This Is the End

RICK BOOKSTABER

Markets, Risk and Human Interaction

December 3, 2008

Should we keep the Big Three on life support?

December 03, 2008
Sometimes it is best to let the patient die. At least if the patient is a company. A company can be resurrected, and enjoy a new life no longer stricken by the debilitating weaknesses that left it lingering at death’s door. Weaknesses like encumbering labor agreements, pension liabilities and health care obligations.

The pleas of the Big Three are those of the management and of the equity holders they represent. They do not have much interest in the hereafter. They would have the company cling to life by the last thread, keep it on life support for as long as it is offered, even make a devil’s bargain to trade the possibilities in its second estate for more time, however impaired, in the current one. Management and the equity holders will not share in the corporation’s afterlife. If it dies, they are gone, no matter how bright the prospects are for the company in its resurrected state.

Thus the equity holders can end up on the wrong side of one of economics’ most prickly conundrums, the agency problem. Usually this problem pits the managers of the firm against the owners; i.e. do the managers of a firm have interests that are aligned with the owners of that firm? In the current crisis the agency problem is: do the equity holders act in the best interest of the firm as a robust, competitive going concern? Do they have an interest in the long-term prospects of the firm, which is our point of interest if we are the government making the bail out decision?

If the answer means pulling the plug, then of course they do not. They will bleed the cash flow to have the firm stay afloat, exert their will to live to the detriment of the future prospects of the firm in a reorganized form. And they will be urged on by those with an interest in the encumbrances that weigh the companies down now, but that will be excised postmortem.

What is surprising in this death drama is that here, in the non-ethereal plain of corporations, we get to observe the passage into the after-life. We get to know the better world where these firms are heading. For example, we can look at what happens to airlines. It seems one airline or another goes into Chapter 11 every few years, and yet they hardly miss a flight. We don’t worry that the planes will start to fall out of the sky; if you didn’t read the papers you might not even know what happened. It is almost a part of the business plan. An airline starts off with the advantages of a new fleet and a low cost work force. Over time the fleet ages, the labor force works its way up the pay scale, the union rules clog the arteries, and costs finally squeeze the life out of the margins. So the airline goes into Chapter 11 and starts the process over.

As Congress deliberates on the Big Three, it should recognize the agency problem it faces with management. And it should look to case studies of reorganizations to weigh the shackles that bind the companies in the current sphere with their prospects in the hereafter.

There is life after death.

November 30, 2008

My "non-testimony" on the regulation of swaps and derivatives

November 30, 2008
I was recently asked to testify in a Senate hearing "to explore the role of financial derivatives in the current financial crisis, the current system for regulating them and recommendations for modifying the regulatory system".

This hearing was by the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, chaired by Senator Harkin of Iowa. That might seem like an unusual place to deal with the regulation of esoteric financial products, but this committee has oversight for the CFTC, because the first futures contracts were agricultural, and the CFTC has oversight on swaps and derivatives, because they have characteristics similar to futures.

I was not able to accept the invitation to testify at the hearing, but it was still worth it, because in his letter, Senator Harkin explained that "You were strongly recommended for your knowledge and insights on this subject by Warren Buffett in a conversation I had with him yesterday". That alone makes the letter worth framing. But although I could not testify, I exercised my first-amendment right to send along off-the-record comments (you can do it too). I will give excerpts from these comments here:

In academic theory, derivatives and swaps are intended to help "span the state space"; that is, they are intended to allow investors to efficiently hedge their specific risks, to more precisely meet contingencies of the market, and to mold their returns to meet investment objectives.

In practice, however, swaps and derivatives are often used for less lofty purposes. They are used to: avoid taxes (for example, total return swaps are used to take positions in UK stocks in order to avoid transactions-based taxes); take exposures that are not permitted in a particular investment charter (for example, index amortizing swaps were used by insurance companies to take mortgage risk); speculate (for example, the main use of CDSs is to allow traders to take short positions on corporate bonds); lever beyond an allowed level; and take risk off-balance sheet, where it is not as readily observed and monitored.

The more complex swaps and derivatives not only find ready demand by serving these functions, there are strong profit incentives for the investment banks to supply them. The more complex the instrument, the greater the chance the investment bank can price it to make profit, for the simple reason that investors will not be able to readily determine its fair value. And if they create a product that is exclusive to them, they can also charge a higher spread when an investor wants to trade out of it.

Viewed in an uncharitable light, derivatives and swaps can be thought of as vehicles for gambling; they are, after all, side bets on the market. But unlike the more common modes of gambling, these side bets can pose risks that extend beyond losses to the person making the bet. There are a number of ways the swaps and derivatives end up affecting the market:

Those who create these products need to hedge in the market, so their creation leads to a direct affect on the market.

Those who buy these instruments have other market exposures, so that if they are adversely affected by the swaps or derivatives, they might be forced to liquidate other positions, thereby transmitting a dislocation into other markets.

The value of some derivatives can have real effects for a company. For example, the credit default swaps are used as the basis for triggering debt covenants, so if the swap spread rises above a critical level, it can have an adverse effect on the company.

The use of derivatives and swaps can pull capital away from other productive uses. Because these are side bets, capital employed in these markets does not find an end-user.

Those who are writing the derivatives are in effect providing insurance to the buyers, but without any regulatory requirements. Often those writing these instruments are not in a well-capitalized position to pay out in the event that the option goes into the money.


In terms of regulation, here are some points to consider:

The regulators must know who owes what to whom in these markets. Right now there is no way to ascertain the effect on the swap and derivatives markets of a firm failing, because regulators do not know the web of counterparties to these instruments.

We should consider standardization of instruments and make the instruments simpler. As I point out in my book, complexity of financial instruments is one of the sources of market crisis.

We should consider having swaps and derivatives move as much as possible away from party-to-party into a clearing house. This would improve monitoring and provide for a lower risk of default.

There should be stronger oversight on the use of these instruments. Who is buying and selling them,and for what purpose. Perhaps require participants to specify if the instrument is being used for speculation or hedging. Regulators should also ascertain if the use is reasonable; are these instruments simply being used to move risk off-balance sheet or to take on positions that would have been prohibited if they were executed in another way.


[I have added responses to some of the comments]

June 22, 2008

Risk Management and Its Implications for Systemic Risk - My Testimony to the Senate Banking Committee

June 22, 2008
On June 19 I testified before the Senate Banking Committee, at a hearing of the Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment. You can read my prepared testimony here.



February 1, 2008

I am Signing Off

February 01, 2008
Going forward, I will not be doing new posts for this blog on a frequent basis. (You can probably see things have already been tailing off).
Here is a review of my book that I thought was particularly interesting. It is heartening to think that my book has a little bit of something for everyone.