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Last Updated: Jul 2, 2009 - 9:44:07 AM |
Central banks are making trillions in unusually cheap money available
to banks in a bid to restore liquidity to the financial system. But
institutions are not passing on the cash to their customers, choosing
instead to invest it and make a fat profit.
These days, bankers are used to bad press and being scolded by
politicians. There's been no shortage of either in the past week.
"Banks Hoard Money," was the headline on the cover of the Financial
Times Deutschland, while the tabloid Bild sharply condemned the
"Outrageous Overdraft Interest Rates." Consumer Protection Minister
Ilse Aigner railed: "It is unacceptable that the financial industry
takes months to pass on reductions in the key interest rate, when it
only takes a few days to pass on key interest rate increases."
The new attacks on banks have been prompted by the fact that base rates
are at a historic low and that central banks are injecting money into
the market like never before. In the last week alone, the European
Central Bank (ECB) allocated the record sum of €442 billion ($619
billion) to 1,100 financial institutions -- at a paltry 1 percent
interest rate.
And yet the money is not going where the central banks want it to go,
namely into the pockets of businesses and consumers -- at least not at
reasonable interest rates.
Instead, many companies are struggling to survive because their loans
and credit lines are not being extended. Meanwhile, citizens are
outraged that they are still expected to pay double-digit interest
rates on their overdrafts.
It seems clear that the banks would rather invest the cheap money they
can borrow from central banks in safe investments, such as German
government bonds offering 2.5 percent interest, than lend it to
companies whose prospects, in the middle of a recession, are anything
but rosy. And they are also lining their pockets with the fees they
charge customers who are forced to go overdrawn as a result of the
crisis.
Are the banks taking advantage of the crisis to turn a profit -- at the
expense of the very citizens to whom they owe their survival?
Previously Unimaginable Sums
It is now almost two years since the financial crisis began in Germany
with the government's dramatic bailout of IKB Deutsche Industriebank.
IKB was one of the many banks around the world who had speculated
unwisely, investing billions and even trillions in new, supposedly safe
securities that were essentially nothing but repackaged and securitized
loans to so-called subprime borrowers. When the bubble burst, the
financial world teetered on the brink of collapse.
If the government had not come to their rescue with previously
unimaginable sums, many banks would no longer exist today. The German
government has already spent a total of €760 billion ($1.06 trillion),
in the form of loan guarantees and bailouts, and it even took a 25
percent stake in Germany's second-largest bank, Commerzbank. To limit
the consequences for the real economy, the government also spent
billions on economic stimulus programs.
The bill for taxpayers is equally enormous. In the coming year, the
federal government will have to borrow €86 billion ($120 billion) -- as
opposed to the €6 billion ($8.4 billion) figure that was planned before
the crisis. Politicians, as well as central bankers, business owners
and, most of all, citizens, expect something in return: a functioning
financial system -- and low-interest loans.
This is especially true now that the banks seem to have survived the
worst of the crisis. In the United States, many banks have started to
repay the money they received from the government under the Troubled
Asset Relief Program (TARP). After last year's record losses, many
institutions have reported respectable profits for the first few months
of 2009, and the banks' share prices, which had fallen to all-time lows
in January, have since doubled.
Nevertheless, the economic crisis threatens to get even worse, because
the credit system is still not working the way many politicians
specializing in financial issues believe it needs to, if greater damage
is to be prevented.
Ilse Aigner has asked officials in her ministry to carefully examine
and document the behavior of financial institutions. She plans to
release the results of the study to the public. In her view, banks that
do not pass on interest rate reductions to their borrowers are
operating in legally shaky territory. Her position is based on an April
ruling by the German Federal Court of Justice, according to which banks
cannot set variable interest rates and fees at their own discretion.
Even Axel Weber, the chairman of Germany's central bank, the
Bundesbank, is relying on public pressure. He knows that banks have
steadily tightened their requirements for the creditworthiness of
borrowers in recent weeks and months. And he also knows that much of
the money the banks have borrowed from the ECB is not reaching
businesses and bank customers.
In a startling move, Weber called upon the banks to pass on interest
rate reductions. Otherwise, he said, "central banks will be forced to
circumvent the banks and take direct measures to support the economy."
That's something they will in fact probably have to do, should
politicians fail in their attempts to stabilize the financial sector.
Despite the current profits and rising share prices, the banking crisis
is far from over.
Toxic Assets and Hidden Losses
Banks still have unimaginable amounts of toxic securities on their
balance sheets. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that
potential global write-downs resulting from the financial crisis could
be over $4 trillion (€2.85 trillion). Crisis-related write-downs to
date amount to only about $1.5 trillion (€1.1 trillion).
Although new, more generous write-down rules have eased the problem,
they have not solved it. And the real solution, the establishment of
functioning bad banks, is something the German government has been
struggling with for months.
So-called "bad" banks are companies into which banks can deposit their
toxic securities. This removal of troubled assets from balance sheets
frees up equity capital otherwise needed as a buffer against risk. It
also prevents banks from being further downgraded by the rating
agencies, which would mean that they would have to establish even
larger buffers.
In return for relieving the banks of their toxic assets, Germany's
center-left Social Democrats, and some members of the center-right
Christian Democrats, have pushed through strict rules that would hamper
the banks for years should they participate in the bad bank program.
Under one of these rules, the banks are required to immediately pay the
federal government 10 percent of the book value of the transferred
securities. Exceptions are only permitted if such a payment would
reduce a bank's capital base to such an extent as to sharply curtail
its ability to compete.
All other potential losses are estimated and must be paid in
installments over a 20-year period. A bank is only permitted to pay a
dividend if its profits exceed the payment it owes the federal
government. But a bank that is restricted in this way would be unable
to raise money on the capital markets -- and therefore would have no
capital to invest. In the worst case scenario, the bank would exist in
a comatose state for decades.
More generous rules were not feasible, for political reasons. Bank
bailouts are unpopular -- especially at the moment, when parties are
campaigning in the run-up to Germany's Sept. 27 national election. It
is difficult to convince voters that such aid averts far more serious
consequences, especially when banks are reporting profits and their
share prices are rising sharply.
The current debate over an amendment of the law governing Germany's
ailing state-owned regional banks, the Landesbanken, is even more
strongly marked by partisan interests. Ironically, it was precisely
these publicly owned banks that enthusiastically snapped up the exotic
high-yield securities that have since proven to be toxic during the
boom years. Should they be written down, some of the state-owned banks
would be forced into bankruptcy. And should a Landesbank go bust, the
state that owns it could also go bankrupt, a scenario which currently
looms over the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, for example.
Hence the state-owned banks are in particularly urgent need of a way to
dispose of their toxic assets. Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück is
aware of this, and he is demanding something in return. He wants the
governors of the states in question to finally move forward on a
long-overdue consolidation of the Landesbanken. But the governors, who
perceive the pressure from Berlin as unreasonable intervention, want to
be allowed by law to establish their own bad banks -- while at the same
time wanting the federal government to take on much of the risk
associated with those institutions.
It is unclear how the dispute will end. If the legislation is not
passed, the German parliament, the Bundestag, will be forced to convene
during the summer recess to save one or perhaps several of the
state-owned banks from bankruptcy.
The Capital Trap
Two years since the start of the financial crisis, many banks are still
on the brink of disaster -- with devastating consequences for the real
economy. Hans-Werner Sinn, the president of the influential
Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research, sees the
"under-capitalization of the banking system and the high levels of
hidden losses that have not yet been disclosed" as the main obstacle to
Germany's further economic development.
No matter how much additional liquidity ECB President Jean-Claude
Trichet and his staff pump into the market, banks' capital ratios
remain a limiting factor when it comes to issuing credit.
The core capital ratios of German banks have declined in the wake of
the crisis, but many are reluctant to bolster their capital base with
the help of the government's special Financial Market Stabilization
Fund, known as Soffin. The program has significant strings attached,
including restrictions on bankers' salaries. Other countries, like the
United States, have taken a more rigorous approach, forcing their banks
to accept an injection of government capital.
A bank is only permitted to lend money or sell debt securities if a
certain portion of the underlying funds is backed by bank capital. The
riskier a loan or customer, the more capital the bank is required to
keep in reserve as collateral.
The credit ratings of US subprime mortgages or corporate borrowers are
now declining faster and faster. The repackaged and resold mortgages on
houses in low-income neighborhoods in the United States often lose
their entire value at one go.
A similarly disastrous development is beginning to emerge among
companies. According to Creditreform, a German company that collects
creditworthiness data, 16,650 companies with a total of 250,000
employees have had to file for bankruptcy since the crisis began.
Experts predict German banks will be hit by up to €170 billion ($238
billion) in recession-related loan defaults by the end of next year.
The effect on bank balance sheets is devastating. Their relatively thin
equity capital reserves are either evaporating or suddenly being tied
up as mandatory reserves -- thanks to Basel II, an international set of
regulations which banks agreed to in 2005 and which came into force at
the beginning of 2007.
Basel II was created to make it more difficult for banks to issue loans
recklessly, in a bid to prevent crises. Now it is only making the
current crisis worse.
A Gift to Gamblers
Under Basel II, banks are permitted to set aside fewer reserves for
loans to customers with strong creditworthiness than to those with
lower credit ratings. In a crisis, however, the solvency of almost all
customers declines. As a result, banks in a downturn must constantly
increase their equity reserves to be able to satisfy the requirements
for existing loans. In many cases, they can only do so by not extending
expiring loans.
The formula used to compute the required equity reserve for a security
with a face value of €1 million ($1.4 million), with US mortgages as
collateral, demonstrates how brutal the mechanism is. If the US rating
agency Moody's issues its highest rating, Aaa, the bank only needs to
keep €5,600 ($7,840) of its capital in reserve for the security. But if
Moody's lowers its rating by 10 levels to Ba1, the required reserve
increases to €200,000 ($280,000). And if the rating drops even lower,
to B1, the bank must keep the full value of the security, €1 million
($1.4 million), in reserve. A different computation factor applies to
corporate loans, but the logic remains the same.
Politicians have been up in arms over these balance-sheet restrictions
for weeks. Two Sundays ago, the SPD's state floor leaders from Hesse,
Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg called for a temporary suspension of
Basel II for banks. According to the three politicians, Thorsten
Schäfer-Gümbel, Franz Maget and Claus Schmiedel, the rules only
exacerbate the difficulties companies face in securing loans at
favorable terms.
Senior government officials in Berlin are all too familiar with the
sensitive nature of the issue. But they also know that it is impossible
for a country to go its own way when it comes to Basel II.
The German Finance Ministry is currently examining options to "provide
banks with short-term relief regarding the capital requirements during
this severe economic crisis," according to a letter Karlheinz Weimar,
the finance minister of the state of Hesse, received two weeks ago. But
the federal Finance Ministry officials also pointed out that any such
efforts would have to reflect the fact that the capital requirements
that apply in Germany are based, for the most part, on international
and European rules "that are difficult to change in the short term."
Weimar wrote to German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück in late May,
pointing out a specific German accounting problem. In Germany, unlike
most other EU countries, so-called revaluation reserves are included as
part of equity capital. This doesn't present a problem as long as the
stock markets are booming and security portfolios are showing high
returns. Reserves increase, the capital base virtually grows by itself
and bankers are perfectly happy.
But in the current situation, German banks must either record the
reduction in the value of assets on their profit and loss statements or
see their revaluation reserves rapidly shrink -- together with their
capital base. This clearly benefits competing banks in France and Great
Britain.
The government-supported Commerzbank, for example, showed more than €22
billion ($31 billion) in equity capital on its Dec. 31, 2008 financial
statement. But because of the bank's negative revaluation reserve of
€2.2 billion ($3.1 billion), CEO Martin Blessing was forced to book
only €19.9 billion ($27.9 billion). The difference at rival Deutsche
Bank, on the same date, was €882 million ($1.23 billion), while at
Postbank, which Deutsche Bank acquired, it was €724 million ($1
billion).
If Weimar has his way, this mechanism will be eliminated, a move
Steinbrück supports. He has told Weimar that the federal government is
"fundamentally open" to adjustments, and that the appropriate
authorities would "intensively expedite" the necessary efforts. A
Finance Ministry spokeswoman confirmed, however, that the banking
industry will be consulted before any final decisions are reached.
Relief is urgently needed, or else equity capital will continue to
shrink and banks will have to restrict lending even further -- with the
consequence that even more companies will go out of business and even
more business loans will have to be written off, causing capital bases
to shrink even further. In other words, the crisis will become
self-perpetuating.
For many business customers, this means that they don't stand a chance
of getting any money from banks, regardless of the interest rate or how
much liquidity the central bank makes available.
This makes it all the more tempting for banks to invest the money to
turn a profit. "This is a real free lunch," comments one Frankfurt
banker who did not want to be named. It is also a gift to gamblers and
speculators within the banks, who are apparently prepared to put up
with a bit of public outrage for the sake of such a profitable
opportunity.
Besides, the banks are largely immune to criticism of their behavior.
For instance, consumer advocates have been outraged for decades over
the banks' practice of inadequately passing on base rate changes to
customers. They have sharply criticized this behavior again and again
-- unsuccessfully, as is still evident today.
Since last October, the average interest rate for overdraft loans to
private households has declined by about one percentage point, from
12.1 to 11.0 percent, according to the German Bundesbank. Rates on
consumer loans have dropped by 0.5 points to 5.3 percent, while rates
on mortgages with a maturity of up to five years have declined by 1.4
percentage points to 4 percent, meaning that rate is almost at a
historic low for Germany.
But the ECB's key interest rate has been reduced much further, falling
by 3.25 percent in the last 12 months. In other words, this crisis is
not that bad for banks after all.
Provided, that is, they have enough capital to survive.
Source:Ocnus.net 2009
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