By Mike Konczal, originally published on Next New Deal
During the 2012 election, conservatives' main goal was to either repeal Dodd-Frank completely or remove such large sections of it that it was a completely different bill. There was very little engagement with the content of Dodd-Frank itself and how to make them work better. One important example was Republican candidates like Jon Huntsman calling for bold new financial reforms that were already part of Dodd-Frank.
It now appears that the flagship policy journal on the right, National Affairs, is moving towards a reform rather than replace agenda for Dodd-Frank and financial reform. The latest issue featured an large, 7,000+ word article, "Against Casino Finance," by Eric Posner and E. Glen Weyl of University of Chicago law school. What's fascinating about the piece is less the authors' counter proposals for reform, which are lacking, than the fact that they accept two of the ideas put forward by financial reformers that have generally been resisted on the right. The first is that derivatives require regulation and the second is that prudential regulation of the largest systemically risky financial firms is necessary.
Let's take those in order, below the fold.
First the authors argue, "[I]n today's derivatives market...no such sensible restriction exists to separate the use of the instruments as insurance from their use as gambling devices." They describe these instruments as "pure gambling," or a transaction in which "one party loses exactly what the other party gains, and both are made worse off by the additional risk they take on in this bargain." They argue that these instruments can increase pure risks and are zero-sum, differentiating them from other trades. They go as far as to argue against the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.
It isn't clear what they think of the general Dodd-Frank approach to derivatives, which emphasizes transparency through exchanges and clearinghouses, capital adequacy, private enforcement, and regulation of intermediaries. Their focus is partially on the "insurable interest doctrine" of common law as it relates to insurance, which requires that a party to an insurance contract have a stake in the event. If you can't buy fire insurance on your neighbor's house, why can you buy credit insurance on his business if you don't have an ownership claim on it? That's a dog whistle for either banning so-called "naked" derivatives or running them under state-level insurance law. The vote to ban naked credit default swaps, proposed in the Senate by Bryan Dorgan, failed (and was generally opposed on the right).
The other regulations relate to bailouts and prudential regulations. As they put it:
When banks fail, the government must act as lender of last resort.
Today, the government serves this role in two ways. First, it compels banks to buy government-supplied deposit insurance, which covers depositors up to $250,000. Second, it provides emergency loans at below-market rates -- bailouts -- to any financial institution whose collapse would take down enough banks with it to endanger the entire economy.
Few seriously doubt that governments must play this role.
Bagehot’s rule is usually summarized as, “Lend without limit, to solvent firms, against good collateral, at high rates." In exchange for this, certain regulations are necessary. Dodd-Frank includes higher capital and liquidity requirements for larger and riskier firms, as well as certain organizational requirements (loosely referred to under the term "living wills") to help with collapsing the company in question via FDIC's resolution powers.
Again, it would be interesting if they addressed the specific reforms to lender of last resort functions included in Dodd-Frank, or the combination of regulation and resolution. Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act was amended so that "any emergency lending program or facility is for the purpose of providing liquidity to the financial system, and not to aid a failing financial company." and any such lending program has to have "broad-based eligibility.” Some have argued this is too loose to deal with a liquidity crisis. Do these authors agree? Are the regulations and FDIC's resolution powers sufficient in this case, or do we need a different approach?
Their specific recommendations for how the right should tackle Dodd-Frank, which is the last third of the piece, involve applying stricter cost-benefit analysis to all rules. There's no talk about repeal, or huge changes to the framework, or long court battles. Cost-benefit has significant problems, but that's a debate for another day. Conceptually, it is tinkering with Dodd-Frank rather than repealing it, which has dominated the conversation on the right. Will this signal a larger change?
Mike Konczal is a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.