#FSOC

18 07, 2023

FedFin on: MMF Redemption Fees, Liquidity-Risk Mitigation

Arezou Rafikian2023-07-19T16:52:22-04:00July 18th, 2023|The Vault|

The SEC has significantly revised its proposed MMF-reform standards, eliminating a controversial swing-pricing approach to reduce first-mover advantage in favor of new redemption fees at institutional prime and tax-exempt funds. These and most other funds now also come under stiff new liquidity requirements, which may combine to impose new and costly disciplines that may enhance the relevant appeal of bank deposits without early-redemption risk. Changes in MMF liquidity requirements may also alter demand for commercial paper, municipal obligations, bank debt, and ….

The full report is available to retainer clients. To find out how you can sign up for the service, click here and here.…

20 06, 2023

Karen Petrou: Our Baffled, Befuddled Central Bank

Eliza Allen2023-06-20T14:47:39-04:00June 20th, 2023|The Vault|

After SVB failed, Jay Powell told his monthly press conference that he found this “baffling” even though the Fed was the lead bank supervisor and the only one charged with its BHC’s oversight. At Wednesday’s presser, Mr. Powell took a different, but still-indefensible tack avoiding responsibility for a looming threat by stoutly denying his ability to do anything about nonbank financial-stability risk. However, the Board has an express mandate under the Dodd-Frank Act to address it. To be sure, the Fed does not have direct regulatory authority over nonbanks as it now remembers it did over SVB. But to say that the Fed’s only power is over banks as he Wednesday did is at best befuddled. A baffled, befuddled central bank is a national – indeed global – hazard.

Of course, perhaps Mr. Powell isn’t befuddled and instead wants to ensure that a crisis he claims the Fed can’t avert isn’t one that damages its already-scant credibility. This wouldn’t be the first time the Fed defended itself at the expense of sound policy, but that makes it no less inexcusable. I’ll have more to say about this in a talk on the 28^th, but last week’s memo looks at just one threat to financial stability and what the Fed could readily do to combat it.

The threat comes from the $1.4 trillion private-credit market’s ambition to use its regulatory-arbitrage advantage to morph into a $40 trillion fixed-income sector. Mr. Powell says all he can do …

8 06, 2023

FedFin on: Under Their Thumb and What a Big Thumb It Is

Arezou Rafikian2023-06-14T16:20:52-04:00June 8th, 2023|The Vault|

As we will detail in a forthcoming in-depth report, the banking agencies’ new “guidance” on third-party vendors essentially brings all nonbank counterparties with whom banking organizations deal under the agencies’ enforcement thumb. As a result, nonbank mortgage companies, MIs, credit enhancers, and tech providers and even the GSEs – Home Loan Banks included – will be forced at the least to answer a lot of questions from the banking entities with whom they do pretty much any kind of business. And, if the agencies don’t like the answers, they now assert that they will issue enforcement orders not just against banks, but also nonbank entities to ensure they comply with the full panoply of safety-and-soundness standards referenced in the guidance along with ensuring appropriate consumer protection.

The full report is available to subscription clients. To find out how you can sign up for the service, click here.

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3 05, 2023

FedFin on: Nonbank SIFI Designation

Arezou Rafikian2023-05-03T17:03:24-04:00May 3rd, 2023|The Vault|

In concert with proposing a new systemic-risk methodology, the Financial Stability Oversight Council sought comment on guidance that significantly rewrites the manner in which nonbanks are designated as systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs). The new approach retracts key aspects of the Trump FSOC’s approach, for example eliminating the necessity of determining if a possible designee is likely to fail and what the costs and benefits of new systemic standards are likely to be. Although the new approach retains numerous procedural opportunities for the possible designee to know of and protest action, these and other changes…

The full report is available to retainer clients. To find out how you can sign up for the service, click here and here.…

27 04, 2023

FedFin on: How To Say It’s Systemic

Arezou Rafikian2023-04-27T17:04:10-04:00April 27th, 2023|The Vault|

FSOC’s newly-proposed analytical methodology for systemic risk identification is most immediately important for nonbank mortgage companies and the regulated institutions that love them. It may look as if a U.S. systemic framework is months away, but FSOC has signaled that, in some cases, systemic interventions could well come sooner.

The full report is available to subscription clients. To find out how you can sign up for the service, click here.…

26 04, 2023

FedFin on: Systemic-Risk Determinations

Arezou Rafikian2023-04-26T16:59:28-04:00April 26th, 2023|The Vault|

Rejecting the Trump Administration’s hands-off approach to designating systemically-important nonbank financial institutions or activities and practices, the Biden Administration’s FSOC has bifurcated this construct with one proposal on designating entities and another that lays out an analytical approach to identifying systemic risk that would then guide firm and activity designation as well as Council staff coordination with primary federal regulators leading to new rules, product or service prohibitions/restrictions, or firm-specific supervisory action. If the final framework is as comprehensive as this proposal and FSOC is as actively engaged as its plan requires, then U.S. systemic standards could extend far more widely than is now the case even if firm-specific nonbank designations are few and far between…

The full report is available to retainer clients. To find out how you can sign up for the service, click here and here.…

21 02, 2023

Karen Petrou: FSOC’s NBFI Plans Will Cost Big Banks Dearly

Arezou Rafikian2023-02-21T11:15:33-05:00February 21st, 2023|The Vault|

Although the always-inscrutable FSOC’s read-out of its last meeting was clear only with respect to approval of prior meeting minutes, the brief mention of ongoing U.S. work to address nonbank financial intermediation (NBFI) was so tantalizing that we ventured down darkened corners of key agencies to get a read-out of our own. Two conclusions came to light: the U.S. will take tough action on limiting bank/NBFI interconnections in its pending bank capital rewrite and FSOC is fine with the SEC’s recent MMF and open-end fund proposals even if pretty much no one else is.

First to the capital rewrites and how costly they could be. In its most recent NBFI review, the FSB took sharp issue with the extent to which the U.S. has taken sufficient steps to curb the inter-connected risks to NBFIs evident even before the 2020 market collapse. We expect the banking agencies not only to issue the end-game rules discussed in my last memo, but also to make good on the U.S. promise to Basel well before the game nominally ended with the 2017 revisions.

This means new capital standards costing banks big when it comes to bank equity investments in funds and higher risk weightings for exposures to unregulated financial institutions. It also means new capital requirements absorbing “step-in” risk – i.e., the extent to which reputational risk forces banks to stand by their off-balance sheet funds, SIVs, or other instrumentalities. Two banks in fact supported affiliated funds in MMFs during the 2020 …

19 12, 2022

FedFin on: FSOC Targets Usual Suspects but Also Points to Big-BHC, Nonbank Mortgage Systemic Risk

Arezou Rafikian2023-01-03T15:56:33-05:00December 19th, 2022|The Vault|

As promised, this FedFin report provides an in-depth analysis of FSOC’s 2022 annual report, focusing on findings with near-term policy implications. As always, the report is lengthy and includes many observations and market details that provide insight into Treasury and member-agency-staff thought. Much in it reiterates concerns about short-term funding markets, CCPs, and….

The full report is available to retainer clients. To find out how you can sign up for the service, click here and here.…

21 11, 2022

FedFin: We’re Starting to See SIFIs

Arezou Rafikian2022-11-22T13:21:33-05:00November 21st, 2022|The Vault|

As came out into the open last week, FSOC will finally turn to rewriting the Trump era rewrite of the Obama Administration’s FSOC protocols regarding systemic financial institutions and activities. Could the SIFI reaper be coming for Fannie and Freddie? We doubt it, but then again…

The full report is available to subscription clients. To find out how you can sign up for the service, click here.…

21 11, 2022

Karen Petrou: What Will Be Done, Not Just Said, To Fix FTX

Arezou Rafikian2022-11-22T13:18:11-05:00November 21st, 2022|The Vault|

The only question left unanswered about FTX is whether it was a purposeful scam as more than a few clients conclude or a case of implacable forces ending the era of easy money that just got the better of another wunderkind whose awesome skills turned out to be largely confined to costumery conveying inspired innovation to all too many vulnerable investors and gullible politicians. No matter which it is or even – as I think – if it’s a bit of both, FTX is a debacle that will change U.S. financial policy for the better unless FTX drives still more crypto chaos that then spills over to core financial infrastructure and intermediation. I’ve gotten a lot of questions about crypto policy after my brief discussion in last week’s talk on the midterm’s policy impact. Here, more on both the legislative outlook and what regulators may finally bring themselves to do even if Congress can’t get itself together any better next year than in so many before it.

First more on why stablecoins are the cryptoasset most likely to come under a new federal gun. This isn’t because they deserve it more than any other cryptoasset – although they might – but because policy thinking about what to do with stablecoins is most advanced and, thus, bipartisan negotiations in the House are closest to the finish line.

That said, even stablecoin standards aren’t going to be easy. The clearest articulation of how new law might work is S. 4356, the Lummis-Gillibrand …