Rethinking “Too Big to Fail”- What Does Failure Mean Anyway?
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Much of the debate about reforming financial regulation revolves around a single question: are certain financial institutions “too big to fail”? The historic turmoil that gripped the markets following the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers – and the extraordinary expense incurred to avoid similar defaults at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG – makes it clear that there is something to the notion that certain institutions are too big or interconnected to be allowed to “fail.”
A true understanding of the “too big to fail” phenomenon requires a more precise definition of failure. What does it mean to fail? The simplest answer is that a firm “fails” when it ceases to exist. Yet equating failure with the “death” of a firm obscures more than it clarifies.
Contrast the cases of (1) Lehman Brothers, which “failed” and then saw many of its U.S. assets purchased by Barclays Capital with (2) AIG, which continues as a franchise thanks to a government rescue, to (3) Bear Stearns, which was merged with JP Morgan Chase thanks to a collateralized loan from the Fed of nearly $30 billion. The senior management of all three firms lost their jobs and the common stock lost nearly 100% of its value in each case. However, the creditors of Bear Stearns and AIG received 100 cents on every dollar of debt obligations they held, while holders of Lehman Brothers’ senior bonds received just $8.625 per $100 of face value, a 91% loss. Counterparties on AIG’s tens of billions of dollars worth of credit derivatives actually saw their positions improved, while Lehman Brothers’ derivatives counterparties suffered losses on any under-collateralized exposures. Bear Stearns’ derivatives obligations, prime brokerage, and custodial accounts were transferred to JPMorgan Chase, holding counterparties harmless.
In all three cases, the management of the firms “failed,” the common stock – which comprised much of the wealth of employees that held it through retirement accounts and compensation – failed, but the franchise, creditors, and counterparties failed in some cases but not in others. The only one of the three failures that threatened systemic financial stability was the failure of Lehman Brothers. And the only unique feature of this failure was the losses suffered by creditors and counterparties.
Thus, the essence of “too big to fail” is the sense that the firm’s creditors will be rescued from loss: the stockholders may get wiped out, the management may lose their jobs, the franchise may cease to exist or get sold off to a rival, but the creditors will be protected. In some cases, creditors are guaranteed rather explicitly, as in the case of FDIC-insured deposits. In other cases, creditors have a reasonable basis to assume that their political profile is sufficient to protect them from loss in the event of a crisis. For instance, depositors above the old $100,000 insurance limit, which are predominately small businesses, could tend to assume that Washington would protect them from wide-scale failure. In other cases, creditors were conditioned to expect a rescue based on past rescues of large firms. According to its last annual report (filed in February 2008), Lehman Brothers’ paid its creditors an average of 5.30% per year in interest. This was barely above the average funding cost of the Federal Government, and hardly reflective of the risk of failure of a firm that was leveraged over 30-to-1 ($691 billion in assets financed with just $22.5 billion in shareholders’ equity).
The supposed solution to the problem of “too big to fail” is “resolution authority” that would empower the government to take over firms on the verge of bankruptcy. Yet, as is clear from the case of Fannie and Freddie, the authority to resolve a firm need not imply losses for creditors. Moreover, the practical application of the authority seems hardly different from the conditions imposed as part of the emergency loans the Fed extended to AIG. If excesses built up because creditors lent money to “too big to fail” firms on the premise that the government would protect them from large, sudden losses, how is formally taking these types of losses off the table going to result in a more stable financial system?
The key point to remember is that firms don’t fail – the claims of various stakeholders do. Policymakers can only solve the problem of “too big to fail” by making large bank creditors feel less secure about their claims. The proposed resolution authority would do precisely the opposite.
Christopher Papagianis is the Managing Director of e21 and was Special Assistant for Domestic Policy to President George W. Bush.