Bank capital requirements are the focus of contentious and heated debates. Since they limit banks’ ability to take on risk and leverage, owners and managers almost always argue for lowering them. To reduce the likelihood of using public funds for further bailouts, both libertarians and progressives argue strenuously that they should be higher. Focusing on the balance between the social benefits of a more resilient financial system and the social costs of curtailing liquidity and loan provision, academicians usually conclude that current levels are too low. So, with well-financed banks and their lobbyists on one side, and a cohort of advocates armed with academic research on the other, regulators are caught in the middle. To whom should they listen?

The answer to this question is an empirical one, so it is important to base any conclusions on a fair and balanced reading of the evidence. Regular readers of this blog will be unsurprised that we continue to maintain that bank capital requirements should be higher than they were even before the Federal Reserve started began its stealth campaign to relax them several years ago. If we were to pick a number, we would start with a leverage ratio—the ratio of common equity to total assets (including off-balance sheet exposures)—that is in the range of 10 to 15 percent, and possibly higher. The risk-weighted equivalent would be about twice as high in the United States (or three times as high in Europe). (The exact numbers depend on the intricacies of accounting standards.) The one thing we would not be arguing for is a further erosion of capital requirements from their current level.

We start with a short reminder about why we need capital requirements in the first place….

On the Resilience of Large U.S. banks

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007-09, policymakers were intent on making the financial system able to weather an extremely severe storm. The authorities had two complementary goals: increase the financial system’s reliance on equity financing and enhance the ability of institutions to recapitalize themselves after a shock. Well, COVID-19 is upon us, and the shock looks to be bigger than the most adverse scenarios in supervisory stress tests.

Our view is that we have made limited progress in promoting resilience. In a recent post, we emphasized how COVID-19 economic disruptions are eroding banks’ capital buffers (that already were slim in parts of Asia and Europe). As the full impact economic and financial impact of COVID 19 becomes apparent, we suspect that some banks will need a form of recapitalization. They were not able to do this in 2008-09 on their own. Will this time be different …?

E Pluribus Unum: single vs. multiple point of entry resolution

Addressing the calamity posed by the failure of large, global financial intermediaries has been high on the post-crisis regulatory reform agenda. When Lehman Brothers―a $600 billion entity―failed, it took heroic efforts by the world’s central bankers to prevent a financial meltdown. The lesson is that a robust resolution regime is a critical element of a resilient financial system.

Experts have been hard at work implementing a new mechanism so that the largest banks can continue operation, or be wound down in an orderly fashion, without resorting to taxpayer solvency support and without putting other parts of the financial system in danger. To enhance market discipline, the shareholders that own an entity and the bondholders that lent to it must face the consequences of poor performance.

How can we ensure that healthy operating subsidiaries of G-SIBs continue to serve their customers even during resolution? Authorities have proposed a solution that takes two forms: “single point of entry (SPOE)” and “multiple point of entry (MPOE).” A key difference between these two resolution methods is that the former allows for cross-subsidiary sharing of loss-absorbing capital and cross-jurisdictional transfers during resolution, while the latter does not. The purpose of this post is to describe SPOE and MPOE. We highlight both the relative efficiency of SPOE and the requirements for its sustainability: namely, adequate shared resources, an appropriate legal framework and a credible commitment among national resolution authorities to cooperate….

Ending Too Big to Fail: Resolution Edition

The failure of Lehman on September 15, 2008, signaled the most intense phase of the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, fueling a run on a broad array of intermediaries. Following Congress’ approval of TARP funding that was used mostly to recapitalize U.S. financial firms, the mantra of U.S. regulators became “…we will not pull a Lehman” (Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, page 380). Thereafter, to ensure that another large institution did not fail, policymakers chose bailouts to contain the crisis. As a result, today we still have intermediaries that are too big to fail.

The autumn 2008 experience convinced many observers of the need for a robust resolution regime in which financial behemoths could be re-organized quickly without risk of contagion or crisis. The question was, and remains, how to do it. Dodd-Frank provided a two-pronged answer: the FDIC would first rely on the bankruptcy code (Title I), and second, on a resolution temporarily funded (if necessary) by government resources (Title II). The second piece is commonly known as Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA), which is funded by the Orderly Liquidation Fund (OLF).

In response to dissatisfaction with parts of this solution, Congress and the President are working on refinements. Last month, the House passed a bipartisan revision of the bankruptcy code (Financial Institutions Bankruptcy Act, or FIBA) that would expedite the resolution of adequately structured intermediaries. And, on April 21, President Trump ordered a Treasury review of OLA, expressing concern that the OLF authorization to use government funds “may encourage excessive risk taking by creditors, counterparties, and shareholders of financial companies.”

This post considers FIBA and how it fits in with the existing Dodd-Frank resolution mechanism....

Regulating Wall Street: The Financial CHOICE Act and Systemic Risk

With the shift in power in Washington, among other things, the people newly in charge are taking aim at financial sector regulation. High on their agenda is repeal of much of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the most far-reaching financial regulatory reform since the 1930s. The prime objective of Dodd-Frank is to prevent a wholesale collapse of financial intermediation and the widespread damage that comes with it. That is, the new regulatory framework seeks to reduce systemic risk, by which we mean that it lowers the likelihood that the financial system will become undercapitalized and vulnerable in a manner that threatens the economy as a whole.

The Financial CHOICE Act proposed last year by the House Financial Services Committee is the most prominent proposal to ease various regulatory burdens imposed by Dodd-Frank. The CHOICE Act is complex, containing provisions that would alter many aspects of Dodd-Frank, including capital requirements, stress tests, resolution mechanisms, and more. This month, more than a dozen faculty of the NYU Stern School of Business (including one of us) and the NYU School of Law published a comprehensive study contrasting the differences between the CHOICE Act and Dodd-Frank.

Regulating Wall Street: CHOICE Act vs. Dodd-Frank considers the impact both on financial safety and on efficiency. In some cases, the CHOICE Act would slash inefficient regulation in a manner that would not foster systemic risk. At the same time, the book highlights the key flaw of the CHOICE Act—the failure to address systemic risk properly....

An Open Letter to Congressman Patrick McHenry

Dear Vice Chair McHenry,

We find your January 31 letter to Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen both misleading and misguided.

It is in the best interest of U.S. citizens and our financial system that the Federal Reserve (and all the other U.S. regulators) continue to participate actively in international financial-standard-setting bodies. The Congress has many opportunities to hold the Fed accountable for its regulatory actions, which are very transparent. We hope that the new U.S. Administration will support the Fed’s efforts to promote a safe and efficient global financial system.

Your letter is filled with false assumptions and assertions....

Ending Too Big to Fail

More than six years after the Dodd-Frank Act passed in July 2010, the controversy over how to end “too big to fail” (TBTF) remains a key focus of financial reform. Indeed, TBTF—which led to the troubling bailouts of financial behemoths in the crisis of 2007-2009—is still one of the biggest challenges in reducing the probability and severity of financial crises. By focusing on the largest, most complex, most interconnected financial intermediaries, Dodd-Frank gave officials a range of crisis prevention and management tools. These include the power to designate specific institutions as systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs), a broadening of Fed supervision, the authority to impose stress tests and living wills, and (with the FDIC’s “Orderly Liquidation Authority”) the ability to facilitate the resolution of a troubled SIFI. But, while Dodd-Frank has likely made the U.S. financial system safer than it was, it does not go far enough in reducing the risk of financial crises or in ensuring credibility of the resolution mechanism (see our earlier commentary here, here and here). It also is exceedingly complex.

Against this background, we welcome the work of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and their recently announced Minneapolis Plan to End Too Big to Fail (the Plan). While the Plan raises issues that require further consideration—including the potential for regulatory arbitrage and the calibration of the tools on which it relies—it is straightforward, based on sound principles, and focuses on cost-effective tools. In this sense, the Plan represents a big step forward...

Global Finance Requires More Global Cooperation

“We have listened to the wisdom of an old Russian maxim, doveryai, no proveryai—trust, but verify.” President Ronald Reagan at the signing of the INF Treaty, December 8, 1987.

In July 2010, central bank governors and supervisors from the 28 jurisdictions that make up the Basel Committee membership were hammering out the agreement on new capital and liquidity requirements now known as Basel III. There was a large sticking point. Some members were standing firm on their desire to have higher capital requirements. Others felt that this would make credit more expensive and less plentiful.

Had agreement not been reached, those insisting on more capital might have said: “Go ahead, be permissive. But if you let your banks operate with low levels of capital, we’ll restrict our banks from doing business with them.” Fortunately, it didn’t come to that....

Bank resilience: yet another missed opportunity

Along with enormous misery, the financial crisis brought an opportunity for long-needed reform. At the top of the list was the clear need for more bank capital. To ensure resilience of the financial system, and protect the public purse, banks’ owners had to have much more skin in the game. That is, potential losses to equity holders had to go way up.

Unfortunately, the 2010 Basel III agreement missed this rare opportunity to make the financial system safe. And now, with the publication of the standards for what has come to be known as total loss-absorbing capacity (TLAC), the disappointment continues to grow. To understand why, we need to step back and address the big question for bank capital: how much is enough...?

The right direction

The recent international agreement to improve the loss-absorbing capacity of globally active banks is an important move in the right direction. But financial regulators should go significantly further to make these banks and the global financial system resilient...

Commentary

Money, Banking, and Financial Markets