The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain’s attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal — the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.
At the heart of the scandal was Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors’ money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry — actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.
When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating’s failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.
The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today’s credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain’s judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.
Okay, so that’s the Obama story … now, what are the facts?
The Facts: Keating was sentenced to prison and required to pay more than $1 billion in civil penalties after being convicted on fraud, racketeering and conspiracy charges centered around his running of Lincoln Savings and Loan, which he bought in 1984. On April 14, 1989, Lincoln was seized by the government at an eventual taxpayer cost of $3.4 billion, then the most expensive thrift bailout in history. Lincoln and Keating became national symbols of the savings-and-loans collapse of the ’80s — much as lending firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have symbolized the current financial meltdown.
McCain had been friends with Keating since the early ’80s — their families vacationed together several times, according to previous CNN reporting. Keating was an early financial supporter of McCain’s political career and donated to his campaigns repeatedly over the years. Keating’s first company, American Continental, was headquartered in Arizona, the state McCain represents. McCain became one of the so-called “Keating Five” — five U.S. senators investigated over accusations they tried to interfere in a federal investigation of Keating’s role in the savings-and-loan’s collapse.
In January 1985, while in the U.S. House, McCain co-sponsored a resolution that would have delayed the effective date of proposed government limits “on direct investment in real estate, service corporations, and equity securities by federally insured savings and loan associations.” He was one of the early sponsors, although a majority of Congress eventually signed on to sponsor it. The legislation would have impacted Keating’s business, but would have regulated the entire industry, not specifically Lincoln Savings and Loan.
McCain also wrote several letters to government regulators and other officials regarding the issue. One, dated Jan. 30, 1985, to White House chief of staff James Baker, called the proposed regulations “unwise,” saying the effort “flys (sic) in the face of our recent efforts to remove the hand of government from the affairs of private enterprise.”
On April 9, 1987, McCain and the other senators attended a meeting with federal regulators investigating Keating. McCain has since said he regrets doing so. “He asked me to help him,” he said during an October 2002 interview with Chicago’s WGN-AM radio station. “I said I wouldn’t do certain things. He called me a wimp. I threw him out of my office, but I still went to a meeting with four other senators with a group of regulators.”
McCain testified that he never asked for anything inappropriate during the meeting, and the Senate ethics committee found that, after regulators said the firm was being investigated not just for insolvency, but on criminal grounds, McCain took no further action on Keating’s behalf. In the end, the committee recommended McCain and Sen. John Glenn be dropped from the probe — although McCain was rebuked by the Senate for using “poor judgment” in his relationship with the millionaire banker.
The Verdict: True. McCain did push to delay regulations that would have cracked down on savings-and-loans practices and intervened on Keating’s behalf, although he was cleared of wrongdoing in the “Keating Five” case.
Why should we believe that John McCain’s judgment is any better now, than it was 20 years ago?
Significant bipartisan work has built consensus around dramatic improvements to the original Bush-Paulson plan to stabilize American financial markets — including cutting in half the Administration’s initial request for $700 billion and requiring Congressional review for any future commitment of taxpayers’ funds. If the government loses money, the financial industry will pay back the taxpayers.
3 Phases of a Financial Rescue with Strong Taxpayer Protections
Reinvest in the troubled financial markets … to stabilize our economy and insulate Main Street from Wall Street
Reimburse the taxpayer … through ownership of shares and appreciation in the value of purchased assets
Reform business-as-usual on Wall Street … strong Congressional oversight and no golden parachutes
CRITICAL IMPROVEMENTS TO THE RESCUE PLAN
Democrats have insisted from day one on substantial changes to make the Bush-Paulson plan acceptable — protecting American taxpayers and Main Street — and these elements will be included in the legislation
Protection for taxpayers, ensuring THEY share IN ANY profits
Cuts the payment of $700 billion in half and conditions future payments on Congressional review
Gives taxpayers an ownership stake and profit-making opportunities with participating companies
Puts taxpayers first in line to recover assets if participating company fails
Guarantees taxpayers are repaid in full — if other protections have not actually produced a profit
Allows the government to purchase troubled assets from pension plans, local governments, and small banks that serve low- and middle-income families
Limits on excessive compensation for CEOs and executives
New restrictions on CEO and executive compensation for participating companies:
No multi-million dollar golden parachutes
Limits CEO compensation that encourages unnecessary risk-taking
Recovers bonuses paid based on promised gains that later turn out to be false or inaccurate
Strong independent oversight and transparency
Four separate independent oversight entities or processes to protect the taxpayer
A strong oversight board appointed by bipartisan leaders of Congress
A GAO presence at Treasury to oversee the program and conduct audits to ensure strong internal controls, and to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse
An independent Inspector General to monitor the Treasury Secretary’s decisions
Transparency — requiring posting of transactions online — to help jumpstart private sector demand
Meaningful judicial review of the Treasury Secretary’s actions
Help to prevent home foreclosures crippling the American economy
The government can use its power as the owner of mortgages and mortgage backed securities to facilitate loan modifications (such as, reduced principal or interest rate, lengthened time to pay back the mortgage) to help reduce the 2 million projected foreclosures in the next year.
Extends provision (passed earlier in this Congress) to stop tax liability on mortgage foreclosures
Helps save small businesses that need credit by aiding small community banks hurt by the mortgage crisis—allowing these banks to deduct losses from investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stocks.
Fed Will Expand Its Lending Arsenal in a Bid to Calm Markets; Moves Cap a Momentous Weekend for American Finance
NEW YORK — The American financial system was shaken to its core on Sunday. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. said it would file for bankruptcy protection, and Merrill Lynch & Co. agreed to be sold to Bank of America Corp.
The U.S. government, which bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a week ago and orchestrated the sale of Bear Stearns Cos. to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in March, played much tougher with Lehman. It refused to provide a financial backstop to potential buyers. Without such support, Barclays PLC and Bank of America, the two most interested buyers, walked away. Barclays said Monday it pulled out of the potential deal after deciding it wasn’t in the best interest of shareholders.
Early Monday morning, Lehman filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Lehman said none of the broker-dealer subsidiaries or other subsidiaries of LBHI will be included in the Chapter 11 filing and all of the broker-dealers will continue to operate. Customers of Lehman Brothers, including customers of its wholly owned subsidiary, Neuberger Berman Holdings LLC, may continue to trade or take other actions with respect to their accounts, Lehman said.
On Sunday night, Bank of America struck an all-stock deal to buy Merrill Lynch for $29 a share, or $50 billion.
The futures of both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will be front and center Monday morning, as Wall Street wakes up to a world where the independent broker-dealers are increasingly few in number. They would be the last of the big five independent firms, with Merrill and Bear Stearns Cos. having been sold and Lehman likely to close down.
This tumultuous year has made it clear that investment banks like Lehman and Bear Stearns face vulnerabilities that commercial banks such as J.P. Morgan and Bank of America are less prone to. The investment banks must constantly depend on short- and medium-term money markets to fund their operations. Commercial banks, meanwhile, can count on more stable consumer deposit bases.
Knowing how anxiety affects me physically, I wonder what my day is going to be like today.
Yeah, sure, I work for Morgan Stanley, one of the survivors (according to the article in the previous post). It’s still going to be a painfully stressful time for anyone working for an investment bank for awhile.
FOR many Americans, Sunday is for church, family lunches or catching a ball game. For the country’s financial authorities, it has become the day of the dramatic announcement: the takeover of Bear Stearns; the Treasury’s promise in July to stand behind Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and, most momentous of all, on Sunday September 7th, what had recently come to be seen the inevitable culmination of that pledge: the government’s seizure of the two giant mortgage agencies.
Hank Paulson, the Treasury secretary, had hoped that the July announcement would calm nerves sufficiently that he would not have to take out his “bazooka”. The opposite happened. The firms’ shares collapsed amid fears that investors would be wiped out in a government rescue. This severely curtailed their ability to issue much-needed capital, also infecting their mortgage-backed securities and the $1.6 trillion of debt they had issued to buy mortgages for themselves. It was only a matter of time before the government was forced to launch its largest-ever financial rescue.
Though some had wanted to see the agencies fully nationalised, obstacles stood in the way—not least that this would have required an act of Congress. So the Treasury had to get creative. The plan has four planks. First, Fannie and Freddie will be taken into “conservatorship”, a watered-down form of receivership, by their revamped regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, until they are once again “sound and solvent”. Second, they will have access to a loan facility, secured against their assets, until the end of 2009. Intriguingly, this will also be available to the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks. James Lockhart, the FHFA’s head, stressed that these bank-owned co-operatives, also designed to grease housing markets, are mostly in good shape. But they have a lot of short-term debt and the quality of their borrowers’ collateral is falling. Allowing them to tap the credit line may be a shrewd precautionary measure.
The third plank highlights Mr Paulson’s wish to protect the taxpayer and avoid “moral hazard”. The Treasury will buy preferred shares as needed, whenever the agencies’ net worth dips below zero, and this paper will be repaid ahead of their existing preferred and common stock (whose dividends are being eliminated). Lowly shareholders could yet lose everything.
Indeed, the deal could have been a lot worse for the taxpayer. In exchange for vowing to keep the firms above water, the government will receive $1 billion “fee” in preferred stock at no cost, along with warrants giving it the right to 80% of the firms’ common stock at a nominal price. The two chief executives will leave. Fannie and Freddie, whose unparalleled political connections helped them to keep regulation toothless and expand on threadbare capital cushions, will no longer be allowed to lobby lawmakers.
The final piece of the plan may unnerve some taxpayers. To keep mortgage markets chugging along, the Treasury will become a buyer of last resort for bonds packaged by the agencies, purchasing them in the open market if demand slackens. Could it end up burdened with piles of toxic paper? Mr Paulson was upbeat, pointing out that since the Treasury would hold the securities to maturity it might one day reap net gains.
But the eventual cost to the public purse is unknown and potentially huge. The Treasury says it could buy as much as $100 billion of preferred stock in each of the two firms, though it deems that highly unlikely. Ultimately, the size of the bill will depend on their ability to recover, and that is far from clear. Under American accounting standards they have adequate capital, despite the rapid deterioration of their portfolios. But on a fair-value basis, marking their assets to the current market price, Freddie is insolvent and Fannie not far off. Moreover, with house prices still sliding and foreclosures rising sharply, worse may be ahead.
It’s going to be really interesting to see how the markets react to this news today … and it might end up being a good deal for the taxpayers in the long run; but with some short-to-medium term pain for banks and investors.
Unlike A-Train, while I agree that the taxpayers are going to get saddled with some of the cost of this mess, I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as he is predicting.
Thus far, the government’s commitment is $200 billion … and there is no guarantee that they’ll have to shell out that much. To put that amount into perspective; as of September 2007, the war in Iraq was costing $720 million per day … $200 billion is about 278 days of the war, a tad more than 9 months. The war could end up costing tax payers between 2-3 trillion dollars; 10-15 times that of the mortgage crisis.
The entire mortgage market is currently estimated to be $11 trillion dollars; this means that the bail-out is for less than 2% of the entire market. With the way that the market has been swinging lately; I make and lose more than that in a day sometimes.
My gut feeling is that most investors are panicking needlessly, assuming that all the loans in these various companies’ portfolios are bad. I think, however, that most homeowners will do everything they can to pay their loans; in the short-term, foreclosures will continue to rise, but with plans being developed to help homeowners’ re-finance their loans, given a few more months things should settle down.
When it comes right down to it, banks would rather take a small loss on loans by re-financing at market-prices; rather than foreclosing, and auctioning off a house at prices that are well-below the going market-rate. And most homeowners would rather stay in their properties if at all possible, doing everything they can to make the payments, rather than losing their homes.
Banks are getting more conservative, and are requiring better documentation before approving loans. Home buyers are buying smarter; trying to get something they can afford, rather than getting the biggest and most expensive house they might possibly be able to get. And the fact remains that it’s really only at the upper-end that housing prices are falling. At the lower-end and middle of the market, prices are stable … either rising very slowly, or stagnant, but not really falling.
Investors just need to step-back a bit, get rid of the worst junk in their portfolios, and ride it out, because it will get better … and getting off a roller-coaster in the middle of the ride is dangerously stupid.
In the latest sign of how badly firms have been hurt by the credit crunch Thornburg Mortgage Inc. Friday said there is “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern, citing deterioration of prices of mortgage-backed collateral and a liquidity position under unprecedented pressure.
Thornburg issued the warning amid an announcement that the lender will restate financial statements for the past two years to recognize write-downs on assets that may result in a $427.8 million charge for 2007.
Picking CCC as your ticker symbol when you are listing a fund that invests in debt tempts fate. That is what private-equity shop Carlyle Group did when it floated Carlyle Capital Corp. in Amsterdam. The fund invests in AAA-rated bonds backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the U.S. mortgage giants. Having borrowed 32 times the amount of equity in the fund by the end of 2007, there wasn’t much cushion against the margin calls that are now coming in.
Many hedge funds borrow heavily, but banks now are increasingly cautious about lending. If a fund’s creditors decide they want to offer less debt or hold more collateral against trades, it can lead to forced asset sales. If the fund’s trades happen to be losing money, too, the result can be a vicious spiral.
Carlyle Capital is struggling to meet calls from financing counterparties for more collateral to back up that debt. Its $21.7 billion portfolio was supported by just $670 million of net assets at the end of last year. Carlyle Group has lent the fund some money — a credit facility recently upped to $150 million — to help ease its cash crunch. The fund held back on paying a dividend last quarter. It says it also has sold $1 billion of assets since August.
