It's the Banksters' World

We are just living in it.

Then there are the more subtle subsidies and protections. Take regulatory forbearance. In 2009, regulators gave banks a gift on their commercial real estate loans. They allowed banks to look primarily at whether the loans were current, rather than at whether the underlying value of the property had declined. Of course, given the commercial real estate collapse, this had the effect of protecting banks from write-downs.

Banks and regulators say this is justified because an underwater borrower isn’t necessarily going to default. True, but it’s hard to see how those borrowers — and therefore the banks — are better off for the crash in their collateral.

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Another way taxpayers coddle the biggest banks is by implicitly guaranteeing their derivatives business. JPMorgan, widely viewed as safe and well managed, is a huge beneficiary here. It had $79 billion worth of derivatives on its books in the first quarter. Even if it’s hedged, prudent and has thin margins, it’s still going to throw off a nice chunk of profits.

Institutions on the other side of these trades wouldn’t enter contracts without believing that they have some underlying protection — protection that comes from the government.

“No sensible person would put a nickel on deposit in the normal course given the enormity and opacity of the derivatives portfolios,” said Amar Bhidé, a former trader and business professor at the Fletcher School. “It’s entirely a function of deposit insurance and the implicit guarantee that the JPMorgan counterparties have.”

The government’s actions in the financial crisis only cemented that certainty. Counterparties and investors that were previously not guaranteed, like holders of money market funds, were protected at every turn.

This bailout never ended. “In effect, we nationalized the biggest banks years ago,” Mr. Allison said. “We implicitly guaranteed them. The taxpayers are still the ultimate owners of the risk in those banks — they just don’t get equity returns for that ownership.”

We here in murika believe in the free market so much that we shield the banksters from ever being exposed to its ills. 

(Via Atrios)