor and regulation czar Daniel Tarullo stopped short of calling for outright break-ups. But he did take the unprecedented step of backing size limitations on banks that would be linked to overall U.S. economic output.

In his own words:

In these circumstances, however, with the potentially important consequences of such an upper bound and of the need to balance different interests and social goals, it would be most appropriate for Congress to legislate on the subject. If it chooses to do so, there would be merit in its adopting a simpler policy instrument, rather than relying on indirect, incomplete policy measures such as administrative calculation of potentially complex financial stability footprints.

Mounting speculation that Spain is prepping for a bailout begs the question – what happens to Italy?

Sources told Reuters Spain is considering freezing pensions and speeding up a planned rise in the retirement age as it races to cut spending and meet conditions of an expected international sovereign aid package.

Markets took this to mean it was preparing the ground for eventually asking for help. According to Lyn Graham-Taylor, fixed income strategist at Rabobank: