Moderator: Craig Torres -?Financial Reporter, Bloomberg News
John A. Allison?-?Former President and CEO, Cato Institute, and former Chairman and CEO, BB&T Bank
Mark Spitznagel -?President and CEO, Universa Investments, LP
James Grant -?Editor, Grant?s Interest Rate Observer
John Allison: Talk about Monetary vs Real economic effects. ?Wall Street did not cause the crisis. ?Was a combination of CRA and the GSEs, aided by the Federal Reserve.
When the dot-com bubble deflated, Greenspan ran monetary policy too loose, and deliberately inflated a housing bubble. ?Greenspan (DM: Bernanke) talked about the global savings glut. ?When rates rose, they rose rapidly in percentage terms rapidly.
Bernanke inverts the yield curve, incenting banks to take undue credit risk. ?Bernanke said that there would be no recession amid all of the bubbles. ?Many mainstream businessmen felt fooled by the Fed.
Average businessmen expect businessmen expect inflation, but it is not happening. ?Now they behave conservatively.
Regulation was worse than monetary policy. ?Risk-based capital. Privacy act. Sarbox.
A big deal, and I am the only one talking about it: Early ’80s: attacked bad banks and they failed — a good thing. ?Good banks kept operating. ?This time regulators saved bad banks and regulated good banks more heavily — perverse. ?Totally irrational.
Sheila Bair should not be viewed as a hero. ?Closed barn door after cow got out. ?Later “solutions” not useful.
Bernanke’s book: on the verge of global armageddon… JA thinks contagion was far smaller than perceived.
Liquidity requirements are restraining lending. ?Thinks that banks can’t aid in creating jobs. ?Lending standards are tight.
Likes a bill coming out that would loosen matters. ?Talks about the ’90s when BB&T opposed regulation on supposed racial discrimination in lending.
(DM: What a dog’s breakfast of clever and stupid)
Mark Spitznagel — management and hedging of extreme risks.
Mises — No laboratory experiments can be performed with respect to human action.
Talks about equilibria, correcting processes, etc. ?(DM: Loquacious, not going anywhere… boring.) ?Mentions Tobin’s q-ratio.
(DM: I remember that I didn’t give his book a good review. ?His talk validates that review.)
Tobin, a Keynesian, looked at the q-ratio as a monetary policy tool. ?But investment doesn’t get affected much by the q-ratio.
Shows how the q-ratio is negatively correlated with future returns, and the left tails get bigger as q-ratios get higher.
Trump can stimulate, but crashes will bring correction.
James Grant: Gruber, Obamacare founder said that it passed because the American people are stupid.
New ideas: what to do now after the election? Grant suggests older policies that existed over one century ago. ?Or, more modern: Taylor Rule? ?Friedman’s constant growth rate of money…
Monetary policy has been debated for the last 250 years… the Fed was viewed as a solution to the Money Trust, but brought its own problems. ?Pension fund problems…
The Fed has paid no price for its manifold failings. ?Double Liability would be a better method. ?Bank shareholders should bail out, not taxpayers. ?Monopoliies: PhD economists w/tenure, Federal Reserve.
$15 Trillion of government bonds have been sold with negative yields. ?A promise to store fiat money at a loss.
Panics used to occur at 10-year intervals, w/gold backing and double liability. ?The economy grew rapidly then.
Overstone: “the trouble with money is credit, and the trouble with credit is people.”
We like being spared volatility. ?How many truly want to have a Old Testament-level bear market?
Swiss National Bank? Creates francs to tamp down the currency and buys up euros, dollars, then stocks.
QE is a cautionary tale. ?It failed politically because it did not work. ?Failure of the PhD standard will lead to new thinking.
Q&A
Mark Q1: Trump sounds monetarist, not radical. ?Who will bring change? ?Who will swim against the tide of Statism?
Grant: Will swim against statism. ?Yeah!
Q2: Could gold trading be viewed by the US as a currency exchange? (lower taxes)
Grant: would be easy to do, but difficult to get done politically.
Q3: Isn’t the cost of funny money low productivity growth? ?(True everywhere it has been done)
Allison agrees. ?So does Spitznagel.
Q4 Julie Smith: recent events in India — the war on cash. ?Comments?
Grant talks about Ken Rogoff, and remove $50 and $10 bills so that negative rates can prevail. ?Someone picked up a copy in India — and it will be self-destructive. ?It murders the cash system, which is the real banking system in India.
Q5: Alex Billy Grad Student at Georgetown: Did the Mexican crisis in 1995 have an impact on future developments?
Allison: big New York banks got bailed out of an irrational risk. ?The cure for too big banks is to let them fail. ?Wall Street was bailed out at the cost of Main Street.
Bert Ely Q6: Support for Basel III is sagging. ?What would the effects be?
Allison: Great. ?Let’s just have a leverage ratio.
Me Q7: ?Risk based capital vs liquidity Life insurers vs Banks?
Allison: doesn’t see it that way. ?Insurers are very different than Banks. ?Buying too much MBS at banks as a result.
Q8: “Ships are safe in harbors, but that is not what ships are for.”
Grant: agrees. Goodhart: Banking and the finance of trade in New York. ?Banks had to remain liquid and well capitalized in order to survive. ?It was a good system.
Q9 (Torres): What should we do now?
Allison: Modify Dodd-Frank such that bank with a 10% leverage ratio could opt out of Dodd-Frank.
Grant: How to modify the Fed: End Humphrey-Hawkins. ?Don’t take a poison chalice… reform wisely after there has been a real crisis and want real solutions.
Spitznagel: end low rates so that economic actors don’t take marginal risks.