“Now If Congress Could See The Light”: A Fully Private Mortgage Market Is Good For Nobody
Let’s be clear about one thing: just about everyone agrees that the federal government is providing too much direct support to the mortgage market today. That support should be scaled back over time, but it cannot be eliminated entirely.
We believe, as do many others across the political spectrum, that a modest level of government support is necessary to promote a stable, accessible and affordable housing market. That includes an explicit guarantee on certain kinds of mortgage debt – but not the financial institutions that issue that debt.
Rather than keeping taxpayers on the hook for every dollar of loss on mortgage-backed securities – as we do now with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – we would rather see private capital take losses first. Financial institutions should have the opportunity to buy limited government insurance on those securities in exchange for a fair and financially responsible fee, much like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. offers on bank deposits.
Regardless of whether you own or rent, a government guarantee is critical to your economic well-being. Here are two reasons why.
First and foremost, the guarantee plays a crucial role in preventing and lessening the intensity of boom-and-bust cycles in the housing market. When private capital retreats from residential mortgages during a downturn, government-backed entities stay open for business, ensuring that money keeps flowing into housing. First-time homebuyers can still get a home loan. Homeowners can still refinance or find a buyer if they’re looking to move. Developers can still access the capital they need to start construction on new apartment buildings. Each of these activities sends ripples throughout the economy – new construction jobs, more demand for household goods, stronger and more stable home values – which improves everyone’s bottom line.
In the most recent example, purely private mortgage lending basically ground to a halt when the financial crisis began in 2008. Ever since Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration have backed roughly 9 in 10 mortgages made in the U.S., saving the market from even worse collapse.
According to a recent analysis from Moody’s Analytics, a fully private market would have “difficulty providing stable mortgage funding during difficult financial times.” The authors concluded that “the resulting credit crunch further undermines housing demand, driving down prices and unleashing a vicious cycle.” That’s not good for anybody.
Second, it’s important to note that government-backed mortgages don’t just help homebuyers – who benefit from lower interest rates and access to longer-term, fixed-rate mortgage products. They also help the one-third of the U.S. population that rents.
In addition to their homeownership operations, Fannie and Freddie guarantee so-called “multifamily” mortgages, which finance apartment buildings with five or more units. That guarantee plays an important role in ensuring that quality, affordable rental options are available for low- and middle-income families. In 2009, the first full year of the financial crisis, Fannie and Freddie backed 85 percent of new multifamily mortgages; today that number is closer to 50 percent.
According to a recent analysis from Freddie Mac, if the government guarantee on multifamily mortgages were to go away, the market would shrink significantly. New construction on rental housing would plummet by as much as 27 percent, while average rents would rise by as much as 2 percent.
It’s clear that America’s families, regardless of their housing situation, benefit from an explicit, limited and paid-for government guarantee on mortgage debt. And a growing bipartisan consensus agrees: of the 25 plans for housing finance reform reviewed by the Center for American Progress, all but five preserve some sort of government guarantee.
Now, if only Congress could come to a similar agreement.
By: Andrew Jakabovics and John Griffith, Analysts at Enterprise Community Partners, U. S. News and World Report, August 13, 2013
“The Wall Street That Cried Wolf”: Banks Complain About Onerous New Regulations While Reaping Record Profits
The headlines have been nothing short of dazzling: “Bank of America profits soar“; “Citigroup’s profits surge“; “Bank boom continues: Goldman Sachs profit doubles.” In fact, the six biggest Wall Street banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley – all beat their profit expectations in the most recent quarter, according to results announced over the last week. JP Morgan Chase is even on pace to make $25 billion (yes, billion with a b) this year.
If you’re thinking that these numbers don’t at all square with the ominous warnings of bank executives and lobbyists, who have been saying non-stop that new regulations meant to safeguard the financial system and prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis are going to irreparably harm their ability to do business, you’re right. But that hasn’t stopped the banks’ griping.
The latest iteration of this argument played out after regulators recently announced new rules regarding bank capital – the financial cushion banks must keep on hand to guard against a downturn. Failed presidential candidate turned bank lobbyist Tim Pawlenty, for instance, said that the new rules “will make it harder for banks to lend and keep the economic recovery going.” JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who has been scaremongering for years about various regulations, warned that the new rules would put U.S. banks at a competitive disadvantage with foreign lenders.
But this same dynamic has been playing out since the Dodd-Frank financial reform law was signed by President Obama in 2010. Banks and their allies complain about onerous new regulations, while at the same time reaping record profits.
And as the New Yorker’s John Cassidy explained, those profits are due to many of the same practices that helped cause the 2008 debacle in the first place: “an emphasis on trading rather than lending, a high degree of leverage, and implicit subsidies from the taxpayer.” That would seem to make the case that new regulations, rather than going too far, have not gone far enough.
Perhaps that’s why banks haven’t been crowing about their new avalanche of profits, and Dimon is even warning about an upcoming profit squeeze. As the Financial Times’ U.S. banking editor Tom Braithwaite explains:
In the next 12 months the Fed will hit the banks with a new flurry of measures. … Those are coming, they are serious and the banks fear them. There is an outside chance that lawmakers will go even further, such as by restoring the split between investment banking and commercial banking known as Glass-Steagall. There is still plenty to play for in deciding how painful the next round of regulations will be.
But, with every earnings season, warnings of calamity look more and more hollow.
One of the major knocks against Dodd-Frank – beyond the obvious one that it left the biggest banks even bigger than they were before the financial crisis – is that it left too much discretion to regulators to write new rules. Corporations and trade organizations familiar with how the agency rule-writing process works are almost inevitably going to have the upper hand in such a system. And there are still so many rules left to be written – some 60 percent, according to the law firm Davis Polk – that Wall Street will have ample opportunity to water the law down to meaninglessness.
But it’s hard to keep saying with a straight face that new regulations will spell doom for the industry when the new rules that are in place so far, which were accompanied by similarly dire warnings, have done nothing to even dent Wall Street’s bottom line. In fact, the huge pile of profits may be the best thing that could have happened for those trying to bring a modicum of sanity back to Wall Street regulation.
By: Pat Garofalo, U. S. News and World Report, July 18, 2013
“Raiders Of The Lost Retirement Account”: Wall Street’s Deceptive Retirement Account Fees Hurt Savers
Worried about your ability to set money aside for retirement? You should also worry about what happens to the money you do manage to put away. According to a report from Demos, the typical two-earner family with an employer-sponsored account will end up paying some 30 percent of its retirement nest egg – a total of $155,000 – to Wall Street money managers in 401(k) fees and charges.
How can this be? The financial services industry, in addition to its talent for developing different kinds of fees, has been adept at coming up with ways of concealing them. To start with, many of the fees and costs that Wall Street collects for trading securities are typically omitted from the top-line “expense ratio” reported to savers. That’s a pretty huge omission, since trading fees account for half the fees charged to an average investor, according to Demos.
The industry also makes its fees look small by typically reporting them as a percentage of total savings, avoiding any mention of the far higher proportion they make up of your total investment return. For example, a total fee that adds up to 2 percent of managed assets may seem small – but if your typical return is 7 percent, the fee represents almost 30 percent of total returns.
One of the biggest advantages enjoyed by industry lies in the nature of the professional advice available to investors seeking to understand such questions. Astoundingly, the broker who sells you a retirement product often has no obligation to serve your best interests, or even to provide you with reliable counsel. Instead, the law often gives brokers a green light to promote products that generate higher fees for them, regardless of the impact on you.
The non-partisan Government Accountability Office has documented numerous instances of such conflicts of interest. The GAO not only found investment managers cross-selling products to 401(k) clients that enriched the manager at the investor’s expense, but also brokers being rewarded for steering investors into high-fee products. One report found that almost a quarter of telephone representatives and half of web sites incorrectly informed investors that no fees would be levied for managing their retirement money if they transferred it into an individual retirement account. In fact, fees are charged on these products, but are usually buried deep in the fine print of the IRA documents.
The good news is that these problems have found a place on the agenda of Washington regulators. The bad news is that the necessary remedies face tremendous opposition. In fact, the way things are going, it will take a mighty effort to keep industry lobbyists from winning the fight to keep investors in the dark.
The Department of Labor has taken up the task of updating the legal protections covering 401(k)s and other employment-based retirement accounts. Certain forms of retirement savings (especially those managed directly by your employer) are already protected by a strong fiduciary duty – that is, a legal requirement for the investment manager to put your best interests first. But the fiduciary-duty rules are outmoded, and exclude much of the current retirement-fund market.
These fiduciary rules were last updated in 1975 – a time when over 90 percent of retirement plans were controlled directly by employers. That’s very different from today’s individualized accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs. As a result, employees have no legal protection when engaged in many transactions, including the critical one of “rolling over” a 401-K into an IRA. In order for the new rules to be effective, the Department of Labor will have to impose a clear ban on inappropriate steering of clients, including strict limitations on broker-payment arrangements that create conflicts of interest, along with much better disclosure.
And it will have to do so in the face of fierce resistance from the financial industry. The Department of Labor recently had to retreat on one proposal to improve fiduciary rules in a debate dominated by insider interests such as brokers and investment managers who benefit from the current high fees and lack of obligations to clients. Now the department is preparing to propose reforms again, and the same interests will try to defeat them again. The public needs regulators and legislators to stand up for better protections for our savings, and prevent the process from being dominated by financial insiders.
The Dodd-Frank financial reform law also handed an important responsibility to the Securities and Exchange Commission – the task of developing new rules to increase fiduciary protections for advice given by securities brokers. Right now, while investment advisors have a duty to put your best interests first, securities brokers don’t. In practice, the distinction between the two types of investment professionals is blurred and unclear to most investors. The Dodd-Frank law called for securities-broker fiduciary duties to be made stronger, clearer and more like those of true investment advisors.
Unfortunately, this is another area where heavy industry lobbying has greatly delayed and weakened action. Preliminary indications suggest that the SEC’s approach could end up being far weaker than is needed to protect investors.
The issues in retirement savings are broad, and new fiduciary rules won’t take care of all of them. But a strong legal obligation for all investment advisors to avoid deceptive and abusive practices would be a common-sense start. And that can only happen if investors and employees stand up for the principle that when financial professionals give advice, they must put the best interests of their clients first.
By: Marcus Stanley, U. S. News and World Report, June 4, 2013
“It’s Time To Tax Financial Transactions”: Here At Last Is An Idea Whose Time Has Come
On Friday at midnight, the sequester kicked in, triggering $85 billion in deep, dumb budget cuts that sent “nonessential personnel”— such as air traffic controllers — packing.
Not to worry, though: Wall Street’s day was pretty much like any other. Billions of dollars in profits were made off of trillions of dollars in financial transactions. And the vast majority of those transactions were conducted tax-free.
Moral of the story: What else is new?
Crash the economy? Free pass. Prevent planes from crashing? Pink slip.
We don’t need a team of policymakers to tell us this isn’t good policy, or that it needs changing. But on Thursday, we heard policymakers propose exactly that: a change.
Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), along with Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-Ore.), unveiled a bill that would place a light tax on all financial transactions — three pennies on every $100 traded.
The good news is that it’s a tax so small it could be mistaken for a rounding error. It’s so small, Wall Street could easily afford it and the average E-Trade investor would barely notice it. If this were a tax on coffee, it would cost you $1 for every 800 cups you bought at Starbucks.
But there’s even better news. This insignificant tax raises a significant amount of revenue — $352 billion over the next 10 years, or enough to refund about one-third of what the sequester will slash from the federal budget. It’s also enough to put many air traffic controllers back to work, Head Start teachers back in preschools, and crucial government programs back in business.
As the saying goes, “Nothing can resist an idea whose time has come.”
And after years of Wall Street excess, and at a moment when new revenues are badly needed, the time has surely come for a financial transaction tax .
Indeed, support for such a tax has never been stronger — or broader. Many on the progressive left have long favored it . Now, though, another group of bleeding-heart liberals, otherwise known as the American people, is on board. When it comes to cutting the deficit, 6 in 10 Americans prefer taxing the financial industry to cutting social spending.
But this idea doesn’t just have the masses on its side; it has the elites, and even some Republican elites. Once championed by the granddaddy of liberal economics, John Maynard Keynes, the banner of a financial transactions tax has been picked up by conservative economists including Sheila Bair, George W. Bush’s appointee to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
After all, the tax isn’t just a good revenue raiser. It’s smart regulatory reform.
The high-frequency traders that now dominate our markets would be hardest-hit by the tax. A top economist recently concluded that their lightning speed, algorithm-driven trading drains profits from traditional investors. And analysts fear that such mass trading strategies could lead to disaster if markets behave unexpectedly.
The new tax would discourage these kinds of trades, which would be a good thing.
Europe, at least, seems to agree. Eleven nations, led by the conservative German government, are on track to start collecting the tax by January 2014. Expected revenues: $50 billion per year.
Of course, we’re talking about a tax on Wall Street.
It’s no wonder that, over the past few weeks, K Street appears to have upped the financial sector’s retainer. Their lobbying effort against the tax — here and in Europe — is in full swing.
Even the Obama administration has been convinced to come out against the tax in the United States. And they’re pressuring Europeans to water down their version by insulating American banks. What’s the logic driving this opposition?
Some have argued that, historically, these taxes have been ineffective because of widespread evasion. But they’re cherry-picking a few badly designed examples, such as Sweden’s lemon of a tax from nearly 30 years ago. This is like saying cars don’t work because you bought a Datsun in the ’70s.
Many countries have implemented such taxes effectively. The United Kingdom, for example, manages to raise more than $5 billion per year on a 0.5 percent tax on stock trades alone.
Another common argument is that the tax will be passed on to mom-and-pop investors. The just-introduced U.S. legislation addresses these concerns by providing tax credits for contributions to typical middle-class investment accounts, including 401(k)s. Investment funds would still be taxed on their trades, but this could encourage longer-term productive investment instead of the short-term speculation that adds little to no value to the real economy.
If the Obama administration is serious about fair taxation and a smart approach to the deficit, it should change its position. Rather than trying to derail Europe’s efforts, it should cooperate with Europe to ensure that the tax there is effectively enforced. And the administration should build support in Congress, including among Republicans.
Yes, we’ve all heard House Speaker John Boehner’s line that the debate over revenue raising is over. We also remember former President George H.W. Bush’s line, “Read my lips, no new taxes,” and how quickly his lips starting saying something else.
For tea partyers, wouldn’t a tax on Wall Street, the beneficiaries of the bailout they so reviled, be less objectionable than most other revenue options?
Sequestration is a septic wound, self-inflicted by lawmakers who can’t agree on anything. Here, at last, we have a smart idea with widespread support — Americans and Europeans, populists and economists, progressives and conservatives.
After Friday’s dumb budget cuts, a little smart policymaking would be nice for a change.
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 5, 2013
“Friends of Fraud”: An Open Attempt By Republicans To Use Raw Obstructionism To Overturn The Law
Like many advocates of financial reform, I was a bit disappointed in the bill that finally emerged. Dodd-Frank gave regulators the power to rein in many financial excesses; but it was and is less clear that future regulators will use that power. As history shows, the financial industry’s wealth and influence can all too easily turn those who are supposed to serve as watchdogs into lap dogs instead.
There was, however, one piece of the reform that was a shining example of how to do it right: the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a stand-alone agency with its own funding, charged with protecting consumers against financial fraud and abuse. And sure enough, Senate Republicans are going all out in an attempt to kill that bureau.
Why is consumer financial protection necessary? Because fraud and abuse happen.
Don’t say that educated and informed consumers can take care of themselves. For one thing, not all consumers are educated and informed. Edward Gramlich, the Federal Reserve official who warned in vain about the dangers of subprime, famously asked, “Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers?” He went on, “The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.”
And even well-educated adults can have a hard time understanding the risks and payoffs associated with financial deals — a fact of which shady operators are all too aware. To take an area in which the bureau has already done excellent work, how many of us know what’s actually in our credit-card contracts?
Now, you might be tempted to say that while we need protection against financial fraud, there’s no need to create another bureaucracy. Why not leave it up to the regulators we already have? The answer is that existing regulatory agencies are basically concerned with bolstering the banks; as a practical, cultural matter they will always put consumer protection on the back burner — just as they did when they ignored Mr. Gramlich’s warnings about subprime.
So the consumer protection bureau serves a vital function. But as I said, Senate Republicans are trying to kill it.
How can they do that, when the reform is already law and Democrats hold a Senate majority? Here as elsewhere, they’re turning to extortion — threatening to filibuster the appointment of Richard Cordray, the bureau’s acting head, and thereby leave the bureau unable to function. Mr. Cordray, whose work has drawn praise even from the bankers, is clearly not the issue. Instead, it’s an open attempt to use raw obstructionism to overturn the law.
What Republicans are demanding, basically, is that the protection bureau lose its independence. They want its actions subjected to a veto by other, bank-centered financial regulators, ensuring that consumers will once again be neglected, and they also want to take away its guaranteed funding, opening it to interest-group pressure. These changes would make the agency more or less worthless — but that, of course, is the point.
How can the G.O.P. be so determined to make America safe for financial fraud, with the 2008 crisis still so fresh in our memory? In part it’s because Republicans are deep in denial about what actually happened to our financial system and economy. On the right, it’s now complete orthodoxy that do-gooder liberals, especially former Representative Barney Frank, somehow caused the financial disaster by forcing helpless bankers to lend to Those People.
In reality, this is a nonsense story that has been extensively refuted; I’ve always been struck in particular by the notion that a Congressional Democrat, holding office at a time when Republicans ruled the House with an iron fist, somehow had the mystical power to distort our whole banking system. But it’s a story conservatives much prefer to the awkward reality that their faith in the perfection of free markets was proved false.
And as always, you should follow the money. Historically, the financial sector has given a lot of money to both parties, with only a modest Republican lean. In the last election, however, it went all in for Republicans, giving them more than twice as much as it gave to Democrats (and favoring Mitt Romney over the president almost three to one). All this money wasn’t enough to buy an election — but it was, arguably, enough to buy a major political party.
Right now, all the media focus is on the obvious hot issues — immigration, guns, the sequester, and so on. But let’s try not to let this one fall through the cracks: just four years after runaway bankers brought the world economy to its knees, Senate Republicans are using every means at their disposal, violating all the usual norms of politics in the process, in an attempt to give the bankers a chance to do it all over again.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, February 3, 2013
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