Most people wonder how the financial crisis will end. For some, the story of how it began is just as important.
Control of that tale will help determine how we respond to the past two years of market mayhem. At stake is the financial industry’s business model and billions of dollars in annual profits.
No wonder Wall Street executives are spinning the causes of the crisis, downplaying their roles in inflating the housing and credit bubbles while presenting themselves as integral to any solution.
This is part of an industry wide effort to return to some semblance of the pre-crisis status quo. The strategy will be tested this month when Congress holds hearings on aspects of Barack Obama’s proposed overhaul of the financial regulatory system.
Another tactic is to pin blame on short sellers who try to profit from falling stock prices.
Taken together, the message is clear: the credit crunch didn’t occur because the financial system was rotten. No, instead it was swamped by an epic storm worsened by investors looking to profit from misery. And if Wall Street says it’s not to blame, can anyone argue with that?
Yes. That scenario flies in the face of what really happened: banks intentionally used too much borrowed money to make bad loans and investments in inflated assets while regulators turned a blind eye to runaway financial engineering and investors took it on trust that everything would be fine. Decay had indeed set in.
‘It Wasn’t Us’
Acknowledging this would cause a lot of pain on Wall Street. “There is an enormous incentive for all the people who have responsibility for what happened to turn around and say, ‘Oh, no, it wasn’t us,’” says Barry Ritholtz, chief executive of research firm FusionIQ and author of “Bailout Nation.”
To sell its story line, the financial industry has been lobbying policy makers while trying to beat back anti-Wall Street sentiment.
The Street’s largest trade group has started a campaign to convince the public that the securities industry is “part of the solution,” according to a confidential Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association memo described in a recent article by Bloomberg News reporter Robert Schmidt. SIFMA is paying $85,000 a month for polling, lobbying and public relations to counter the lynch mob, according to the memo.
Fictional Account
The “We’re here to help” yarn is a tough sell, and the folks at Sifma know it. The group’s memo noted that its PR offensive must be sensitive to its own members’ “disparate views on difficult topics such as the need for the industry to acknowledge responsibility for various aspects of the financial crisis.”
In other words, no one will buy it if we say Wall Street isn’t to blame but our members want to try anyway. Who knows where such thinking will lead. Maybe we’ll soon see “Hug a Banker Today” bumper stickers.
The real hugs that bankers and traders want are, of course, from Congress and the administration as they consider the biggest overhaul of the U.S. financial system in 75 years. That’s where the Street’s take on the crisis becomes particularly important.
‘Nothing to Learn’
“The once-in-100-years-storm story means that there’s nothing to learn here, it just happens every now and then and we have to accept it,” says Joseph Mason, professor of banking at Louisiana State University. “That absolves banks and regulators from responsibility for reforming in a meaningful fashion financial regulation.”
An added bonus is that lawsuits against financial executives are easier to defend against if the crisis wasn’t due to specific company actions, Mason adds.
There’s another reason for the industry to push the idea that it isn’t responsible for the financial crisis -- it’s a canard that bolsters market confidence.
If the crisis really did start with banks and their regulators, why should investors now believe Citigroup Inc. or Bank of America Corp. are exercising proper judgment when estimating potential future losses on their loan books?
It’s much more comforting to think that firms such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. failed because of so-called bear raids on their stocks.
That helps explain why the Securities and Exchange Commission and others are considering various restrictions on short selling. On their own, those moves probably wouldn’t be calamitous. Yet they are dangerous if taken as a sign that short sellers were to blame for our problems, not gaping holes in balance sheets caused by reckless investments.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said that history would be kind to him because, as a victor, he intended to write it. Even though Wall Street supposedly lost out in the financial crisis, it wants very much to emulate him.
Control of that tale will help determine how we respond to the past two years of market mayhem. At stake is the financial industry’s business model and billions of dollars in annual profits.
No wonder Wall Street executives are spinning the causes of the crisis, downplaying their roles in inflating the housing and credit bubbles while presenting themselves as integral to any solution.
This is part of an industry wide effort to return to some semblance of the pre-crisis status quo. The strategy will be tested this month when Congress holds hearings on aspects of Barack Obama’s proposed overhaul of the financial regulatory system.
Another tactic is to pin blame on short sellers who try to profit from falling stock prices.
Taken together, the message is clear: the credit crunch didn’t occur because the financial system was rotten. No, instead it was swamped by an epic storm worsened by investors looking to profit from misery. And if Wall Street says it’s not to blame, can anyone argue with that?
Yes. That scenario flies in the face of what really happened: banks intentionally used too much borrowed money to make bad loans and investments in inflated assets while regulators turned a blind eye to runaway financial engineering and investors took it on trust that everything would be fine. Decay had indeed set in.
‘It Wasn’t Us’
Acknowledging this would cause a lot of pain on Wall Street. “There is an enormous incentive for all the people who have responsibility for what happened to turn around and say, ‘Oh, no, it wasn’t us,’” says Barry Ritholtz, chief executive of research firm FusionIQ and author of “Bailout Nation.”To sell its story line, the financial industry has been lobbying policy makers while trying to beat back anti-Wall Street sentiment.
The Street’s largest trade group has started a campaign to convince the public that the securities industry is “part of the solution,” according to a confidential Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association memo described in a recent article by Bloomberg News reporter Robert Schmidt. SIFMA is paying $85,000 a month for polling, lobbying and public relations to counter the lynch mob, according to the memo.
Fictional Account
The “We’re here to help” yarn is a tough sell, and the folks at Sifma know it. The group’s memo noted that its PR offensive must be sensitive to its own members’ “disparate views on difficult topics such as the need for the industry to acknowledge responsibility for various aspects of the financial crisis.”In other words, no one will buy it if we say Wall Street isn’t to blame but our members want to try anyway. Who knows where such thinking will lead. Maybe we’ll soon see “Hug a Banker Today” bumper stickers.
The real hugs that bankers and traders want are, of course, from Congress and the administration as they consider the biggest overhaul of the U.S. financial system in 75 years. That’s where the Street’s take on the crisis becomes particularly important.
‘Nothing to Learn’
“The once-in-100-years-storm story means that there’s nothing to learn here, it just happens every now and then and we have to accept it,” says Joseph Mason, professor of banking at Louisiana State University. “That absolves banks and regulators from responsibility for reforming in a meaningful fashion financial regulation.”An added bonus is that lawsuits against financial executives are easier to defend against if the crisis wasn’t due to specific company actions, Mason adds.
There’s another reason for the industry to push the idea that it isn’t responsible for the financial crisis -- it’s a canard that bolsters market confidence.
If the crisis really did start with banks and their regulators, why should investors now believe Citigroup Inc. or Bank of America Corp. are exercising proper judgment when estimating potential future losses on their loan books?
It’s much more comforting to think that firms such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. failed because of so-called bear raids on their stocks.
That helps explain why the Securities and Exchange Commission and others are considering various restrictions on short selling. On their own, those moves probably wouldn’t be calamitous. Yet they are dangerous if taken as a sign that short sellers were to blame for our problems, not gaping holes in balance sheets caused by reckless investments.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said that history would be kind to him because, as a victor, he intended to write it. Even though Wall Street supposedly lost out in the financial crisis, it wants very much to emulate him.
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