Willem Buiter <http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/50> 9 March 2009
< Given the manifest failure of the efficient market hypothesis >
*Financial regulation is a now-or-never proposition as the sector’s lobbying power is greatly diminished. This column argues that we should embrace robust regulation now, risking over-regulation. Correcting mistakes later would be better than risking another era of “self-” or “soft-touch” regulation.*
Over-regulate now
It is necessary, for political economy reasons, to rush new comprehensive regulation of the financial sector. While it would be better, holding constant the likelihood of the measures being adopted and implemented, not to act in haste, there is now a unique window of opportunity – a period of extraordinary politics, in the words of Balcerowicz – to actually get the thorough regulatory reform we need. The reason is that the private financial sector is on its uppers – down and out – and will not be able to put together much of a fight, let alone its usual boom-time massive lobbying effort to veto radical measures. It is better to over-regulate now and subsequently correct the mistakes than to risk another era of self-regulation and soft-touch under-regulation of financial markets, instruments and institutions. Macro-prudential regulation
The objective of macro-prudential regulation is systemic financial stability. This has a number of dimensions:
- Preventing or mitigating asset market and credit booms, bubbles and
busts
- Preventing or mitigating market illiquidity in systemically important
markets
- Preventing or mitigating funding illiquidity for systemically important
financial institutions
- Preventing or managing insolvencies of systemically important financial
institutions
Other micro-prudential considerations (abuse of monopoly power; consumer protection; micro-manifestations of asymmetric information) should be left to the micro-prudential regulator(s). Comprehensive regulation
Regulation will have to be comprehensive across instruments, institutions, markets and countries. Specifically, we must:
- Regulate all systemically important highly leveraged financial
enterprises, whatever they call themselves: commercial bank, investment
bank, universal bank, hedge fund, SIV, CDO, private equity fund or bicycle
repair shop.
- Regulate all markets for systemically important financial instruments.
- Regulate all systemically important financial infrastructure or
plumbing: payment, clearing, settlement systems, mechanisms and platforms,
and the associated provision of custodial services.
- Do it all on a cross-border basis.
Self-regulation
Self-regulation is to regulation as self-importance is to importance. The notion that markets, including financial markets could be self-regulating, by properly incentivising CEOs and Boards of Directors and through market-discipline, is prima facie suspect. We decide to regulate markets because of market failure. Then we let the market regulate the market. This is an invisible hand too far. The concept of self-regulation is especially ludicrous for financial markets. Finance is trade in promises expressed in units of abstract purchasing power (money). It scales up and down ferociously quickly. If Airbus or Boeing wishes to double the size of its operations, it takes 4 or 5 years to put in place another set of assembly lines. If a bank wishes to scale its balance sheet and operations ten-fold, all it has to do is to add a zero in the right places. Given enough optimism, trust, confidence and self-confidence, financial activity can, through leverage, be scaled up alarmingly quickly. Once optimism, trust, confidence and self-confidence disappear and are replaced by pessimism, mistrust, lack of confidence and fear/panic, the scaling down of bank activities can occur even faster. Such an industry cannot be left to its own devices. The importance of public information
Regulation can only take place on the basis of independently verifiable (public) information. Regulators cannot rely on information that is private to the regulated entity. This means that the capital adequacy of the first pillar of Basel II has to be overhauled radically, as its risk-weighting of assets relies in part on internal bank models that are private to the banks.... Regulation financial innovation
Financial innovation in products and institutions is potentially beneficial and potentially harmful. There is a need to regulate financial innovation. I propose the model used in the US by the Food and Drug Administration for pharmaceutical and medical products.
- First, there is a positive list of financial instruments and
institutions. Anything that is not explicitly allowed is forbidden.
- To get a new instrument or new institution approved, there will have to
be testing, scrutiny by regulators, supervisors, academic specialists and
other interested parties, and pilot projects. It is possible that, once a
new instrument or institution has been approved, it is only available ‘with
a prescription'. For instance, only professional counterparties rather than
the general public could be permitted.
- Clearly, this approach to financial innovation would slow down
financial innovation. It may even kill off certain innovations that would
have been socially useful. So be it. The dangers of unbridled financial
innovation are too manifest.
Rating agencies
- Rating agencies should be turned into single-activity or single-product
line firms. They should provide just ratings, not any other products or
services, including advice. The conflict of interest in combining rating
activities with advisory services or the sale of other lucrative services or
products to customers looking for the best possible rating is obvious and
inescapable. Chinese walls don't work and are aptly named. The Great Wall of
China did not keep the barbarians out or the Han Chinese in.
- The quasi-regulatory role of the rating agencies in Basel II should be
eliminated.
- The customer wishing to have his company, country, or instrument rated
should not pay the rating agency, ex ante or ex post. Instead, the customer
should pay the regulator, who would then allocates/auctions the individual
rating activity among the population of competing rating agencies.
- Rating agencies should be paid in part in the securities they are
rating. Such securities should be held to maturity and cannot be hedged by
the rating agency.
Securitisation
Securitisation of transparent, relatively homogeneous assets or cash flows is a useful invention, but only if the originator of the underlying assets/cash flows is required to retain a material chunk of the first-loss or equity tranche.... Narrow banking vs. investment banking
The distinction between public utility banking/narrow banking vs. investment banking; (the rest) has to be re-introduced. I advocate a form of Glass-Steagall on steroids, with a heavily regulated and closely supervised narrow banking sector, engaged in commercial banking (taking deposits and making loans) and benefiting from lender of last resort and market maker of last resort support. The investment bank sector will also be regulated and supervised, but more lightly, and according to the same principles as other systemically important highly leveraged non-narrow bank institutions.
Universal banking has few if any efficiency advantages and many disadvantages. Economies of scale and scope in banking are soon exhausted. They tend to be fat to fail, have a lack of focus, and suffer from span-of-control negative synergies etc. Universal banks or financial supermarkets use their size to exploit market power and try to shelter their risky, non-narrow banking activities under the LLR and MMLR umbrella of the narrow bank that's hiding somewhere inside the universal bank. Penalise bank size
Splitting banks into public utility or narrow banks does not solve the problems of banks (narrow or investment) becoming too big or too interconnected to fail. It is therefore necessary to penalise bank size per se, to stop banks from becoming too large to fail (if they are interconnected but small, they are still not systemically important). I would penalise size through capital requirements that are progressive in size (as well as leverage). Institutions’ contribution to systemic risk
The problem of the ‘swarming' of individually not systemically important institutions that collectively achieve critical mass as regards systemic stability has been analysed by Tobias Adrian and Markus K. Brunnermeier and in the recent Geneva Report <http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2796> by Markus Brunnermeier, Andrew Crocket, Charles Goodhart, Avinash D. Persaud and Hyun Shin.* They propose a measure of an institution's contribution to systemic risk which they call CoVaR* . It is the value at risk (VaR) of a financial institution conditional on other institutions being in distress. The increase of in an institution's CoVaR relative to its VaR is supposed to measure spillover risk among institutions.
There are clearly deep conceptual problems with this measure. It jumps from correlation to ‘spillover' – which is effectively causation – without much thought about the difference between the two. And, like VaR, CoVaR is likely to be very different under conditions of extreme crisis than under the conditions prevailing on average during the sample that provided the data used to calculate the CoVar. But the problem of individually systemically insignificant institutions that can collectively achieve critical mass is one that has to be addressed by the regulator and supervisor if there are large numbers of small institutions. Fair value accounting
There is no substitute for fair value accounting or even mark-to-market accounting. Companies must be required to use the strictest version of it for the inflation it requires. Even illiquid market prices are better than managerial discretion. Companies should not be able to move assets between the trading book, the banking book, and the “available for sale” book, unless the institution is in administration or in a special resolution regime. Regulatory forbearance should be used to mitigate the consequences of mark-to-market pricing when asset prices are depressed because of market illiquidity. Remuneration
Remuneration is a matter of corporate governance. The incentive structure created by compensation packages does, however, influence the risk profile of a bank or other financial institution. It should be taken into account by the regulator/supervisor in determining capital requirements and liquidity requirements, assuming the regulator/supervisor understands the impact of the remuneration structure on bank risk taking. Mixed public-private ownership
Given the manifest failure of the efficient market hypothesis, it is not at all obvious that systemically important financial institutions should be allowed to be listed companies. Financial institutions' stock market valuations have been notorious will-o'-the wisps and have, through stock options and other stock-market valuation-related executive remuneration components, contributed to the excessive risk taking during the recent boom. Partnerships, mutual ownership, cooperative ownership, and various forms of public and mixed public-private ownership may be more appropriate for financial institutions. Perhaps we should even consider removing limited liability for investment banks!