Bank Lawyer's Blog

Barney Bites Bernie (And Neel)

2016-03-27T22:07:00-05:00

Now that hell has frozen over, I find that all kinds of amazing things are occurring, one of which has created the danger of ripping a huge hole in the space-time continuum: I find myself in agreement with Barney Frank.

While watching the PBS News Hour this past Thursday night, who should pop up but the former House Banking Committee Chair and favorite Bank Lawyers Blog Bullseye, Barney, who was interviewed by Jeffrey Brown about Frank's reaction to statements by Neel Kashkari, currently president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and former Bush Bailout TARP Toolmaker, and the ever-cranky Bernie Sanders, Gen Y's favorite "Democratic Socialist," about "To Big To Fail Banks." Sanders also alleged that the way to break up big banks is to reimpose the Glass-Steagall on commercial banks. Frank, now that he's out of the political arena and no longer feels compelled to be what every politician feels he or she must be, i.e., a caster of shade upon of the truth, was remarkably critical of two gents who are spouting the Democrat Party line about the evils of Wall Street's "TBTF" banks.

Barney may have gained some objectivity, but he's lost none of the pungent-tongued arrows from his verbal quiver.

In the first place, both Senator Sanders and Mr. Kashkari continue to evade the biggest question. That is, how big is too big? The crisis which touched off when Lehman Brothers couldn’t make its payment, Lehman Brothers was about $650 billion in assets. We have banks four and five times that size

And the question is, does everybody have to be smaller than Lehman Brothers is today? But that would have consequences. Getting there would be a problem. By the way, it should be very clear, Glass-Steagall doesn’t do it. There is a disconnect between Senator Sanders insisting that the banks be broken down to the point where they won’t by their own size threaten, if they have too much debt, to undermine it.

And Glass-Steagall — Glass-Steagall would reduce — it wouldn’t do anything to Goldman Sachs and to Morgan Stanley, which are almost Glass-Steagall-ized themselves. But looked at Citicorp, or J.P. Morgan Chase, or Bank of America, Wells Fargo, even if they were subject to Glass-Steagall, they would still be well beyond the size that Lehman Brothers was.

There is just a disconnect between saying we’re going to do Glass-Steagall and getting the banks down to a size where, if there was a complete failure, you would get damaged by it.

The entire response above by Frank is remarkable for the fact that he's right. It's obvious that he's not been spending his time since retirement sampling the wares of Mar Jane-related "legal" businesses in Colorado.

Frank also jumped all over Kashkari's comparison of the 2008 meltdown to the S&L crisis of the 1980s, and Kashkari's statement that the reason the S&L crisis didn't bring the economy down was because none of the S&Ls was "too big to fail." Again, Frank asks why Kashkari won't tell us how big is too big? He also correctly notes that the bailout of the S&Ls cost a lot more than the bail out of big banks in 2008, although he does not also observe that this was because the 2008 TARP allowed the big banks to survive, while the S&L "bailout" allowed them to fail (or most of them, at any rate (outside the Southwest Plan thrifts), and established the Resolution Trust Corporation, staffed by the FDIC, to liquidate their assets. If the politicians, including Frank, had stayed out of it in the 1980s and let the initial bailout template concocted by the former Federal Savings and Loan Corporation play out, there's a chance that the money from that bailout might also have been largely repaid.

Frank says the primary risk is not size but "indebtedness," and on this point he's got a point. However, I disagree with his assertion that his bloated namesake, Dodd-Frank, has dealt successfully with the risk of bank's engaging in excessive borrowing and hinky derivatives that made "The Big Fail" such a hit (his misapprehension of the effect of the Volcker Rule has been lambasted previously), and his assertion that now, no bank is too big to fail.

If a large institution can’t pay its debts, it fails. It is not too big to fail. It is put out of business, by law. No federal official can advance any money to pay its debts under the law until it is dissolved.

TARP also required legislation to create, and the wide-open authority it provided the federal government to bail out banks was induced by panic among folks at the highest levels of the federal government (including Frank) of immanent widespread economic collapse. We'll see how effective Franken-Dodd is when the next crisis hits, as it inevitably will. There's no prohibition on a future panicked Congress changing the rules on the spur of the moment to do what Frank claims can never again be done.

To prove that I haven't completely turned to the dark side, I think his statements about overturning Citizens United are bunk. Nevertheless, all-in-all, startlingly, he makes a lot of sense.

False Promise

2016-02-28T21:57:00-06:00

Former FDIC Chairman Bill Isaac once called Franken Dodd "the worst piece of financial legislation in modern history" and blasted the law's "Durbin amendment," in particular, as "pure and simple, special-interest politics."

I think the Durbin amendment is really a terrible precedent," Isaac says. "It weakens the banking industry at a time when we need it strong, and the folks who supported the Durbin amendment should be ashamed of themselves."

The subsequent cap placed on interchange fees by the FRB in response to Turban Durbin's amendment caused many bankers and credit union executives, and their trade group representatives, to predict that the only result would be to fatten the pockets of retailers at the expense of both financial institutions and their customers. Over five years down the road, that dire prediction appears to have been spot on, according to a recent opinion piece in the American Banker by the CEOs of the ICBA, CUNA, and NAFCU (people who sometimes are at each others throats on bank vs. credit union issues).

The price controls lawmakers were able to impose on those providing electronic payment options have resulted in an $8 billion annual handout to retailers that they have not passed on to consumers. Five years after the Federal Reserve issued a rule to implement the amendment, retailers have kept most of this revenue — an estimated $32 billion — for themselves.

While Congress may have thought this legislation would provide a benefit to consumers, data from a survey of merchants contained in a recent Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond study indicates that the amendment is simply not working as intended. The report found that "few merchants are found to reduce prices or debit restrictions as debit costs decrease." This just reinforces the argument that the Durbin amendment is essentially a merchant handout from Congress.

Consumer research echoes the reality that retailers are not passing on this revenue in the form of savings for customers. In September, Phoenix Marketing International conducted its fourth annual survey of nearly 2,000 consumers and found that the vast majority of shoppers have not experienced a price drop at the point of sale. In fact, in each of the 15 categories measured, at least 92% of shoppers reported that prices rose or stayed the same over the past year.

The authors further assert that the retailers' trade association claims of several years ago that retailers were passing along the savings to customers, and, more recently, that the fee reduction benefited banks and credit unions, as bald-faced lies.

A study released last week by the Credit Union National Association reported estimated reduced revenue of $1.1 billion for credit unions resulting from Dodd-Frank's regulatory costs, all of which the report attributed to the swipe fee provision. Real data in the form of costs of processing changes and declining fees since 2011 debunks claims that credit unions and small banks below $10 billion in assets are not feeling the pinch. Further, there has been a decline in the interchange rate since the price controls went into effect. It continues to remain around 4 or 5 cents below where it was pre-Durbin, according to a survey by the National Association of Federal Credit Unions.

The authors conclude that rather than trying to blow smoke up the nether regions of financial institutions and consumers, perhaps retailers' time would be better spent figuring out ways to pass along the savings on interchange fees to consumers. Don't believe that conclusion any more than you should the retailers' claims. What financial institutions really want is the repeal of the Durban amendment and the Fed's limit on interchange fees. That won't happen in 2016, but perhaps the next Pontifex Maximus of the Disunited States of America can spare a moment from building "the greatest border wall of all time, a wall that will make the Great Wall of China look like Tom Sawyer's picket fence" to promote some Republican-sponsored legislation to benefit community banks and credit unions for a change, instead of the Wal Marts and Home Depots of the world.

Yes, I know: and perhaps pigs will sprout wings.

Clinton Promises to Fly Beyond Dodd-Frank

2015-12-13T21:52:00-06:00

Hillary Clinton, in trying to out-Warren Warren, is ensuring that many bankers, of whatever stripe, will have to take a moment to ponder what a Clinton presidency might mean for the entire banking business before pushing the lever for her in November 2016. Unlike many Republican candidates, who publicly promise to roll back Dodd-Frank's more onerous provisions (regardless of private intent), Hillary promises to take Dodd-Frank to places that even its most ardent supporters have only dreamed about.

But it’s not enough simply to protect the progress we have made," Clinton wrote. "As president, I would not only veto any legislation that would weaken financial reform, but I would also fight for tough new rules, stronger enforcement and more accountability that go well beyond Dodd-Frank."

On Clinton's wish list are the usual proposals to strengthen the Volcker Rule, reimpose Glass-Steagall, break up big banks, restrain "risky" derivative trading, put Jamie Dimon in thumb screws, and force Wall Street interns to entertain donors to the Clinton Foundation at various strip clubs, she gets into the ominous "bad bankers" proposals that threaten to turn a danger of "trickle down" of big-bank regulation onto community banks into a virtual Niagra Falls.

Extend the statute of limitations for major financial crimes to 10 years
Require financial firms to admit wrongdoing as part of settlements
Increase transparency about terms of settlement and fines actually paid to the government
Penalize executives when their firm pays a fine

She also wants the SEC and CFTC to be "independently funded," just like the CFPB. That way, behavioral psychologist and utopian intellectuals can team up to remove any checks-and-balances on the social engineering agendas of the Progressives that Hillary is courting in her bid to grab the grass crown. As King Richard and his minions have been attempting to do with the CFPB.

Her desire to insert "strong regulators" into bank regulatory agencies also bodes ill for community banks. If you love the way that for the last eight years, bank regulators have second-guessed executive decision making on a continuous basis, used regulatory power to attempt to choke off bank access to legal but politically and/or "morally" disfavored businesses, and pushed the envelope of theories like "disparate impact" to find discrimination where no one has ever found it before in order to reward favored constituencies, you'll love another eight years under the current president's "logical successor." At least she's giving you a "heads up" and not hiding the ball. Don't say you weren't warned.

Now, if the opposing party could only nominate something other than the south end of a horse traveling north to run against her. If they can find one, that is.

The Lesser Of Two Evils

2015-11-08T21:53:00-06:00

In a fascinating bit of humbuggery, the US House of Representatives decided last week not to follow the lead of the US Senate and, instead, chose to screw the Federal Reserve rather than the banks who are members of the Federal Reserve System. Of course, both houses of Congress are robbing Peter to pay Paul, his cousin Guido, and their extended family back in Sicily, but that's beside the point. The point is that bank-bashing took a back seat to the realization that next year is an election year, and pissing off bankers might have to take a back seat to fundraising needs until after the first week of November 2016.

Nobody likes the Fed (except when it bails out the world), so messing with that august entity is usually fine and dandy, politically speaking.

The New York Times lays it all out for us.

The banking industry scored a surprise victory on Thursday when the House voted to pay for part of a new highway bill by draining a rainy-day fund at the Federal Reserve rather than cutting federal payments to some of the nation’s largest banks.

The Senate, scrounging for road-building money, voted earlier this year to reduce the Federal Reserve’s annual dividend payments to large commercial banks, saving about $17.1 billion over the next decade. The House was to follow suit, but after loud protests from the big banks, its final version of the highway bill preserves those dividends and instead requires the Fed to provide $59.5 billion over 10 years instead of putting the money into an account intended to cover potential losses.

Now congressional negotiators must decide which to hit, the Fed or the banks.

The Times notes the ultimate injustice of either alternative funding source: funds for highways are supposed to come from the gasoline tax. Naturally, politicians don't want to pass a tax raise that would enrage supporters of both Bernie Sanders and Ben Carson (which covers the political spectrum from coast-to-coast). Moreover, banks are (almost) lower than lawyers in the mind of the average mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging voter, and bending banks over the back of the sofa isn't generally a risky play. So, whether it's the Fed or its member banks that pay the unjust price of this latest boondoggle, the banking system will pay a price.

If the banks pay the price by being shortchanged, considerably, on dividend income from the Fed, that will hurt their bottom lines. Moreover, Fed Chair Janet Yellen is probably correct in her warning that the Fed will lose members. On the other hand, if the Fed is the direct loser, its surplus will take a hit, which is not something that is in the interest of the financial system. The article points out that the surplus is in addition to capital the Fed raises by selling shares and it may not be needed to bail out the Fed if it goes negative over the next few years as it unwinds the stimulus. It also observes that Congress has tapped the surplus in the past. Setting aside the fact that just because you beat up an old lady and steal her Social Security check one month does not justify making it a habit, this would be the first time since the Fed was created that Congress would completely drain the surplus and prevent it from being refilled.

Other commenters, including some members of Congress, also think either choice is a loser.

"They’re both bad," said Aaron Klein, director of financial regulatory reform at the Bipartisan Policy Center, although he noted Congress has a history of tapping the Fed’s reserves.

Even the author of the House plan sounded apologetic. "This is not perfect policy, but it is much better than the alternative," Representative Randy Neugebauer, a Texas Republican, said on the House floor early Thursday. Mr. Neugebauer said he hoped that future transportation funding "comes from transportation users and not completely unrelated sectors of our economy."

When Porky sprouts wings, Randy.

One silver lining to this dark cloud is that it has upset Maxine ("The Socializer") Waters.

"How many of my colleagues or their constituents have a safe investment that pays this well?" Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, asked on the House floor Thursday morning. "Most of my constituents are lucky to earn a penny a month on their bank accounts."

The fact that the dividend rate paid by the Fed to its members has absolutely nothing to do with the appropriate source of funding for highway construction is beside the point to The Socializer. The money's there, banks are getting it, they're making a better return than me and my friends, the federal government wants the money, so what's the problem? Take it!

I can't wait for either Hillary Clinton or The Greatest Show On Earth (EVER!) to get into the White House in 2017 and set all this right.

Hear Me Now and Believe Me Later

2015-10-29T22:01:00-05:00

In The Land of Liars, it's occasionally hard to separate the professionals from the merely proficient amateurs. However, when I'm in desperate need of affirmation that the spirit of the late, great Tommy Flanagan has not departed our nation's capitol, I need search no further than the latest news story about the Queen Bee of prevaricators, Hilarity Clinton.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would not bail out big banks to save them from collapse in the event of another financial crisis, she said on Tuesday.

During a late night television appearance with comedian Stephen Colbert, Clinton said her priorities were focused on raising the minimum wage and bolstering the middle class.

"If you're president and the banks are failing, do we let them fail?" asked Colbert.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes... " Clinton said.

No, no, no, no...

In 2008, when she was a beloved senator from the Empire State, Clinton gave a hearty thumbs up to bailing out the big banks. That was the smart move. As Hank the P warned us then and since, it was either TARP or "disaster."

In 2015, of course, she's running against an opponent who was one of the small minority of senators to vote against the bailout bill. Bernie was anti-big-bank then and he's never changed his tune. Lindsey Graham may have amusingly tweaked Sanders last night by claiming that he honeymooned in the Soviet Union and has never came back, but the dude has one thing that is rare in D.C.: integrity.

There's also the nettlesome problem that Lizzie Warren is the left's darling and she's opted out of the race this time around. To assure herself of the nomination, Clinton has to try to pull as many Spouting Bull supporters as she can away from the grumpy old man. Telling Colbert that she'd let the big banks fail plays well with a crowd that doesn't let reality get in the way of ideology. She's like Ted Cruz in that respect, I suppose.

If we ever were to face the prospect of the collapse of the banking system again and Clinton was at the nation's helm, she'd steer the ship full speed ahead into the bailout iceberg and be the first one in a lifeboat. Count on it.

She's not in Flanagan's class, but she's close. Really, really close.

Releash The Hound

2015-05-25T21:26:00-05:00

Calling the CFPB a "rogue agency," Georgia Senator David Perdue introduced a bill in the Senate last week to bring the rogue to heel. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Accountability Act of 2015 is a companion bill to one that passed the House with substantial bipartisan support.

"Right now, the CFPB is a rogue agency that dishes out malicious financial policy and creates new rules and regulations at whim without real Congressional oversight. The American people, through Congress, deserve a closer look at the CFPB and how its actions will impact consumers," he said. "Additionally, the agency itself has failed to operate within its own budget and proven it is more concerned with preserving its own power than protecting the public. Ultimately, I believe the CFPB should be eliminated, but an important first step is bringing it into the light for the American people."

As expected, financial institution trade groups supported the bill. In addition, taxpayer advocacy also voiced support.

A statement from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance charges that the CFPB operates outside of the jurisdiction of Congress that most agencies operate in and continues to be appropriated by taxpayer funds without the proper Congressional oversight. "This is an agency that demands scrutiny like any other federal agency and should be held accountable for their actions by moving into the proper process for Congressional appropriations," said David Williams, President of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. "Any federal agency operating with the use of taxpayer funds must be subject to oversight by the elected officials that represent those taxpayers in Washington."

Expect Senators Darth Warren, Vladimir Ilyich Sanders, and their comrades in the Senate to fight tooth-and-nail to derail this bill. Even if it passes the Senate, expect the president to veto it. At that point, we'll see how extensive the "bipartisan" support for the law might be, because I would be surprised to see such a veto overridden this year or next.

Still, a boy can dream.

Banks: Targets of Opportunity

2015-05-17T21:45:00-05:00

Conservative economist Larry Kudlow claims that while bank-bashing didn't work for the Labor party in the recent UK elections, banks in the US should gear up for a round of groin-kicking from both sides of the US political spectrum as the US presidential election race heats up late this year and next. According to Kudlow, the intellectual dishonesty inherent in this tactic is apparent.

Few will admit it, but unaffordable, undocumented mortgage quotas came out of Washington, not Wall Street. And Fanny and Freddie enforced them. And while the Fed’s ultra-easy money destroyed the dollar, it also caused a bubble in home prices.

Yes, banks made risk-management mistakes. But when will the firing squads stop? You know, you can’t have a decent economy without banks.

But when will you ever hear a politician say that?

Let me guess.

[Sound of crickets chirping]

Kudlow lists the usual suspects: Lizzie Warren, Bernie ("The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains") Sanders, and, lately, Hilarity Clinton, but also notes that Republicans are also jumping on the anti-bank bandwagon.

Of all people, former Florida governor Jeb Bush bashed banks while in New Hampshire.

But wait, didn’t Jeb’s brother preside over the big bank bailout? Oops.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry is slamming the banks. So is former HP CEO Carly Fiorina. She actually said, “I agree fully with Elizabeth Warren.”

As Kudlow responds: "Huh?"

What's next for Carly? Is she coming out as 1/32 Huron? Will she change her last name to "Simon" and make her campaign song "Nobody Does It Better?"

Kudlow thinks that there are valid reasons for a politician to defend banks.

Banks do make business loans, which have picked up quite a bit. They do provide mortgages, though the terms are more difficult. They do offer credit cards, decent ATM machines, car loans, farm loans, and student loans. Even though the Fed has decimated interest rates, they do allow large savings accounts. And they do, after all, connect savings with investment. (I think that was their original purpose.)

Kudlow would get rid of the Ex-Im bank, as well as the "conserved" Aunt Fannie and Uncle Freddie. He doesn't say how he'd finance the US residential mortgage market without Fannie and Freddie, and I'd like to hear his ideas on that issue, because right now, those two broke (yet cash-generating) behemoths are pretty much all there is in the secondary mortgage market in this country, at least for conventional loans.

But I digress.

While sarcastically claiming that he'd never defend banks, he ends with a warning to pols.

Sometimes British politics leads our politics. And if bank-bashing didn’t work in the U.K., maybe politicians here should let it go, and instead focus on pro-growth measures like flat-tax reform, free trade, deregulation, and sound money. Just for a moment, why not leave banks alone?

Because they're easy scapegoats, Larry. Like lawyers, everybody loves to hate them, and for the cynics we have in D.C., who value power over truth (even those--or, perhaps, especially those--who claim to speak truth to power), they are low-hanging fruit.

Study Contends Community Banks Need Relief

2015-05-05T21:32:00-05:00

A recent study released by the University of New Orleans backs up what many have been contending: "Community banks in Louisiana and throughout the United States are rapidly disappearing, and federal laws meant to protect the country from another megabank bailout have saddled smaller financial institutions with disproportionately large costs."

The number of community bank charters plummeted 53.3 percent from 1993 to 2014, while the number of non-community banks jumped 17.6 percent, according to National and Regional Trends in Community Banking. The study was conducted by the University of New Orleans.

The causes include consolidation in the banking industry, competition from online banking and the crushing burden of “too big to fail” federal regulations, said Kabir Hassan, lead author of the study. The regulations are not working as intended to prevent the economy from being crippled if one of these megabanks fails.

“Actually in my reading, they have institutionalized it even further,” Hassan said. “And what it means is, when the law is made for a big bank, who suffers? The small, mom-and-pop community banks.”

[...]

Hassan spoke at a community bank meeting organized by Gulf Coast Bank & Trust Co. Sen. David Vitter, chairman of the U.S. Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, also spoke at the meeting in Baton Rouge.

Vitter said he hopes to distribute the study’s findings as widely as possible, starting with the Senate Banking Committee.

Although the downward trend in community banking is well-known, when these complaints are brought to Washington, D.C., there are typically two responses, Vitter said. The Washington-type experts deny it is happening or say it’s an unintended consequence.

“Well, it really doesn’t matter if it’s intended or not. That doesn’t change the reality,” Vitter said.

Obviously, Vitter is an ally of community banks in their quest for "regulatory relief." It will be interesting to see how his fellow members of the Senate Banking Committee, including everyone's favorite populist, Lizzie Warren, react to the study. With a yawn and a shrug, is my guess.

As the linked article points out, the loss of community banks has potentially serious consequences for small business lending. Traditionally, community banks have been the primary source of small business loans. While some commentators believe that alternative non-bank sources (including peer-to-peer lending) will eventually substantially supplant community banks, even if true (which I doubt), that's not going to happen overnight. I recall reading in the late 1990s prognostications that the internet would make soon branch banking obsolete. Several years later, the federal banking regulators were telling consultants and bank lawyers that they'd better not bring any more "internet-centric" bank charter applications for approval, because the bloom was off that rose. While the internet, and mobile, banking channels may one day replace brick-and-mortar branches, change happens more solely than many "true believers" expect, and severe dislocations for customers can result while the paradigm is shifting.

I think regulatory relief for community banks ought to be getting more "play" in Congress than we've seen thus far. More statistical support like the UNO study may help it gain traction. Let's hope so.

Going Unrogue

2015-05-03T21:45:00-05:00

McGuire Woods attorneys Matthew Orso and Joshua Davey recently discussed the hypocrisy of the CFPB's public statements that it favors "transparency" and claims that it is not subject to "the Federal Advisory Committee Act (“FACA”), which, among other items, requires an agency to hold committee and subcommittee meetings in public."

Only three agencies are statutorily exempted from FACA – the Central Intelligence Agency, the Officer of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Federal Reserve.

Yet despite the fact that the CFPB is not involved in intelligence gathering or the setting of monetary policy, Director Richard Cordray has taken the position that it is not subject to FACA.

Unfortunately for the CFPB, Cordray made the claim to a Wisconsin Congressman, who wanted to attend a CFPB's Consumer Advisory Committee meetings in February, at the time that the CFPB denied his request. That Congressman turned around and introduced a bill to peel back the curtain on whatever the CFPB is trying to hide. We hope that it's not a wizard.

Congressman Sean Duffy claims that his bill, the Bureau Advisory Transparency Act, "mandates that FACA must apply to all of the CFPB's advisory committees. The people have a right to know what their government is up to, and the government has a responsibility to provide that transparency." In addition to that act, Orso and Davey note that "a budget amendment has been proposed by Senator Perdue to subject the CFPB to the Congressional appropriations process, rather than allowing its continued operation under the Federal Reserve with no accountability to Congress. The amendment seeks to allow Congressional oversight of the CFPB’s functions in light of its roughly $600 million budget."

Transparency and accountability. For the CFPB? Expect the Massachusetts Mohican to go on the warpath against these heinous concepts. They're fine when they apply to the rest of the world, but not when they try to impede the "justice for all" that can only be provided by the benevolent despots whose ideology is pure and must remain unsullied by the low-lives who inhabit the opposing realms of the universe (i.e., the other 99%). After all, what will happen to the fog-brained poor without Aunt Lizzie and her cadre of true believers to tell them what they ought to want?

Davey and Orso close with a dash of hope and a dollop of reality.

The days of the CFPB’s clandestine policymaking and unbridled activities may be coming to a close. Don’t expect it to happen without a fight.

The following is rare footage of Senator Warren sending the Adjustment Bureau's famous "Flying Squad" of litigation lawyers after a transparency-seeking waif and her little dog. Those offended by the sight of chimps with wings, or scarecrow stomping, should shield their eyes.

Lizzie Warren's Latest Bad Idea

2015-04-19T21:52:00-05:00

Writing in Forbes, Tim Worstall dissects Elizabeth Warren's recent call for a tax on financial transactions and discovers that it's not only cancerous, but DOA.

He first restates Warren's announced purpose for the tax.

Among specific legislative steps Warren wants to see, she said Congress should impose a tax on every financial transaction, a policy embraced in Europe and by some fellow Democrats. She argued such a step would kill high-frequency traders who rely on “gimmicks that add no value to the economy” to turn a profit.

That's a favorite Warren meme: banks and financial markets are rife with "gimmicks," "tricks," and "traps" that only Native American law professors with the intellectual heft of Warren and her fellow elitists-masquerading-as-populists can discern and then devise methods with which they can protect the common people (too fog-brained from their poverty to protect themselves). Those methods always usually involve the gentle ministrations of powerful federal bureaucracies staffed not by what Honore de Balzac once labeled as "pygmies," but by legions of Mother Teresas and Mahatma Ghandis. After all, Lord Acton had it wrong: absolute power only absolutely corrupts the other guy.

Worstall begs to differ.

We’ve had one recent Nobel Laureate in Economics whose Nobel was for the study of taxation systems. That’s Sir John Mirrlees (along with Peter Diamond). And one of the points that they make is that transactions taxes, taxes like the FTT, are a really, really bad idea. It’s entirely fine to try to tax the financial sector more (I don’t know about Diamond but Mirrlees would think it OK) but the way to do that is through a consumption tax (like sales tax, or VAT) not a transactions tax. So, we’ve theory against Warren’s idea.

And then there’s that one single peer reviewed paper I’ve ever done. An early version of which is here:

There are several problems with the tax itself: it won’t reduce volatility, a desired aim, it will increase it. Banks won’t be paying the charge because corporations don’t pay taxes, only people do. The pain and grief it causes to those who will pay it will be more than the revenue raised. But more than all of these, there’s one really large problem that no one seems to have noticed yet – there just won’t be any extra money to spend.

That’s right, we’ve all these people licking their lips at being able to spend more of our money and there just won’t be any more of our money for them to spend: there will be less.

The secret to this comes from the EU Commission’s own attempt to persuade us that tens of billions can be taken out of the system without anyone noticing. They report that such a tax would raise 0.1% of GDP in revenues but would lower GDP by 1.76% while it did so. It’s a reasonable rule of thumb that 40-50% of the marginal changes in GDP consist of tax revenues. So, if we reduce GDP by 1.76%, we reduce tax revenues by 0.7-0.9% of GDP. In return we get tax revenues of 0.1% of GDP.

These are, recall, the EU’s own numbers, not those made up by some neo-liberal (I prefer realist) like me.

This is rather a serious problem for the argument in favour of a new tax. Not only won’t it raise any revenue, nor solve any of the perceived problems that it’s aimed at, but it will actually blow a hole in current tax revenues – leaving us with decidedly less money, not more, to do good things for poor people.

I’m all for the idea that we shaft the people who shaft us through the financial and tax system. But what Elizabeth Warren is proposing is this financial transactions tax. Something that will cost us, the people, more money and also, at the same time, reduce the amount of tax revenues that the government can collect to spend upon us, the people.

Worstall ends with purported wonder as to why, if the tax not only doesn't do what its proponent want it to do, but makes matters worse, Warren would propose it. I know why: because it feeds her public image as an advocate of the common man and it appeals to the envy of that common man who feels (with much justification) that the system is rigged, and that "The Banks" are the dragons who must be slain if the common man is going to get his "fair share" of the economic pie. Tax the "rich." Redistribute the taxes (or what's left of them after feeding the maw of the bureaucracy) to the "common man." Huey ("Every Man a King") Long had quite a run with the theme of wealth redistribution in the 1930s until he was gunned down the day after he announced his run for the White House.

Today, we have The Massachusetts Mohican picking up the same war club and swinging it. No one wishes her the same personal fate as Long, but let's hope that her crackpot ideas continue to shatter on the hard rock of the facts.