Institutional Risk Analyst

To rescue Europe, to reinvigorate the United States, and to set the global economy on a sustainable path toward expansion, the current debate offers a so-called "choice": either slash government spending or spend your way to growth. In Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is one of the most prominent proponents of fiscal restraint -- in part because Germany is picking up the tab for the continent's debt crisis. And in the United States, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is the fullest-throated supporter of more government spending.

In this issue, we return to the Lehman Brothers, Madoff and MF Global bankruptcies to talk about how the largest banks have wired US bankruptcy laws to their own advantage. Specifically, the 2005 changes to the bankruptcy code, combined with the traditional American caution regarding pre-judgement restraint on the parties surrounding a bankruptcy, has provided American banks with a free pass to facilitate fraud with no accountability. But first, Ally Financial has received the blessing of the US Treasury to file a bankruptcy for the ResCap real estate unit. This is a profoundly bad idea.

The State of Illinois, often a microcosm of the country, is now at the back of the pack as far as the fifty states of the US are concerned. With its general-obligation rating lowered to A2 from A1 in January, it is now the lowest-rated by Moodys of all the states. Its A+ rating by Standard and Poors is the fifth highest in that firms ratings of the states, but it is on negative outlook and could be downgraded.

In this issue we provide a "how to" roadmap for the restructuring of Bank of America (BAC), this in response to a number of yowls of protest, spurts of indignation and outright do-not-knows. For those who've not done so, please read "A not so fictional FSOC memo for Bank of America" where we introduced the home audience to the concept of a parent-only view of BAC and other bank holding companies ("BHCs"). The restructuring of BAC creates a huge positive for credit creation in the US housing sector, the necessary condition for an economic recovery.

This week, we do a short rant on the 2H 2011 outlook for financials and ask whether further deflation does not mean a mixed road ahead for some banks. To review, let's look at the Bank Stress Index for the past several years in the box below. You can look up the rating for your bank on our retail web site, www.irabankratings.com. The major factors affecting bank performance are largely economic as always, but the market value of the liquid, large-cap financials will be buffeted by the macro see-saw between the US and EU. We just hope that our BSI is not rising again by the close of 2011.

In our last issue, we presented the case for the insolvency of the parent of Bank of America Corp, even though the subsidiary banks remain profitable and well-capitalized. This week, we ponder the situation at Bank of New York Mellon, where like BAC the operational performance of the depositories does not tell the whole story. Despite the high profile thrashing meted out to BAC and BK both by the NY AG in the Countrywide put-back settlement, markets may not fully appreciate just how deep is the rising kimchee swirling around BK.

We present our view on Bank of America (BAC Q2 2011 Bank Stress Rating: B) from the perspective of a fictional analyst named Herbert Gold working at the Fed. He has been asked to write the briefing for the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the vehicle created by the Dodd-Frank confidence in bureaucracy legislation to liquidate insolvent financial firms. But before we delve into a fanciful exposition on the importance of a parent-only analysis of a bank holding company, let's check on developments at IRA and the new Q2 2011 bank stress index (BSI) ratings for the US banking industry.

This week in The Institutional Risk Analyst, we take a look at the latest week of inaction and indecision on the part of the leaders of the G-20 nations. Never has doing absolutely nothing taken so much time and garnered so much market and media attention. If the nothing doing dance by Barack Obama, Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel reaches a much higher frequency, life as we know if is definitely going to change big time. And that change may include altering the international role of the dollar, a change regarding which neither Congress nor the American people have been consulted.

In this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we feature a summary of a paper by David E. Woolley, a California Licensed Land Surveyor and Certified Fraud Examiner, who is a principal of Harbinger Analytics Group in Tustin, CA. Thanks to David and Lisa Herzog, who edited the study and performed research, for summarizing the paper. But first a rant on the furious inaction of the past week.

The housing GSEs and the largest banks are blocking the economic recovery by denying Americans from refinancing their home mortgages. If the Obama Administration wants to see the US economy recover, then we must start the real process of restructuring that Washington & Wall Street have been avoiding since 2007. Obama may not be able to turn things around before the 2012 election, but he will be remembered more kindly in the history books if he has the courage to do the right thing. As always, we are available to help in this process.

This week we republish an important article by Christopher Laursen, NERA Vice President, on bank trading under the Volcker rule. And we ask whether Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke knew he was saying about the conforming loan limit yesterday before the House Financial Services Committee.

This week in The Institutional Risk Analyst, we feature a conversation with FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair as she nears the end of her term. Bair has been in and out of public service for three decades, including working for Congress, the Treasury and lastly the FDIC. She spoke to IRA co-founder Chris Whalen before the July 4th break.

In this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we feature a comment from Richard Alford on the state of thinking inside the Federal Open Market Committee regarding monetary policy -- at least based on what folks at the Fed say in public. We also comment on the latest financial bailout, in this case the apparent salvation of the European and US banks in the CDS market from taking a hit in the restructuring of Greece.

This week in The Institutional Risk Analyst, we republish a comment by Robert Eisenbeis, Chief Monetary Economist of Cumberland Advisers, "Did the Fed Print Money in QE1 and QE2?" Eisenbeis, who was Executive Vice President and Director of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta prior to joining Cumberland, corrects a puzzling comment on the Fed published last week in the Wall Street Journall by George Melloan. We assumed that Melloan and the Wall Street Journal editorial staff were aware of the rules of monetary quantum mechanics, but maybe not.

We feature a comment by Damien IslamFrenoy and David Cox, of Microsoft Banking and Capital Markets, about the need to restore context to information to better identify and manage risk. But first we make a few observations about the trends in the political economy. The first quarter of 2011 is now the best quarter since 2007 but does this mean that the future is assured? With an ROA<1% and ROE measured in single digits, the results are less than stellar. But the retrenchment of Americans away from housing assets and toward cash savings raises questions about the future of the banking industry.