#procyclicality – Federal Financial Analytics

4 08, 2023

FedFin on: Credit-Risk Capital Rewrite

Arezou Rafikian2023-08-04T13:41:04-04:00August 4th, 2023|The Vault|

In this report, we proceed from our assessment of the proposed regulatory capital framework to an analysis of the rules governing credit risk. In addition to eliminating the advanced approach, the proposal imposes higher standards for some assets than under the old standardized approach (SA) via new “expanded” requirements. As detailed here, many expanded risk weightings are higher than current requirements either due to specific risk-weighted assessments (RWAs) or definitions and additional restrictions. This contributes to the added capital costs identified by the banking agencies in their impact assessment, suggesting that lower risk weightings in the expanded approach reflected the reduced risks described in the proposal for other assets and will ultimately have little bearing on regulatory-capital requirements and thus ….

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

Karen Petrou: Why FDIC Privatization Isn’t a Pipe Dream

Eliza Allen2023-04-17T12:02:05-04:00April 17th, 2023|The Vault|

As night follows day, so proposals to privatize the FDIC have again followed bank failures. While debate over deposit-insurance privatization was, is, and will be an ideological tug of war between free-market conservatives and government safety-net progressives, it’s nonetheless an important option that warrants careful analysis as the FDIC yet again faces huge losses, banks are charged crippling and procyclical premiums, and talk turns to still more federal coverage at still greater risk not just to insured banks, but also to taxpayers. Pure FDIC privatization remains impossible, but target risk transfers warrant careful, but quick consideration.

Privatization was last seriously discussed when Congress rewrote FDIC coverage in 2006. This was a halcyon time when the FDIC was so sanguine about all the rules put in place after the S&L and bank crises that its 2007 study confidently predicted that systemic risk was a thing of the past, uninsured deposits would never again be covered, and the Deposit Insurance Fund more than sufficed for any systemic situation.

Of course, the great financial crisis that began later that same year put the lie to all this happy talk. Privatization proposals now aren’t anywhere near as happy nor do they repeat past assertions that, with FDIC privatization, the nation could also dispense with bank regulation. Instead, and for good reason, talk has now returned to private options because, without them, moral hazard seems sure to be embedded in a financial system that is still more shadowy.

A modern rethink of FDIC privatization must …

Karen Petrou: Procyclical Capital Rules and the Economy’s Discontent

Arezou Rafikian2023-01-04T13:14:40-05:00August 8th, 2022|The Vault|

In our recent paper outlining the holistic-capital regime regulators should quickly deploy, we noted that current rules are often counter-productive to their avowed goal of bank solvency without peril to prosperity. However, one acute problem in the regulatory-capital rulebook – procyclicality – does particularly problematic damage when the economy faces acute challenges – i.e., now. None of the pending one-off capital reforms addresses procyclicality and, in fact, several might make it even worse. This memo shows how and then what should be quickly done to reinstate the counter-cyclicality all the regulators say they seek.

Last Thursday, the Fed set new, often-higher risk-based capital (RBC) ratios for the largest banks. The reason for this untimely capital hike lies in the interplay between the RBC rules and the Fed’s CCAR stress test. Packaged into the stress capital buffer (SCB), these rules determine how much RBC each large bank must hold to ensure it can stay in the agencies’ good graces and, to its thinking, better still distribute capital.

Put very simply, the more RBC, the less RWAS – i.e., the risk-weighted assets, against which capital rules are measured. The higher the weighting, the lower a capital-strained bank’s appetite to hold it unless risk is high enough also to offset the leverage ratio’s cost – at which point the bank is taking a lot of unnecessary risk to sidestep another set of unintended contradictions in the capital construct. As a Fed study concludes, all but the very strongest banks sit on their …