WASHINGTON: The six very large US bank holding companies — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — share a pressing intellectual problem: they need to explain why they should be allowed to continue with their dangerous business model. So far, their justifications have been weak, and the latest analysis on this topic from Goldman Sachs may even help make the case for breaking up the financial institutions to make them safer.
Legislative proposals from two senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Republican David Vitter of Louisiana, have grabbed attention and could move the consensus against modern megabanks. Under intense pressure from Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S Bernanke conceded recently that the US still has a problem with financial institutions that are seen as 'too big to fail'.
Pressed by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, among others, Attorney General Eric Holder is sticking to his story that these companies are too big to prosecute. Cyprus offers another vivid reminder of what happens when banks become too big to save.
GOLDMAN REPORT
In this context, it is no surprise to see the financial sector wheel out its own intellectual big guns. A frisson no doubt rippled through the financial-lobbying community last week with the release of a report from Goldman Sachs's equity research team, 'Brown-Vitter bill: The impact of potential new capital rules'. This is the A-team at bat, presumably with clearance from the highest levels of management. Yet, instead of providing any kind of rebuttal to the proposals in Brown-Vitter, the report may strengthen the case for breaking up the six megabanks, while also requiring that they and any successors protect themselves with more equity relative to levels of debt. Read the report with five main points in mind.
First, notice the lack of sophistication about bank capital itself. The authors write of banks being required to "hold" capital, as if it were on the asset side of the balance sheet.
They go on to construct a mechanistic link that implies "holding" capital prevents lending. Banks don't hold capital. The proposals are concerned with the liability side of the balance sheet — specifically, the extent to which banks fund themselves with debt relative to equity (a synonym for capital in this context). Higher capital requirements push companies to increase their relative reliance on equity funding, thus increasing their ability to absorb losses without becoming distressed or failing. If the transition is properly handled, there is no reason that more equity funding would translate into lower lending.
Second, the Goldman analysts seem completely unaware of the recent book by Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig, 'The Bankers' New Clothes', in which the authors debunk the way many bank representatives (including the authors of the Goldman Sachs note) look at issues around capital. More equity relative to debt on a bank's balance sheet means that equity and debt become safer: the bigger buffer against losses helps both.
