IRA Goes Off The Rails – Mark To Market

Posted by Karl Denninger

In what I can only describe as a self-serving piece for keeping banking “exactly as it is” (which is inherently unsustainable and thus can’t be) IRA tries to refute the value of mark-to-market with a stunning piece.

Finally, on April 2, 2009, FASB allowed banks to use “cash flow” to value bonds when the market was illiquid – exactly like Bernanke said last week. This fixed the immediate problems in the system, and the economy and financial markets have been on the mend ever since. In fact, the stock market bottomed on March 9, 2009 – the very day markets found out that Representatives Barney Frank and Paul Kanjorski would hold a hearing to force FASB to change the misguided accounting policy.

No it didn’t.

1. Remember FHLB Seattle again? Their “at market” losses on a portfolio of trash, er, loans was some $300 million.  They claimed that the real loss to be realized over time was in fact $12 million, using model-based accounting.  After all, these loans, while deeply underwater, weren’t really impaired.

Or so they told Congress.  I remember the testimony well.

But now, one year later, they are suing the banks that packaged up all this dog squeeze.  Among the pieces of trash being sued over are the very same securities against which they said that a model-based valuation system showed a tiny $12 million loss.

Are they suing for $12 million?

No.

That “tiny $12 million loss” in fact is some $311 million – almost exactly what the market price predicted it would be.

Remember, this was in the “depths of hell” time period too – March of 2009.  It was when the entire world was coming apart, Satan was chortling at the fate of our financial system and the S&P 500 traded – literally – at 666.

Yet that view – that market view – was correct.

To the regulators, it does not matter if the loan is still being paid on time. And it does not matter if the lower valuation of the collateral will force an already stressed borrower to come up with more cash. Regulators have decided that they want banks better capitalized and the way they can do that is to reduce the value of a bank’s assets and then force these banks to raise money from shareholders.

It shouldn’t matter to the regulators.

As I wrote months ago, the solution to this problem is One Dollar of Capital:

The solution is very simple, but you will notice that Jamie doesn’t bring it up.  That’s because he finds it unacceptable.

What’s that solution?

Prohibit as a matter of Federal Law, and enforce it vigorously under pain of immediately dissolution, THE LENDING OF MONEY UNSECURED THAT EXCEEDS THE FIRM’S CAPITAL.

This is in fact the only way you can both end “too big to fail” and not constrain size or influence.

It is also the definition of sound lending.

It is also how lending was done prior to the banksters corrupting the government and literally usurping the sovereign credit of The United States.

This is what the regulators are trying to back into.

It is the right thing to do, because it is the definition of sound banking.

ONE DOLLAR OF (EXCESS) CAPITAL FOR EACH DOLLAR OF UNSECURED LENDING.

You enforce this, the problem with systemic risk disappears.  Banks can fail without harm to anyone else.  Banks can take all the risk they want – with their shareholders and subordinate bondholders money – but never with depositors or secured bondholders money.  At the point those bets go bad and deplete their excess capital the bank is closed – right then and there.

All secured lenders to the bank get their money back.

All of it.

All depositors get their money back.

All of it.

The shareholders and unsecured lenders to the bank take a haircut, which is determined by the actual over-time performance of the outstanding unsecured lending.

The FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund loss, if this regulatory framework is applied and enforced, is always zero.

This regulatory regime exactly matches the bank’s lending risk with the expected risk of lending money to the bank.  Those who lend unsecured (e.g. shareholders and subordinate bondholders) have lent money with the expectation that they might lose it.  The bank in turn has lent out capital with the expectation that it might not be repaid.

The secured lenders to the bank – senior bondholders and depositors – lent their money with the expectation that it was a secured loan.  The bank in turn lent that money out secured by an asset that is valued (each and every day) at or above the loan balance.

Statutory law sets a reserve ratio (cushion) between secured lending out and secured capital in.  This gives the market room to move against the bank on the valuation of those secured loan assets without causing the bank to fail.  Management is free to increase that ratio should it desire, but not to dip under it (if they do, the bank gets closed.)

But for each dollar of unsecured lending that is out there from the institution, that bank must hold one dollar of excess capital beyond statutory requirements.

If it does not, at any time, then the bank is closed, haircuts may happen, and the bank’s management loses their jobs.

This is the only stable fractional lending system that can be constructed folks.

It remains difficult or impossible to find support for it precisely because it is so simple and yet it absolutely prevents the playing of “Heads Management Wins, Tails Taxpayers Lose.”

If we want a stable financial system, we must impose this, and I call upon IRA, along with the other folks in the private and government sector, to wake up and smell the math.

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