by Matthew Richardson and Nouriel Roubini
Between the fall of 2008 and the winter of 2009, the world's economy and financial markets fell off a cliff. Stock markets in the United States, Asia, Europe and Latin America lost between a third and half of their value; international trade declined by a whopping 12 percent; and the size of the global economy contracted for the first time in decades.
When economists and Wall Street types toss around the term "systemic risk," that's pretty much what they're talking about. The particular risks that led to the crisis -- i.e., big institutions with too much leverage, too little capital and too many implicit and explicit government guarantees -- were not impossible to anticipate. (In fact, some of us warned about the financial pandemic that was to come.) Now, the question is: How do we keep this all from happening again?
To create a truly safe financial system, we have to focus on two goals. First, we have to drive a stake through the heart of the "too big to fail" mantra that only fattens our financial beasts. Second, we should stop focusing on the problems of individual banks and look at the broader risk that the largest and most complex financial institutions pose.
For the full opinion editorial in Sunday's April 11th Washington Post, please go to the following link
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/08/AR2010040805132.html
A number of academics and policy makers have favored the forced debt-for-equity conversion bonds or contingent capital. With any regulation, the key is to know strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of contingent capital have been mentioned a number of times here and there (for most recent FT article, see http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0310ebf4-4342-11df-9046-00144feab49a.html). Here, I outline some contingencies for contingent capital that regulators must keep in mind.
by Viral Acharya & Matthew Richardson
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, John Varley, Barclays Chief Executive, was quoted as saying: "We see big banks as diversifiers, not risk aggregators." His comments are part of a chorus of Bank CEOs now questioning various reforms that are aimed at large, complex banks.
He is plain wrong and regulators should be wary of such arguments.
