Help To Bubble

I just don't get it. The UK is awash with debt it can't shift, yet the UK government thinks it's a great idea to ensure that people get £130bn of mortgages they can't otherwise afford. 

A Treasury spokesperson is quoted in today's FT as saying that "there are rules ensuring that people can pay the mortgage that they have taken on." But if they couldn't have got the mortgage in the first place, how is that so?

It would be fair enough if someone were able to point to specific, unreasonably restrictive bank lending practices and get them changed. Yet neither the Treasury nor the Bank of England has been able to bring the banks to heel, so putting the taxpayer on the hook for 15% of a bunch of new high loan-to-value mortgages seems a little careless to say the least.

But maybe it's too late. Maybe we're just seeing the inevitable consequence of the fact that the UK state is already standing behind £491bn of UK mortgage debt, or 42%. The state simply has to be back even more. The US introduced this nonsense as a 'temporary measure' 70 years ago and, as Gillian Tett recently pointed out, is now behind 90% of the US mortgage market. How's that working out for them? You be the judge.

Welcome to Bubbleland.

Image from LuxLifeMiami.

Either Gillian Tett's On Fire...

Ominous bursts of smoke have been rising from Gillian Tett recently. 

On September 12, the lady who gave us Fool's Gold pointed out that six key aspects of the financial system in 2008 are far worse now. 

The banks are bigger. Shadow banking is bigger. Investor faith hinges on central banking 'wisdom' and liquidity, while the top 5% of bankers are soaking up 40% of that support in bonuses. No one has been jailed for their role in the sub-prime fiasco. And the US government agencies now account for 90% of the mortgage market...

Today's smoke is rising over the Federal Reserve's decision to keep buying smack bonds at the rate of $85bn a month. It appears to have concluded that the West simply can't handle the withdrawal symptoms. Meanwhile, the UK regulatory elite has finally started to ring the bell over the fact that only 10-15% of the money our banks create actually goes to productive firms, while the rest is stoking financial asset bubbles... And, oh look, the real estate agency, Foxtons, has soared on its return to the stock market.

Either Gillian Tett's on fire, or something else sure as Hell is.

Image from JetSetRnv8r.

More Sunlight Needed On Perverse Tax Incentives

Our continuing economic woes seem to reveal a UK Treasury that has lost touch with the fundamental tax and regulatory problems in the UK economy and is unwilling to engage openly and proactively on how to resolve them.

Not only did the Treasury lose any grip it had on the financial system when it mattered most during the last decade, but the rocky passage of the Financial Services Bill and the need to create a joint parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards also reveal that any such grip remains elusive. This, coupled with the UK's bizarrely complicated system of stealth taxes and incentives, demonstrates the urgent need for more transparency and openness in how the Treasury is going about the task of addressing our economic issues.

The latest example comes with the news that the government might revisit the bizarre decision to delay the revaluation of business rates, which are still based on the higher rental values of 2008. The task of setting business rates every five years lies buried in the Valuation Office Agency, an 'executive agency' of HM Revenue and Customs within HM Treasury. So it's nicely insulated from anyone who might complain about the impact of the rather occasional exercise of its responsibility. Instead, businesses have complained to Vince Cable, over at Business Innovation and Skills, and he's bravely (insanely?) promised to do what he can. However, the hermetically sealed nature of civil service silos means the Valuation Office Agency can safely ignore the issue.

Anyone else afflicted by perverse public sector tax issues faces the same problem. 

UK-based retailers are wasting their time by complaining they are disadvantaged compared to international businesses that are better able to minimise their tax liabilities. Not only is this a welcome distraction from the bigger issue of how the public sector wastes money, (which the Cabinet Office has been left to address), but the Treasury hides behind BIS, no doubt laughing-off the complaints as an example of businesses not understanding how the arcane world of taxation really works. The trouble is the Treasury doesn't understand how that world really works either. Nobody does. That was the whole point of Gordon Brown's stealth approach to taxation. But this should be no excuse for the department that's supposed to be in charge. The Treasury needs to take responsibility for understanding and explaining how it all works, including the unintended consequences.

Similarly, the Treasury needs to take responsibility for the fact that the UK's small businesses face a funding gap of £26bn - £52bn over the next 5 years. Here, again, BIS has had to act as a human shield, even threatening to launch its own 'bank'. Yet HMT has allowed four major banks to get away with controlling 90% of the small business finance market while only dedicating 10% of the credit they issue to productive firms. This, despite the fact that small businesses represent 99.9% of all UK enterprises, are responsible for 60% of private sector employment and are a critical factor in the UK's economic growth which has slipped into reverse yet again. Meanwhile, the Treasury continues to resist allowing a broader range of assets to qualify for the ISA scheme, which currently incentivises workers to concentrate their savings into low yield deposits with the same banks that are turning away from small business lending just when it's needed most.

More sunlight please!

Does Ana Botín Have Any Clothes?

In a fawning interview in Monday's Telegraph, Ana Botin, CEO of Santander UK and billionaire's daughter, is lauded for having run a start-up and quoted as saying she will be “accelerating” the expansion of the bank’s small business lending. But does this really justify such fawning tributes, or does the emperor have no clothes?

According to BIS, the stock of lending to UK non-financial corporate businesses was £506bn in December 2011.  The department estimates a potential credit gap over the next five years of between £84bn and £191bn for the business sector as a whole, of which between £26bn and £59bn is estimated to relate to smaller businesses. BIS says bank lending may grow, but the ability of bank lending to increase may be constrained by the ability to raise capital and meet higher funding costs. The big four banks control over 90% of the business finance market, leaving the likes of Santander with very little indeed.

At any rate, the important factor here is not the amount that Santander actually dedicates to small business lending. It's the proportion that its small business lending activity represents of its overeall credit creation. Richard Werner, the economist, estimates that UK banks generally dedicate only 10% of their credit creation activity to productive firms. He says that it's critical to grow that proportion because credit aimed at productive firms is the only signficant driver of economic growth as measured by GDP - which is flat. Credit that goes to consumption only fuels inflation, and credit for the purchase of non-GDP assets simply drives up the prices of those assets. In Germany, by contrast, 70% of banks (about 2000 of them) only lend locally and supply about 40% of SME finance.

Against this backdrop, Santander's claims don't merit much attention at all. To achieve it's proposed 'acceleration' of lending to small businesses, Santander UK suggests it will use some of the £2bn capital allocated to its failed acquisition of 316 RBS branches and some of the £1bn it has drawn down as part of the public subsidy given to banks in the form of the Funding for Lending Scheme. The bank announced £500m additional asset financing last Thursday. Yet its gross business lending only stands at £10bn, even having grown 20% year on year since 2009. “This is net new lending,” claims, the CEO, but then says this represents switching from other banks. So it may not be net new lending to SMEs generally, i.e. funding that is going to SMEs who can't otherwise get it.

So, while she talks a good game, Ana Botin and the bank she runs have no clothes. 

Image from ElaineByrne. 

Credit Drives Growth (Not Interest Rates)

Thanks to IPPR and The Finance Innovation Lab for an invigorating seminar on bank reform this morning. I've noted some of the highlights below, but in summary: Chris Hewett gave a great overview of the range of proposals; Richard Werner debunked the myth that interest rates drive economic growth and explained why the Bank of England must guide bank credit away from speculation and into productive firms; and Baroness Susan Kramer explained the work being done in Parliament.

Chris's 'policy map' in particular is worth studying in particular (zoom out of his presentation to find it). It reveals the ideas that are merely 'a glint in the eye', those that are attracting support and those that are being fought over by stakeholders in a way that is likely to produce change in the near term. 

Richard showed that interest rates do not drive economic growth. Rather, they lag changes in economic growth by as much as a year. So it's a myth that lowering interest rates will increase economic growth, or that raising them will slow growth. Instead, the evidence proves that those in charge of monetary policy merely react to a slowing economy by lowering interest rates, and react to a growing economy by raising them. In other words, economic growth drives the setting of interest rates not the other way around (so GDP growth and interest rates are positively correlated, not negatively correlated as many people suggest).

So the current low Bank of England base rate merely reflects the current economic malaise, and changing it one way or the other won't drive economic growth (GDP). Mortgage rates are already much higher, anyway, and it may be doubted whether banks would pass on any rise to savers.

In fact, Richard observed that the only driver of growth in GDP is bank credit that is used for productive investment. Credit used for consumption merely raises inflation, and credit used to buy financial assets (which don't count towards GDP) merely drives up non-GDP asset prices.

Richard explained the importance of recognising that we derive 97% of our money supply from banks extending credit. They 'create' money every time they make a loan. But here's the killer: only about 10% of credit created by UK banks actually goes to productive firms. The rest of the credit created is used by investment banks, hedge funds, private equity and so on to speculate on non-GDP assets.

In addition, the risk-weightings under bank capital rules discourage banks from lending to small firms (as I've also mentioned before), effectively encouraging lending to fund speculative property deals - even though the overall risk profile of loans to small businesses is lower than lending for speculative purposes, and in spite of the fact that small firms represent 99.9% of all enterprises and are responsible for 60% of private sector employment).

Richard explained that Project Merlin and the more recent efforts by the Treasury to shame banks into lending to productive firms all fail because the banks can afford to ignore the Treasury. But central banks have been successful in guiding credit to the right sectors previously, because the banks rely on the faith of the central bank to stay in business. The IMF has previously discouraged the use of this so-called "window guidance" because it has been abused in certain countries (e.g. to aid speculators or political cronies). But a transparent programme could work. A longer term alternative is to create new banks that never lend for speculative purposes - in Germany, for example, 70% of banks (about 2000 of them) only lend locally. Spain had a similar system, but then required its local 'cajas' to lend nationally, with devastating effects.

Finally, Richard said that the banks' could lend more to productive firms and still meet their capital requirements. But they need to lower the bar to obtaining credit (which German banks have commonly done during a downturn) and to incentivise staff for making productive loans. Currently, it's easier for bankers to earn bonuses for supporting speculative activity.

Baroness Kramer explained that Parliament is focused on four main aspects of the financial crisis: the market failure to provide bank credit to productive small firms; capital/cost barriers to launching new banks; encouraging peer-to-peer finance platforms; and ensuring that the Financial Services Bill and the up-coming Banking Bill are fit for purpose. 

Susan said that the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Banking Standards should have the membership and resources to get to the root cause of market failures and make improvements to fix them. While the evidence of market failure is clear, more evidence of the underlying problems and causes is very much welcome (even after the deadlines for submissions have expired). There is a belief amongst some in the House of Lords that the same regulator should be responsible for addressing market failure, as well as enterprise risk and market abuse, because they are all linked. The FDIC in the US provides an example of how this can work.

Proposals to reduce capital/costs that prevent the launch of new banks include reduced capital requirements for local banks that won't be systemic; and the regulation of a common banking platform that takes care of most operational risks, so that small banks could simply 'plug-in'. Susan observed that credit unions only cover about 2% of the borrowing population, so are not a replacement for new, local institutions.

Baroness Kramer has led the way in proposing amendments to the Financial Services Bill to proportionately regulate peer-to-peer finance. In the course of discussing those proposals, it appears that the Treasury has conceded that there is already a provision in the Financial Services Bill that could enable such regulation. However that still leaves the job of agreeing the detailed secondary legislation (and any further enabling legislation) required, so the industry should keep up the pressure in that regard.

Finally, Susan praised the white paper that underpins the Banking Bill as containing 'pretty good' language on enabling new entrants to the banking industry. However, it is going to be important for everyone to be vigilant in ensuring the spirit of this is captured in the provisons of the Bill.