Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.
Banks will likely have too much cash by 2019 as a result of the Basel III global banking rules, UBS AG Chief Executive Oswald Grübel said Thursday. "In the next 10 years, at the end of 2019, we will have overly liquid, overcapitalized banks," he said, addressing a business audience at a conference. "However this also means we won't have a lot of growth." Mr. Grübel was discussing changes in the global balance of power and what the possible consequences would be. The CEO has said that investment banking could shift to the U.S. and Asia if stricter capital requirements are enforced in the U.K. and Switzerland. The basic economic tenet, however, remains that "power goes where the money is," he said.
This is consistent with the fallacy that the banks are basically solvent and able and ready to extend credit if only these darn regulators would get out of the way. As James Galbraith has argued, the problem is said to be no more serious than some clogged plumbing. A bit of Draino in the form of government handouts and guarantees should be sufficient to get credit flowing again. Most major banks are not insolvent, this story goes, but rather have a temporary liquidity problem induced by malfunctioning financial markets. Time will allow market mechanisms to restore the true, higher value of "legacy" assets. Once the banks are healthy, the economy will recover.
Nonsense. Private debt loads remain too high, income and employment continue to fall, and delinquencies and foreclosures continue to rise. Assets are overvalued even at current depressed prices. Many financial institutions (probably including most of the big ones) are hopelessly insolvent, holding mountains of toxic waste that will never be worth anything.
So why are we busy implementing policies that simply maintain a credit-based economy? All around the world, policymakers continue to foster the fiction that all we have a temporary illiquidity problem, not a problem of excessive leverage, excessive debt, and a legacy of assets that were vastly overvalued based on economic scenarios that had no chance of coming to fruition. Given the inappropriate premises under which policymakers in the U.S., the U.K., and the euro zone have dealt with the leverage of financial institutions, it's obvious that problems will continue to languish if the administration does not change its course of action. This will heavily constrain the global economy's capacity to recover and will lead to multiple Japanese style "lost decades" around the globe.
The whole boom of the last 25 years was predicated on financial deregulation, massive fraud, and a huge build up of private debt as a consequence of inadequate fiscal policy to generate full employment and rising incomes. Growth was based on household borrowing and the continuation of negative saving trends (that is, household deficit spending). A good place to start recovery efforts, therefore, would be to change this method of economic growth by promoting employment, rather than capitulating to the siren songs of the bankers whose recklessness got us into this mess.
In a much saner world, we would be in the midst of a government-led investment push, much like the Space Race or the Manhattan Project, to drive new energy technologies forward by scaling up production and innovation, both apt to lower unit cost points. There would also be a concerted effort to establish the new infrastructure required. (After all, highways were constructed in part for national defense purposes, and railroads and canals had their share of public subsidization.) But with the ease of capture so visible, no such effort led by the government could be trusted enough to be supported, especially by a citizenry that has become one of fragmented (and anxious) consumers. Deficit austerians in government fail to understand that a budget deficit is essential for stable economic growth if the contribution of net exports (the difference between exports and imports) is not strong enough to sustain domestic demand while the private domestic sector is trying to save.
We need to put an end to these ridiculous policy responses. We not only require substantially increased supervision and regulation of the financial sector, but must also put a stop to the practices that brought on the crisis in the first place. If left alone to deal with the current problems, market mechanisms will push management and owners of insolvent institutions to ramp up losses and engage in yet more fraudulent accounting, leading to an even bigger crash down the road.
We cannot just be negative.
There is no way to zero risk in banking, this is for sure. Basel iii is not perfect, but it is better than Basel ii.
The framework improves consistency and establishes risk management principles that are unique.
Yes, we will have another crisis in the future, this is also for sure. It is simple: Passing laws against robbery and murder has not stopped people from robbing and murdering.
To ban or not to ban taking risks? More strict banking rules can destroy the economy. Banks will not be willing to lend. What is next? Unemployment, bankruptcies, no mortgages…
Banks are (and must be) in the business of taking risks. Sometimes governments force banks to lend to at-risk borrowers, and decisions are based on government intervention, not risk management. Is there a framework against that? Can we blame Basel iii?
We can increase the likelihood that banks can absorb losses under certain circumstances. This is all we can do.
George Lekatis
http://www.basel-iii-association.com
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein tesifies before the Senate in April 2010
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
By Matt Taibbi
May 11, 2011 9:30 AM ET
They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.
And what are the odds for GS's prosecutions? The worst they can expect is another slap on the wrist.
You know you are reading a site run by a religious cult when statements such as this are taken as fact without actual proof.
For some suggestions as to how we can move forward, see www.aesopinstitute.org
The posts there in economics and energy may prove helpful.
One cannot tax the "rich" (a very misleading term since those deemed "rich" by the government are not truly the rich most of the time. The truly rich with so much money are usually the trust-fund families ala' Rockerfeller and Kennedy and Bush families) enough to eliminate the current debt and deficit let alone drive the needed revenue to expand the government enough to "invest" more.
What this Senior Fellow seems to miss is that in the real world (not the ivory tower of theories which have no real consequences) one does not add more debt to other people in the future for your own purposes. It would be immoral for me to straddle my kids with my school debt and my home loan in order for me to "invest in their future." It is no better when we do so by government force. And, it is economic suicide as well where we make their suffering even worse than our own when our chickens come home to roost so to speak.
The MERSCORP Mess hasn't been addressed...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/l-randall-wray/why-mortgagebacked-securi_b_802600.html
L. Randall Wray: Why Mortgage-Backed Securities Aren't (Backed by Securities): How MERS Toasted the Banks
"In a series of pieces I have argued that MERS, a creation of the mortgage banking industry, has effectively destroyed the institution of private property in America. Ironically, MERS was created to facilitate quick and easy and cheap securitization of mortgages -- what are called mortgage-backed securities. In fact, what it did was to eliminate any backing of the securities by mortgages. Of the total securitized asset universe, something like $7 trillion are (supposedly) backed by residential mortgages. However, MERS helped to delink the securities from the mortgages. At best, they are unsecured debt -- there is no property backing the securities. What this means is that foreclosure is not permitted. As I have said before, it is likely that most or even all foreclosures occurring in the US are illegal seizures of property -- home thefts. We are talking about 100,000 completed home thefts per month, with another 250,000 new foreclosures started to steal
homes every month. Projections are that 13 million homes will have been "foreclosed" (read: stolen) by 2012.
Worse, from the perspective of the banks, they've got to take back all the fraudulent MBSs, most of which are toxic..."
Sounds like the banks will need a $ 7 trillion bailout.
The other big joke is how we pay:
Taxes that go to big oil billion dollar subsidies.
Profits that go out of the economy tax-discounted.
Tax dollars used to run-up life's necessities in the commodities market.
This is exactly what you get for pay-to-play politics.
I bet the big oil exects were winking and blowing kisses, and would have been playing footsie, with their little puppets, if they weren't symbolically sitting at a separate table.
Social media might help Americans and real business interests find representation in our government.
Put your $250.00 savings in your sock drawer ;~)