Reprint from Bloomberg (Source)
Too Big to Fail:
The former U.S. Treasury official who led the 2008 bailout program for the nation’s biggest banks says in his new role at the Federal Reserve that Congress and regulators should consider breaking them up to protect the financial system from another crisis.
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari, speaking Tuesday in Washington, said his regional Fed bank will study ways to toughen U.S. banking laws to prevent another financial crisis.
Regulators should consider options including breaking up the nation’s largest financial institutions, loading them up with “so much capital that they virtually can’t fail” and taxing leverage to make the system safer, he said. Tougher oversight will require new legislation, he added.
“The biggest banks are still too big to fail and continue to pose a significant risk to our economy,” Kashkari, who managed the U.S. Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program for rescuing banks in the crisis, said in his remarks. It was his first public speech since joining the Fed on Jan. 1 as its newest policy maker.
While Kashkari’s position fits with populist sentiment that has driven the rise of presidential candidates including Democrat Bernie Sanders, it’s at odds with top Fed leaders including Chair Janet Yellen, who isn’t calling for dramatic steps such as breaking up large banks. Such changes would also face a steep uphill battle to adoption by the Republican majority in Congress, which wants to roll back parts of the Dodd-Frank financial law passed in 2010, rather than go further as Kashkari proposes.
Kashkari’s remarks drew praise from Sanders. “Wall Street cannot continue to be an island unto itself, gambling trillions in risky financial instruments, making huge profits, assured that, if their schemes fail, the taxpayers will be there to bail them out," the Vermont senator said in an e-mailed statement.
Kashkari, who took over at the Minneapolis Fed following a failed run for governor of California as a Republican in 2014, compared the risk posed by big banks with that of a nuclear power plant in explaining why the government would probably have to bail out banks again in the event of another systemic crisis.
‘Astronomical’
“The cost to society of letting a reactor melt down is astronomical,” said Kashkari, who was a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker before joining the Treasury during the administration of Republican President George W. Bush. “Given that cost, governments will do whatever they can to stabilize the reactor before they lose control.” Kashkari's, 42, said the Minneapolis Fed will hold a series of events and collect public and financial-industry input before making proposals by the end of this year on how to address the issue.
Kashkari's, asked about the economy and monetary policy after the speech, stuck to the Fed’s January statement and said if the reality ends up like the outlook, the U.S. will be headed in a “better direction.” He will be a voting member of the interest-rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee in 2017. The Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington sets policy for bank supervision, which is implemented by the 12 regional Fed banks including Minneapolis.
In testimony before Congress last week, Yellen said regulations imposed since the financial crisis have had “very substantial payoffs in the form of a much more resilient and stronger, better capitalized, more liquid banking system.”
Fed spokesman Eric Kollig declined to comment on Kashkari’s initiative.
My personal opinion after being involved in the Banking Sector is the quality of the people they have on their staffs. In my situation there is one individual who is making policy decisions based on what their bank is doing and not based on any knowledge of what the industry is doing. This person seems to live in their own very little world without even knowing what the word algorithm means let alone how to develop and apply it. And I am sure there are others in other banks with decision-making authority they should not have at this time. It takes years to learn a job and also learn from the mistakes of that others have made by reading and research.
Oh well small things for a small mind, where common sense is not that common any more.
WASHINGTON, Dec 18 (Reuters) - The top U.S. banking regulators issued a forceful warning about commercial real estate lending on Friday, saying they will keep close watch on the segment next year as a recent swell in looser loan standards threatens banks' financial health.
The statement from the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said banks have been easing underwriting on loans for commercial real estate.
The agencies "also have observed certain risk management practices at some institutions that cause concern, including a greater number of underwriting policy exceptions and insufficient monitoring of market conditions."
The warning comes after a series of federal analyzes found that looser underwriting standards, especially prevalent in commercial real estate (CRE) loans, posed threats to the financial stability of both banks and the United States.
In Friday's statement, the regulators said that next year they will "continue to pay special attention to potential risks associated with CRE lending." They will focus on banks that have recently experienced substantial growth in commercial real estate lending, that plan to increase the lending, or operate in growing or risky markets.
The agencies could ask lenders to strengthen underwriting standards or raise additional capital, according to the statement. They could also ask for plans to better monitor the loans, which can be made for shopping centers, office spaces, apartment buildings or condominium projects.
The statement outlined a series of steps that the banks could take to lower their risks, such as analyzing a borrower's ability to service all of its debts during periods of rising interest rates.
(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
CHARLOTTE, N.C., Dec 18 (Reuters) - Federal Reserve forecasts pointing to four interest rate hikes in 2016 show what the U.S. central bank means when it says it anticipates raising rates at a "gradual pace," Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker said on Friday.
"That's half the rate at which we raised rates in the last tightening cycle. So that's what 'gradual' means to me," Lacker told reporters in Charlotte, North Carolina after appearing on a panel.