Astonishingly, as Wall Street reform enters its final hours, a tired, generic corporate refrain against regulation is gaining traction. As bigwig bankers and their lobbyist brethren fight to defeat tough new rules on derivatives -- the crazy casino that brought down AIG -- all their sloganeers can come up with is the trite wail that serious rules will send this risky business overseas. It'd be funny if members of Congress weren't taking it seriously.
"Oh no--the business will go overseas!" is the last-ditch, we're-about-to-lose-this-one cry of despair for corporate executives in every industry. Crack down on a profitable abuse in the United States and the entire business will move to London or Mumbai, sending jobs and tax revenue abroad -- or so the argument goes. You only hear this line when CEOs know they have no case and have to divert attention away from the real substance of the policy debate. In the case of Wall Street abuses, this nonsense is especially ridiculous. The bank lobby really just doesn't have any good arguments to launch in its favor, so it's falling back on generic corporate jargon.
In reality, the U.S. has extremely broad authority to crack down on derivatives activity abroad, we just don't have a whole lot of good rules on derivatives for regulators to enforce. It's extremely difficult for financial institutions to simply offshore their risky derivatives business to avoid oversight. Under current law, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has the authority to regulate any trading done by foreign firms on behalf of U.S. clients, any trading of U.S. assets conducted by foreign institutions and any trading that causes a "substantial disruption" in U.S. markets. Just about anything the CFTC wants to get its hands on, it can, and the current CFTC chairman, Gary Gensler, is a committed reformer. We just need to write good rules for his agency to enforce.
Moreover, finance tricksters will have no incentive to move their destructive derivatives trading abroad, because the rules in other countries are, in fact, much tougher than those the U.S. is currently considering.
There are a lot of ways to crack down on Wall Street, but none of them will work without reining in the insane, secretive market for derivatives -- speculative instruments that allow financiers to gamble on anything from subprime mortgages to the price of corn. Right now Wall Street is making a big push to roll out new derivatives on movie box-office receipts, allowing the financial world to place raw bets on how much money a movie is going to make. It sounds crazy and destructive, and it is.
Germany is leading the way on derivatives reform by simply banning this kind of naked gambling outright. The U.S. effort is critically important, but much more modest. Instead of banning the casino, reformers in Congress are hoping to shrink it by ending the taxpayer subsidies that fuel it. This is at the heart of the proposal from Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., that has earned so much ire from the bank lobby. Bankers love their taxpayer subsidies, and love converting them into bonuses -- who wouldn't? The trouble is that this business is inherently risky and can jeopardize the entire economy, as the collapse of AIG attests.
But ending subsidies is still not as strong as banning gambling, which Germany is doing. The entire European Union is currently making a move to follow Germany's lead. Businesses can't exit U.S. markets to skirt regulations if their Wild West trading schemes are outlawed everywhere else.
In the U.K., officials are poised to impose a hefty tax on all financial assets, preventing banks from ballooning their balance sheets with derivatives trades. That means U.S. banks can't send their derivatives operations to the U.K. without paying a big price.
Outside of Europe, few nations have the financial infrastructure to support derivatives trading on the scale of what we currently have in the U.S., where $300 trillion in trades are housed at just five banks. Some Asian nations do have this kind of infrastructure -- big financial firms in Asia all realize that they will have to comply with U.S. rules if they want to keep doing business in the U.S. And indeed, policymakers in Hong Kong and other financial centers are looking to the U.S. for leadership on derivatives and are likely to mimic whatever reforms are adopted here.
But more broadly, we have to ask why the U.S. should be worried about this activity being offshored at all. Raw gambling by financial institutions brought on one of the greatest economic catastrophes in American history. It forced the government to pony up over $4 trillion in bailout funds, expanded the national debt by 40 percent, and killed more than 8 million jobs. If this business goes overseas, so be it! Let other nations bailout their megabanks and wreck their own economies if they want to. Today's derivatives casino is a job-killing nightmare that produces nothing other than megabonuses for bankers. Taxpayers have no business subsidizing such economic destruction.
Compared to international efforts, Blanche Lincoln's derivatives bill is overpoweringly mild, but it remains the only serious attempt to rein in the speculative casino that crashed our economy. The fact that the bank lobby's only tactic left is the wail "offshore!" shows how desperate our bank executives have become. Congress has no business caving to such nonsense at this stage of the reform process.
Follow Zach Carter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/zachdcarter
Deport all multinational banks, their only purpose is to drain every last drop of blood from their victims.
This simply isn't true, you can't just pop into another country and claim that you have jurisdiction over their economic transactions. How do you think the US would react if Zimbabwean regulators came to New York and Chicago and said they couldn't trade certain securities because it is causing disruption to Zimbabwean markets. They'd get laughed at or arrested. That's likely what will happen to US regulators popping overseas to do the same thing.
There isn't going to be any real reform. You can count on that. And it's pretty offensive that just like with health care "reform" the Wall Street-Democratic party is going to tout the meager semblance of reform they do give us as a huge reason why they should be reelected.
Throw the bums out. Find a progressive third party and start supporting them NOW, before it's too late. I recommend Greens, the party I have abandoned the corporate Democrats for.
Another fantasy... that wealthy people owe allegiance to no country. What lunacy!
Put your money to work doing real things with real people in the USA folks. You love to have the might of the American government and military on your side. But do you have the patriotism to be an important part of the deperately needed rebuilding effort here at home?
c'mon....be something more than just another "investor"....be a citizen...be a leader....be a somebody
It is a fantasy to think that country doesn't matter, and that morals, ethics, and doing something of real value doesn't matter. But that is what our transnational off shore based, financial casino focussed wealthy americans' behavior says. It says..."I don't need to be an American. I'm bigger than that. I'm a citizen of the world". Which means: "I'll take what I can get wherever I can get it and make sure I don't pay any taxes...but I'll be sure to collect any support I need from anywhere I can get it if I'm in need"
think bigger ladies and gentlemen
Come on!
QUIT BEING SUCKERS FOR WALL STREET!!!!
force investmnet back to main street.
the world has done it before, and the economies always improved.
The banksters aren't lending because they are using our money as chips at their casino.
What is wrong with this picture?
Farmers are getting subsidies,but that's good,because we still need to eat.
End the money laundering,casino trade and wars-bring back Glass-Steagall.
Oh,disband the banks who engage in these practices.
Car insurance is a derivative. You get paid based on contingent event. If you get into an accident, you get paid, if you do not, you don’t get paid.
Stock options are derivatives. A call option is worth more if the stock goes up and is worth less if the stock goes down.
Interest rate swaps are derivatives. If the lender wants a floating rate asset and the borrower wants to pay a fixed rate, you can use a swap to make both people happy.
Some of these products can go to an exchange (stock options), others are very specific (auto insurance) and some could be either (swaps, although accounting rules push them off exchange).
If he doesn’t like CDOs or synthetic this or that, then he should get himself educated enough to argue why that product should be pushed to an unregulated island in the Caribbean (the real “offshore” being discussed) instead of just banned for US regulated and/or listed companies.
Spare us. You've started out with a kindergarten definition of what a Derivative is, and then give only passing attention to synthetic CDOs, where there is little if any connection to real assets. It's gambling, and you know it. It's a great way for the Financial Services Industry to make a great deal of money, while it parasitically kills the mainstream Economy in the process.
In this case the underlying is the auto, the contingent event is an accident.
Every insurance policy is by definition a derivative. That is the problem with the way Zach simplifies his arguement.
Except that it's even worse. For a bank to oppose the reasonable reform proposals - mainly asking for either capital backing up transactions or putting transactions on exchanges or both - is similar to a soccer team lobbying for the abolition of rules prohibiting foul play.
You may think you can win more often. But it's not really what you want.
In fact the correct analogy is closer to drug addicts lobbying for the legalization of hard drugs - as others have commented.
Members of Congress are bribed to take it seriously. Their campaign finances depend on bribes from the same banks they are supposed to regulate. If we want serious financial reform, we must first accomplish campaign finance reform.