EconoMonitor

10 Steps To Prevent the Next Bank Crisis

Look, this is really simple stuff:

As I discussed yesterday on Dylan Ratigan, we can easily prevent the next credit crisis caused by a TBTF banks (and the rogue traders they employ), we need to take 10 EZ steps:

1.  Depression era Glass Steagall legislation needs to be restored (it was repealed in 1998). Separating FDIC deposit banks with much riskier Wall Street iBanks and speculators is imperative.

2. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 needs to be repealed, (Those opposed to this repeal should be deported).

3. Rating agencies need to have their official SEC charters revoked. If they want to sell ratings, they need to do so in the marketplace, not by regulatory mandate.

4. The SEC issued “Bear Stearns exemption” — replacing the 1975 Net Capitalization Rule’s 12 to 1 leverage limit to with essentially unlimited leverage — needs to be legislatively revoked, and the old rule officially reinstated.

5. The Depository Bank Reserve Rules that have whittled away need to be restored to decades ago levels. Basel 3 does not go far enough. And Federally Pre-emption of States anti-predatory lending laws must be revoked.

6. The Federal Reserve must focus on Employment and Inflation — not backstopping speculators.

7. Nonbank mortgage underwriters (i.e., Subprime lenders) need to be subjected to same comprehensive federal supervision as other banks. Traditional credit standards need to be applied.

8. Mortgage underwriting standards must revert to pre-2000 standards, including  verifying income, payment history, and credit scores, Loan to value (LTV). And Automated underwriting (AU) systems need to be revamped or removed.

9.  “Innovative” mortgage products — 2/28 ARMs, I/O s, Neg Ams — need to have stronger restrictions on them

10. Clawbacks of corporate bonuses AND stock sales paid for transactions that eventually turn out to be false, temporary, or losing positions (think subprime or CDO underwriting) must be the law of the land. This includes sales people, trading desks and executives.

That’s my 10 — there certainly are lots more, but this list will go a long way to preventing the next banking disaster . . .

This post originally appeared at The Big Picture and is reproduced with permission.

One Response to “10 Steps To Prevent the Next Bank Crisis”

Most Read | Featured | Popular

Blogger Spotlight

Ed Dolan Ed Dolan's Econ Blog

Edwin G. Dolan is an economist and educator with a Ph.D. from Yale University. Early in his career, he was a member of the economics faculty at Dartmouth College, the University of Chicago, and George Mason University. From 1990 to 2001, he taught in Moscow, Russia, where he and his wife founded the American Institute of Business and Economics (AIBEc), an independent, not-for-profit MBA program. Since 2001, he has taught at several universities in Europe, including Central European University in Budapest, the University of Economics in Prague, and the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, where he has an ongoing annual visiting appointment. During breaks in his teaching career, he worked in Washington, D.C. as an economist for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and as a regulatory analyst for the Interstate Commerce Commission, and later served a stint in Almaty as an adviser to the National Bank of Kazakhstan. When not lecturing abroad, he makes his home in San Juan Islands, Washington.

Economics Blog Aggregator

Our favorite economics blogs aggregated.