Posts

StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective – Good Intentions, Bad Results: Learning from the Panic of 1826

/in /by

Good Intentions, Bad Results: Learning from the Panic of 1826They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In 1825, to deal with the “Indian Problem,” the US Congress formed a region known as “Indian Country,” lands West of the Mississippi (today Oklahoma). Their intentions were good.

“The removal of the tribes from the territory which they now inhabit would not only shield them from impending ruin, but promote their welfare and happiness,” President James Monroe told Congress on January 27. He went so far as to say that without a defined Indian country “their degradation and extermination will be inevitable.”

It’s heartening to know that at least some of the President’s contemporaries could see through his good intentions. New York County District Attorney Hugh Maxwell and twelve other prominent New Yorkers wrote in a pamphlet published in1825 that “the American Indians, now living upon lands derived from their ancestors and never alienated or surrendered, have a perfect right to the continued and undisturbed possession of these lands,” and the “removal of any nation of Indians from their country by force would be an instance of gross and cruel oppression.”

History was not on Mr. Maxwell’s side, nor with his attempts to reform the financial industry a few years later. His prosecution of the Life & Fire Insurance Company, whose owners Jacob Barker, et al perpetuated a fraud that led to the Panic of 1826, resulted in a hung jury. (Eventually, Mr. Maxwell’s efforts did lead to comprehensive reform, including: financial reporting requirements, accounting standards, and defined roles & responsibilities for directors, according to Professor Eric Hilt in a paper about the Panic of 1826.)

Mr. Maxwell’s rationality was no match for his era’s good intentions. For what lead Life & Fire’s directors to commit fraud in the first place was in part driven by a desire (so they claimed) to extend credit to high-risk borrowers being ignored by traditional banks. When those borrowers started to default en masse, fraud appeared to be the only way to repay their investors, but unfortunately, even that didn’t work.

Why was an insurance company doing a bank’s work? In the 19th century, banking was the most profitably industry in America, and incumbent banks fought hard to protect their profits. To open a new one involved special-act charters and bitter legislative battles. Would-be owners required both political and financial capital, which few had in equal measure.

Enterprising merchants like Mr. Barker started circumventing these laws by forming insurance companies whose charter empowered them to lend their capital. In so doing, they created a new financial product called a post note. A typical post note transaction went as follows: a borrower approached an insurance company and requested a six-month IOU of $1000, minus a discount of say 3%. The borrower would then sell the discounted $970 post note on the money market, also paying a discount to the post note purchaser of say $30, receiving $940 in cash.

After six months, the borrower would repay the insurance company’s IOU of $1000. The insurance company would repay the money market investor’s post note of $970, yielding a $30 profit for both the insurance company and the investor.

While rates and terms varied, it was not unusual for post notes to trade at yields of 2 percent per month or more, compared to banks that were lending at yields of five percent per year, Professor Hilt’s research found. Needless to say, these products were very profitable as long as default rates were low.

But higher yield meant higher risk, since borrowers who sought out post notes did so because they did not qualify for the less expensive credit from traditional banks. Despite their dubious quality, the corporate guaranty by the insurance company created a sense that the investments were safe. This combination of high yield and seemingly low risk sparked a credit boom.

“The judge the lawyer the doctor the clergy the widow the trustee of orphans all fell into the common vortex of investing in these bonds,” Life and Fire Insurance Company director Jacob Barker wrote in a letter in 1827.

Like post notes, what made sub-prime mortgage-backed securities (MBS) so attractive to investors during the boom years was their high yield and perceived low risk. Unlike 1826, where the secondary market was created by the private sector, our government in many ways created the secondary market that gave sub-prime loans both the cash and perceived safety they needed to expand.

This was all done with good intentions. Looking to increase the homeownership rate and “foster affordable housing,” the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) department issued regulations that required 55% of all government sponsored entities (GSEs) to purchase “affordable” loans from banks, either directly or through packaged MBS.

Most of these “affordable” loans were in fact sub-prime, “for persons with blemished or limited credit histories,” and “carry a higher rate of interest than prime loans to compensate for increased credit risk,” according to HUD.gov. In 2009, forty percent of mortgages were sub-prime according to Forbes.com.

By 2007, Fannie Mae and Freddie Max held $227 billion (one in six loans) in nonprime (aka subprime) pools, and approximately $1.6 trillion in low-quality loans altogether, according to Forbes.com and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

“That was a huge, huge mistake,” said Patricia McCoy, who teaches securities law at the University of Connecticut. “That just pumped more capital into a very unregulated market that has turned out to be a disaster.”

Nonetheless, when the crisis hit in the Fall 2008, the financial world seemed to be blind-sided. “It’s a new financial world on the verge of a complete reorganization,” said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Equity Markets in Jersey City, New Jersey.

But was it a new financial world? In many ways, looking back to the Panic of 1826, we see ourselves looking back at us. Both were defined by financial innovations that seemed to defy the natural law of risk and reward, by promising a high yield and low risk. Both crises fooled investors into believing that transferring risk is the same thing as removing it. Both crises were made worse by the good intention that lending money to people who can’t pay it back is good for society. Both crises proved it’s not.

In our time, the implosion of the subprime lending market “has left a scar on the finances of black Americans,” the Washington Post reported in 2012, “that not only wiped out a generation of economic progress but could leave them at a financial disadvantage for decades.” (HUD.gov studies reveal that African-Americans are one-and-a-half times more likely to have a subprime loan than persons in white neighborhoods.)

Like the comprehensive financial reforms made after the 1826 panic, we can be reasonably sure that the numerous reforms issued after our own will fail to avert another crisis. This is because financial regulation cannot address the cause of financial crises that lives in our mirror. As long as there are borrowers who can’t see through good intentions, and take on more debt then they can repay, there will be financial crises.

Real financial reform means living within our means, and abiding by the natural law of risk and reward. With the rising default rate on student loans, the increasing popularity of sub-prime auto loans, I fear that we have not yet learned our lesson. I’m confident we will eventually, but like our predecessors, it may have to be the hard way.

About the Author

Cara WickCara Wick writes about American financial and political history at www.bankersnotes.com. She holds a BA from Williams College and an MBA from the University of Iowa. Cara can be reached at [email protected].

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:10 — 15.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS

StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective – Panic of 1907 vs Great Recession of 2008

/in /by

Panic of 1907 vs Great Recession of 2008This year, 2013, marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve System, and central bankers are taking a historical perspective. That is “good advice in general,” Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told attendees at the Fourteenth Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference, in Washington, D.C earlier this month.

“An appreciation of the parallels between recent and historical events greatly influenced how I and many of my colleagues around the world responded to the crisis,” Mr. Bernanke said.

He went on to describe the similarities between the banking crisis of 1907 – the one that inspired the formation of the Federal Reserve – and the more recent 2008 financial crisis.

Both fit the archetype of a classic financial panic, Bernanke said. Both crises started in an economy in recession and both suffered from a sudden lack of liquidity.

In 1907, money was tight in part due to the rebuilding of San Francisco. After the Bank of England raised its discount rate, causing more gold to flow out of the US, New York was left with unusually low monetary reserves just as it entered the cash-intensive harvest season, explained Ellis Tallman and Jon Moen in a 1990 article about the Panic in the Atlanta Fed’s Economic Review.

In the more recent crises, Bernanke explained, liquidity started to dry up when housing prices declined, and subprime mortgage defaults rose in 2007. As the underwriting weaknesses of subprime portfolios became known, banks stopped lending to each other, paralyzing credit markets. By 2008, losses from these portfolios were causing banks to fail.

In both crises, a tinder-dry credit environment made them vulnerable to sparks. In 1907, the fire started when F. Augustus Heinze and C.F. Morse tried and failed to corner the stock of the United Copper Company. The investigation into the scam revealed an intricate web of corrupt bankers and brokers. (Heinze was president of Mercantile National Bank, and Morse served on seven New York City bank boards.) When the president of the second largest trust in the country was implicated in the copper cornering con, depositors started a run on Knickerbocker Trust.

Without a central bank, the availability of liquidity depended on the discretion of firms and private individuals, Bernanke explained. The Lehman Brothers moment of 1907 came when New York’s financiers, led by J.P. Morgan, were unable to value the trusts, and refused to ‘bail out’ Knickerbocker. (Unregulated and a relatively new innovation, trusts were the ‘toxic assets‘ of the 1907 crises. Trusts, however, were financed by consumer deposits, while the toxic asset of 2008 were securities contracts held by investment banks.)

Their refusal prevented other institutions from offering aid, and depositors started a massive run on banks and trusts, exacerbating the liquidity crises. (In 2008 a loss of confidence in the banking system did not turn into a consumer run on banks primarily because of FDIC deposit insurance.)

Morgan et al realized that a failure of the trusts could spread to the entire financial system, and they ultimately convinced John D. Rockefeller and others to pony up enough cash to stabilize the markets.

Similarly, American lawmakers eventually agreed that failure of the nation’s largest financial institutions was not an option, and passed the $700 billion Trouble Asset Relief Program in October 2008 (reduced to $475 billion by the Dodd-Frank Act). This program was designed “to strengthen market stability, improve the strength of financial institutions, and enhance market liquidity,” according to the Federal Reserve.

A major difference between the two crises, that I can see, is the popular perception of these liquidity liberators. In 1907, Senator Nelson Aldrich called the actions of JP Morgan and crew heroic. In his arguments for centralized banking reprinted in the New York Tribune, he warned that without it “men may not be found in another emergency with the patriotism, courage and capacity of those who in this crisis rendered such inconspicuous and invaluable service to the financial interests of this country.”

But in the 2008 crisis, when taxpayers rendered this very same “invaluable service,” people stormed the streets in protest. From the tea party conservative to the Wall Street occupier, hatred of the bailouts was met with bipartisan vehemence.

So why is it that when a handful of wealthy individuals restore liquidity to a broken system they are courageous patriots, but when it’s taxpayer’s, lawmakers are voted out of office? Perhaps the vehemence comes from how the money was used. In 1907, it was to save consumer’s retail deposits, in 2008 corporate wholesale funds.

As Bernanke explains in his speech, seeking to stem the panic in wholesale funding markets, in 2008 the Fed “extended its lender-of-last-resort facilities to support nonbank institutions such as investment banks.” This had little direct impact on consumers. As Fed governor Daniel Tarullo recently said “the savings of most U.S. households are generally not directly at risk in short-term wholesale funding arrangements.”

In 1907, on the other hand, ending bank runs meant “widows on the corner” could cash their checks, shop-owners could feed their families.

Another problem with the 2008 solution, from the popular perspective, was the moral hazard it created.

Senator Aldrich worried that courageous individuals might be hard to find in a financial emergency, and it appears he was right to worry. Senior executives in 2008 were not interested in rendering an inconspicuous service to the financial interests of the country. They didn’t even want to forego their bonuses. But in trying to account for the rarity of courage, lawmakers in 1913 may have created a system that prevents it from emerging.

A July 2013 Congressional research report articulates a challenge for today’s central bankers. “Although ‘too big to fail’ (TBTF) has been a perennial policy issue, it was highlighted by the near-collapse of several large financial firms in 2008… If a TBTF firm believes that the government will protect them from losses, they have less incentive to monitor the firm’s riskiness because they are shielded from the negative consequences of those risks.”

In 1907, the wealthy elite pooled their resources to prevent the failure of banks and trusts, saving millions in consumer deposits. In so doing they bore the brunt of the consequences of their risks, and Americans considered them heroes for it.

About the Author

Cara WickCara Wick writes about American financial and political history at www.bankersnotes.com. She holds a BA from Williams College and an MBA from the University of Iowa. Cara can be reached at [email protected].

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:14 — 14.3MB)

Subscribe: RSS

StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective – The Government has Created a Monster

/in /by

The Government Has Created a MonsterThe Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has served as an integral part of the nation’s financial system since its inception in 1933. Our trust in this institution is so strong that it is rare to find someone with a checking account in a bank that lacks an FDIC placard in the window. Nonetheless, the failure and resolution of Texas-based First RepublicBank, reminds us that the hand of government can harm as well as help when it wrestles the invisible hand of the market.

More than an insurer of accounts up to $250,000, the FDIC also regulates financial institutions and serves as a receiver in bankruptcy. The latter role was codified in the Federal Deposit Insurance Act of 1950, which provided the FDIC “additional powers to both expedite the liquidation process for banks and thrifts in order to maintain confidence in the nation’s banking system,” the FDIC’s Resolution Handbook explains.

RepublicBank merged with InterFirst Corporation in June 1986, and formed First RepublicBank Corporation, the largest bank holding company in the Southwest at the time. Then FDIC Chairman William Seidman expressed concern about the merger of two weak banks, “however, without the merger, both banks were more likely to fail, and they would cost even more [apart] than if they failed together,” Seidman recalled in his memoir Full Faith and Credit1.

Seidman’s concerns were warranted. With both banks highly concentrated in the weak Texas real estate market, the deal ended up helping neither bank. As the bank’s losses mounted, depositors fled. Just nine months after the merger was completed, the FDIC had to step in to resolve the failing institution, and at $3.9 billion, it was the most costly bank failure in FDIC history.

Though much can be blamed on the poor condition of the bank’s assets, some of the government’s deal-making “proved to have some room for improvement,” according to the FDIC’s review2.

Included in the resolution was a servicing agreement between the FDIC and NCNB Corporation of Charlotte, NC, the acquiring bank of First Republic’s assets, which required the FDIC to cover costs associated with managing the troubled asset pool. This agreement turned out to be a major source of income for NCNB, and gave them an incentive to hold on to the assets rather than liquidate when the market strengthened. All told, the FDIC paid $1.9 billion in management fees to NCNB.

Another issue was taxes. The IRS had negotiated with NCNB (and no other bidders) $700 million in tax savings with the acquisition. A letter from the IRS allowed the acquirer to treat the deal as a “tax-free reorganization and to carry forward losses from the failed banks to offset future income,” according to the FDIC’s analysis3. These tax savings allowed NCNB to compete aggressively in the Texas market, offering above-market deposit rates and below-market loan rates.

“The government has created a monster,” Chris Williston, the president of the Texas Independent Bankers Association, told American Banker in 19904.

In stepping up when banks fail, the FDIC provides “an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1933. But the example of First RepublicBank reminds us that infusing government into any market-based transactions can change the outcome for better and for worse. In restoring public confidence, the more invisible our government can be, perhaps the better.

About the Author

Cara WickCara Wick writes about American financial and political history at www.bankersnotes.com. She holds a BA from Williams College and an MBA from the University of Iowa. Cara can be reached at [email protected].

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:51 — 5.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS


References

  1. Full Faith and Credit, William Seidman, p. 147
  2. Managing the Crises, p. 612
  3. ibid., p. 596
  4. ibid., p. 605