Sli Eile: Two television documentaries shown, recently: one called ‘Freefall’ a dramatic story of the current economic climate as it unfolded for individuals in the City and a family; the other a story of the demise of Lehman Brothers last year, leave room to wonder how close the parallel to Anglo-Irish and the late-night agonies in board rooms and Merrion Street this time 12 months ago.
Globally, as well as in Ireland, the world of finance is reminiscent of Hamlet's "an unweeded garden" of "things rank and gross in nature".
The explanations are familiar: greed, lack of adherence to moral codes, lack of regulation, blind faith in markets, senior policy makers and public servants asleep at the wheel. It was and continues to be a systemic failure of huge proportions with devastating results for ordinary people.
One of the features of the current financial turmoil in Ireland is the way in which many sharp differences have opened up across the political, media and socio-economic interests fronts. There is no consensus on how to sort out banking (but there is on most other things - hence the Dublin Consensus).
Each political party in the Oireachtas has its own version of how best to proceed from here (NAMA as is, NAMA modified, ‘Good, bad bank’, Nationalisation of the big two banks and other variations of these). It is probable that a mix of sectional economic interest and remnants of past ideology influence the position adopted. I think that it is also true to say that most people haven’t a clue what the mumbo jumbo means and leave it to the ‘experts’ to work it out (but which experts?). It is also true to say that there are massive uncertainties built into any policy response at this time. We simply do not know what the future holds in terms of growth in GDP, lending, equity valuesor property values, as well as Euro currency movements. In this climate it is little wonder that different groups wish to minimise the risk to themselves:
Political parties are aware of the huge electoral implications of ‘getting it wrong’, not to mention the long-term pay-back in fiscal liabilities that might cripple the exchequer for years;
Bankers (as in those who manage banks) need to defend their capital reserves and avoid a run on their deposits and other liabilities post summer-2010 – and (another small point) they need to safeguard their own remuneration out of maximised short-term profits;
Many people working in the finance sector and their families are worried sick about losing their jobs in any rationalisation of banks (whether through nationalisation, or majority state holding, or some other change);
Depositors – large and small – want to be sure of their savings 3-5 years out from now;
Share-holders have taken a hammering but want to regain something – these include pension savers;
Bondholders – large and small, senior and subordinated – need some acceptable non-dire level of predictability of likely return and security of asset;
And …significant borrowers in the toxic wastelands want to cover their losses, move on and start all over again if they can (they will go to any lengths, as we saw in the Courts recently…).
The ‘Regulators’ and other public officials need to be seen to perform and deliver, especially as they failed so abysmally heretofore.
The truth is you can’t please everyone – at least not all of the time. And you certainly can’t fool everyone – at least not all of them all the time.
Essentially, banking in Ireland today is a lame duck. And when the duck is lame the State moves in, at least temporarily, to either subsidise or take-over. Everyone agrees about that. Even Adam Smith would have signed up to that (but I doubt he would have approved of NAMA). At the moment, it is a question of subsidise as the State takes the risk, while citizens pay the premium through higher debt servicing and taking on the value of future losses on over-paid assets through NAMA. Some ducks in the past didn’t matter so much . Hence, steel, shipbuilding, car assembly, mining and the like eventually went to the wall in many European countries. The problem with banking is that it is too central to everything else, so that it cannot be allowed to wreck the rest of the economy - especially those businesses without credit.
I am sceptical about the claims of unique knowledge, expertise and certainty made by those who said only a year ago that banking is fine and does not need to be recapitalised ... or, it does but only a bit. Twelve months later, why should anyone put too much trust in the judgment of those at the helms of banking, regulation, economics and media punditry? Even today, we simply don’t know the scale of bad loans.
Good old fashioned banking needs to be brought back, except this time as mixed economy.
Let me explain. I think we need a single public retail bank constituted from AIB and BOI in competition with other retail banks, an ICC and ACC as they were for business credit and re-structuring, and the Credit Unions when it comes local economy and households. With a tough regulatory regime, corporate democracy and ethics, and public ownership of at least one key financial institution in each of the three key areas: high-street retail, business/wholesale and local community banking. Let the privately owned institutions compete with that on this home ground, and lets have some mixed economy.
In the meantime, what are going to do with the toxic stuff? Without getting lost in technical and legal detail,we need to see the big picture. To the extent that individuals and corporates lost in their gambling, then let them take the hit with one proviso – that individuals and households suffering large drops in incomes are protected by a basic income floor through the social welfare system, plus some attenuated means-tested compensation payment to shareholders reflecting a fair price for shares. That’s only fair, especially if those on social welfare face cuts this winter.
Playing the stock market has to be understood as a game where losses mean losses and moral hazard is opposed.
Let anything guaranteed to September 2010 stand, but that’s it. Let some version of a State asset agency buy up bank debts at some estimate of current market prices (as the Swedes did in the 90s), rather than some fanciful long-term economic value (implying a huge loss on many assets held by the banks), while the State moves in and nationalises AIB and BOI without further delay and starts putting in place a plan for a National Recovery Bank as proposed by Fine Gael some months ago. Any future windfalls from a recovery in the value of some assets could be re-cycled into credit towards new green businesses, as well as re-structuring of those which have a chance of survival. In other words, instead of over-paying for rotten debts through NAMA, lets use the surplus over current market price to capitalise a National Recovery Bank.
As I understand it, the key point in the Labour Party line on nationalisation (which is exactly what Karl Whelan and Brian Lucy have being saying since the beginning of the year) is that
A crucial feature of the nationalisation approach is that it dramatically reduces the risk involved in having to value the bad loans.
I agree that an asset agency would be useful – once nationalisation has gone through.
I am not proposing a nationalised, but unreformed, banking arrangement and corporate ethos. Old-boy networks are everywhere from company boardrooms to a future asset agency to property developers to estate agencies to the golf course.
….in the year 2020 - sure he is a decent chap and you know how much trouble he has had and we can put it all behind us….an equity stake in return for their helpfulness is in order….a levy on windfall profits needs to take account of international market sentiment… blah blah
Question: If nationalisation of the big two banks, AIB and BOI, is the answer, as more and more people agree(including some very respectable and conservative economists) then why should it be only temporary? What advantages arise from a private sector-owned, only, banking system? Discuss.
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