Hard evidence: bailed out banks take more risk

Politicians, Treasury Secretaries, etc. would have you believe that “moral hazard” is something we should only worry about in the abstract, in the future, when they’ve moved on to another job. But now a study confirms with hard facts: moral hazard–it lives.

Researchers have asked for some time whether and how bailouts might affect banks’ risk-taking. Would they run wild, aware of the high likelihood of being bailed out again if they ran into trouble? Or would they ease off precisely because they’d now be assured of lower financing costs and long-term survival, and therefore would want to avoid doing anything that might cause regulators to take that valuable banking license away? More daring or more discipline

The World’s 29 Too Big To Fail Banks

Here is the list of so-called global systemically important financial institutions by country. Who’s missing in your view

Sheila Bair on European Regulatory Capture

Sheila Bair argues that Europe’s banks are undercapitalised due in large part to regulatory capture

You Sexy M.F.

Here are a bunch of videos and links which update you on MF Global

On the CDS market, the Greek referendum and US banks’ selling insurance

There is much truth to the generalization that European banks took on direct exposure to European sovereigns through the bond market, while top banks took exposure through selling insurance, primarily CDS, on the sovereigns. The latest BIS data suggest that in H1 2011, US banks increased their CDS sales by almost $81 bln to $518 bln. Two thirds are tied Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain. Five US banks count for more than 90% of the CDS exposure

Bill Black on potential Bank of America derivatives losses

In the video below, Bill Black discusses the issues he raised in a recent post about Bank of America’s accounting activities. At issue is the effect of its shift of assets from the holding company to its FDIC-insured subsidiary. In total, Bank of America owns derivatives with a notional value of $75 trillion. The Federal Reserve authorised this accounting manoeuvre despite FDIC objections

How government is to blame for global financial crisis

"There are unintended consequences of free markets. It’s not capitalism that has been the problem, but irresponsible governments and politicians who have allowed the financial system to explode by permitting the build-up of ludicrous amounts of debt and leverage. "No one ever said that free markets could or would be self-regulating. That’s where people over

How not to resolve a banking crisis

Much of macroeconomic policymaking is trial and error. This column discusses calamitous error on the part of Iceland’s policymakers, in the hope that others can at least try something else

Dexia is seeking a new brand name

Belgian newspaper De Standarad reports that the folks at twice bailed out Franco-Belgian bank Dexia are looking for a new name for the company. Apparently, the Dexia brand has been tarnished.

Dexia is Belgium’s version of NCNB, now Bank of America, a small bank that grew enormously through expansion and acquisition

Full Text: Moody’s downgrades five Spanish banks following Spain’s downgrade to A1

“Moody’s Investors Service has today downgraded the long-term senior debt and deposit ratings of five Spanish banks by one notch. These rating actions follow yesterday’s downgrade of the Kingdom of Spain’s government bond rating to A1 from Aa2. All of the banks’ ratings carry a negative outlook. The affected banks are Banco Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank , La Caixa and Confederación Española de Cajas de Ahorros (CECA).”

Bank of America’s Death Rattle: Not with a Bang, but a Whimper

Bob Ivry, Hugh Son and Christine Harper have written an article that needs to be read by everyone interested in the financial crisis. The article (available here) is entitled: BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank Unit. The thrust of their story is that Bank of America’s holding company, BAC, has directed the transfer of a large number of troubled financial derivatives from its Merrill Lynch subsidiary to the federally insured bank Bank of America (BofA). The story reports that the Federal Reserve supported the transfer and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) opposed it. Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism has written an appropriately blistering attack on this outrageous action, which puts the public at substantially increased risk of loss.

I write to add some context, point out additional areas of inappropriate actions, and add a regulatory perspective gained from dealing with analogous efforts by holding companies to foist dangerous affiliate transactions on insured depositories. I’ll begin by adding some historical context to explain how B of A got into this maze of affiliate conflicts

A year later everyone is catching on about Fed policy and net interest margins

Last November, in anticipation of QE2, I wrote a post called “How Quantitative Easing and Permanent Zero are Toxic To Bank Net Interest Margins”. The gist of the post was that if the ‘extended period’ for low rates was too long, net interest margins would suffer, especially during a recession. I was looking at Japan and their economic policies and seeing low yields and super-low net interest margins killing bank earnings. Now that we are seeing more movement down on net interest margins (BofA and Wells Fargo both showed margin compression for example), the mainstream media is finally catching on to the connection between Fed policy and net interest margins. You heard it here first though