But the real barrier to taking such a step is probably political more than anything else.

From The Baseline Scenario:

"A Quick Note on Bank Liabilities

with 3 comments

I want to pick up on a theme Simon discussed in his last two posts: the recent panic over bank debt, particularly subordinated bank debt. I’ll probably repeat some of what he said, but with a little more background.

Remember back to last September. What was the lesson of Lehman Brothers? The most important asset a bank has is confidence. If people are confident in a bank, it can continue to do business; if not, it can’t.

For the last six months, where has that confidence been coming from? Not from the banks’ balance sheets, certainly. And not, I would argue, from the dribs and drabs of capital and targeted asset guarantees provided by Treasury and the Fed. It has been coming from a widespread assumption that the U.S. government will not let the creditors of large banks lose money, out of fear of repeating the Lehman debacle.

The story goes something like this. Let’s say that Citigroup were restructured - via bankruptcy, or via government conservatorship - in such a way that creditors did not get all their money back. (None of this applies to FDIC-insured deposits or to recently-issued senior debt that is explicitly guaranteed by the government.) They might be forced to convert debt for equity, or they might be stiffed altogether. The first-order concern is that this would have ripple effects that could take down other financial institutions. According to Martin Wolf, bank bonds comprise one quarter of all U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds; losses would be spread far and wide, hitting other banks, pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds, and so on. If Citigroup did not support its derivatives positions, then institutions that bought credit default swap protection from Citi would face further losses. (I believe that most U.S. banks were net buyers of CDS protection, however.) The fear is that it will be impossible to predict how these losses will be distributed and who else might go down.

The second-order concern is bigger. After all, Lehman did not seem to force any major financial institution into bankruptcy, although it may have twisted the knife that AIG had already stuck in itself. Once investors figure out that bank debt is not safe, they will refuse to lend to any banks, and we are back in September all over again. Or almost: it is possible that the Federal Reserve’s massive efforts to provide liquidity to the banking system will be enough to keep banks functioning. But who wants to take that risk?

This is why, for the last five months, the government has been doing everything it can to imply that bank creditors (at least for “systemically important” banks) will be protected, without saying so explicitly, because that would suddenly increase the potential liabilities of the government by trillions of dollars.

So what changed this week?

Simon’s theory is that the semi-forced conversion of Citigroup preferred into common shares was taken as a sign that the government may try to force creditors to exchange their bonds for common stock in future bailouts. Preferred shares are not, technically speaking, debt. But they are a lot like debt, and once you finish converting preferred into common, the next layer of the capital structure is subordinated debt. Now, Tim Geithner could come out and say, “Yes, we forced a conversion of preferred into common, but we’re going to stop there and not do the same to creditors.” But no, actually, he can’t say that, because that would constitute an explicit guarantee of all bank liabilities. So the market is left wondering, and we know by now that markets don’t like uncertainty.

Another possibility is simply that more and more people are thinking that the government may end up restructuring debt. Martin Wolf and Willem Buiter, both very serious people, both have raised the question of whether the government should be protecting creditors. Wolf, I believe, doesn’t answer the question (although he discusses the issue very well); Buiter says no.

Each time the lines on that chart above have spiked upward, the government has taken some action to imply that creditors will be protected, without making any promises. Chances are we’ll see another action along those lines. At some point, though, the government may lose credibility.

As an aside, one of the steps in Sweden’s sometimes-heralded bank rescue program was an explicit government guarantee on all bank liabilities. If any country could guarantee its banks, you would think it would be the U.S. But the real barrier to taking such a step is probably political more than anything else.

Written by James Kwak

March 6, 2009 at 2:04 pm"

Me:

My point might not be relevant, but I’d like to try again. Forgetting the shareholders, etc., for a moment, what is Citi’s plan going forward? I’ve referenced a number of stories from Reuters that they plan to sell off major holdings, but keep Banamex. A figure I’ve read for Banamex is $12 to $15 Billion Dollars. How much they could get for Monex, Nikko Cordial, etc., I haven’t read. However, we are going into a depression. Many businesses might not make it. Citi’s plan, just like AIG’s, was essentially to get a bridge loan from the government to get through this crisis, and repay the money in the future when they can get a better deal for these assets. But what happens if that strategy blows up? It might be better to sell these businesses now.

What I’m asking, in other words, is whether or not Citi’s assets will ever be worth enough, going forward, for anybody to get anything from them? If the government is having to subsidize these assets, can we be sure that they aren’t already clearly a major loss?

If we are not really trying to save Citi, but insure investors or creditors of Citi, why not negotiate with them directly, acknowledging that they have us by the short hairs? It won’t be a very pleasant realization, but at least we’d be attacking the problem directly and telling the taxpayers the truth.