Two items in today’s Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, March 9, 2010) capture two different views of regulatory reform of credit default swaps. The first is the emerging European view:
European leaders pushed for a ban on speculative bets against government debt following recent financial turmoil in Greece … German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday that her government is backing an initiative to curb the credit-default swaps market, together with France, Greece and Luxembourg, and she suggested Europe would forge ahead on its own even if the U.S. didn’t go along.
José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, said the commission would examine closely the possibility of banning outright “purely speculative” trading of the swaps …
The ban now being discussed in Europe would allow investors to use the contracts to hedge against possible defaults by government borrowers, but prevent them from taking purely speculative positions. “It’s hard to justify why market players should purchase insurance against risks to which they are not themselves exposed,” Mr. Barroso said.
There are a number of responses one could make to the EU’s Barroso (below the fold, I put what appears to be the implied Obama administration view). Contrast this, however, with the March 9, 2010 speech by CFTC Chair Gary Gensler on CDS regulatory reform. Gensler did not suggest attempting to ban “speculative” trading in CDS, but did endorse three general reforms to the CDS (and more generally the OTC derivatives) market:
The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated how over-the-counter derivatives – initially developed to help manage and lower risk – can actually concentrate and heighten risk in the economy.
A comprehensive regulatory framework governing over-the-counter derivatives should apply to all dealers and all derivatives, no matter where traded or marketed. It should include interest rate swaps, currency swaps, foreign exchange swaps, commodity swaps, equity swaps, credit default swaps and any new product that might be developed in the future. Effective reform of the marketplace requires three critical components:
First, we must explicitly regulate derivatives dealers. They should be required to have sufficient capital and to post collateral on transactions to protect the public from bearing the costs if dealers fail. Dealers should be required to meet robust standards to protect market integrity and lower risk and should be subject to stringent record-keeping requirements.
Second, to promote public transparency, standard over-the-counter derivatives should be traded on exchanges or other trading platforms. The more transparent a marketplace, the more liquid it is, the more competitive it is and the lower the costs for companies that use derivatives to hedge risk. Transparency brings better pricing and lowers risk for all parties to a derivatives transaction. During the financial crisis, Wall Street and the Federal Government had no price reference for particular assets – assets that we began to call “toxic.” Financial reform will be incomplete if we do not achieve public market transparency.
Third, to lower risk further, standard OTC derivatives should be brought to clearinghouses. Clearinghouses act as middlemen between two parties to a transaction and guarantee the obligations of both parties. With their use, transactions with counterparties can be moved off the books of financial institutions that may have become both “too big to fail” and “too interconnected to fail.” Centralized clearing has helped to lower risk in futures markets for more than a century.
Gensler’s speech is serious, plain-spoken and, even if one disagrees with particular policy prescriptions, a useful, well-organized walk through the issues. I think that most participants in the regulatory reform process would accept these proposals as commonsense, at least in the US; going beyond them to the kinds of proposals being made in Europe currently is a different matter. (There has been a lively debate going on in the Financial Times in the past few days over CDS and liquidity.) (My own view is close to Gensler’s, FWIW, and where it differs, it certainly does not head down the EU path outlined above.)
Regarding the insurable interest question and “speculative” trading in CDSs, here is Gensler on both speculative trading and the “empty creditor” problem (it’s a lengthy quote from the speech, which I include for completeness):
Market Manipulation
The CFTC and the SEC should have clear authority to police the over-the-counter derivatives markets for fraud, manipulation and other abuses. It is important that these markets serve to help people hedge risk as well as provide for efficient and transparent price discovery markets.
At the height of the crisis in the fall of 2008, stock prices, particularly of financial companies, were in a free fall. Some observers believe that CDS figured into that decline. They contend that, as buyers of credit default swaps had an incentive to see a company fail, they may have engaged in market activity to help undermine an underlying company’s prospects. This analysis has led some observers to suggest that credit default swap trading should be restricted or even prohibited when the protection buyer does not have an underlying interest.
Though credit default swaps have existed for only a relatively short period of time, the debate they evoke has parallels to debates as far back as 18th Century England over insurance and the role of speculators. English insurance underwriters in the 1700s often sold insurance on ships to individuals who did not own the vessels or their cargo. The practice was said to create an incentive to buy protection and then seek to destroy the insured property. It should come as no surprise that seaworthy ships began sinking. In 1746, the English Parliament enacted the Statute of George II, which recognized that “a mischievous kind of gaming or wagering” had caused “great numbers of ships, with their cargoes, [to] have . . . been fraudulently lost and destroyed.” The statute established that protection for shipping risks not supported by an interest in the underlying vessel would be “null and void to all intents and purposes.”
For a time, however, it remained legal to buy insurance on another person’s life in England. It took another 28 years and a new king, King George III, before Parliament banned insuring a life without an insurable interest.
The debate over the role of speculators in markets did not end in the 18th century. That debate continued as the CFTC’s predecessor and the SEC were set up following an earlier crisis and that debate continues on to this day. In the case of futures, Congress determined that speculators should be able to meet hedgers in a centralized marketplace. In the oil market, for example, a speculator that will neither produce nor purchase oil is able to buy or sell oil futures. But Congress did require that all such futures trading be regulated, that markets be protected against fraud and manipulation and that regulators be authorized to limit the size of the position that a speculator can take.
The Administration has recommended – and the House financial regulatory reform bill that passed in December includes – critical steps to address the use of CDS to manipulate markets or possibly commit other abuses. With regard to single-issuer CDS or narrow-based CDS, the SEC should have consistent authority over all financial instruments subject to its jurisdiction. The SEC should have the same general anti-fraud and anti-manipulation rulemaking authority with respect to credit default swaps under its jurisdiction as it has with regard to all securities and securities derivatives under its jurisdiction. In addition, the SEC should have authority to set position limits in single-issuer and narrow-based CDS markets as it now has for other single-issuer or narrow-based securities derivatives. The House bill allows the SEC to aggregate and limit positions with respect to an underlying entity across markets, including options, equity securities, debt and single-stock futures markets.
Bankruptcy
Credit default swaps also can play a significant role once a company has defaulted or gone into bankruptcy. Bondholders and creditors who have CDS protection that exceeds their actual credit exposure may thus benefit more from the underlying company’s bankruptcy than if the underlying company succeeds. These parties, sometimes called “empty creditors,” might have an incentive to force a company into default or bankruptcy. These so-called empty creditors also have different economic interests once a company defaults than other creditors who are not CDS holders.
These incentives result from the separation of economic risk from beneficial ownership. In the capital markets, assuming economic risk usually comes with some type of governance right. Shareholders place their investment at risk, which brings the right to vote and to inspect books and records. Debtholders may extend credit or buy bonds along with rights as outlined in various debt covenants and indentures, as well as having rights in bankruptcy court.
Though reform efforts to date have yet to address the bankruptcy laws, we should seriously consider modifications to address this new development in capital markets. One possible reform would be to require CDS-protected creditors of bankrupt companies to disclose their positions. Another is to specifically authorize bankruptcy judges to restrict or limit the participation of “empty creditors” in bankruptcy proceedings.