It’s been 6 years since Lehman went bankrupt overnight, stunning bondholders who were forced to reprice Lehman bonds from 80 to 8 (see chart below) in a millisecond, and launching the world’s worst depression since the 1930s, which courtesy of some $10 trillion in central bank liquidity injections, has been split up into several more palatable for public consumptions “recessions.” Europe is about to succumb to the third consecutive one even if for the time being the Fed’s has succeeded in if not breaking the business cycle, then certainly delaying the inevitable onset of the next major contraction in the US economy.
Paradoxically, instead of taking advantage of this lull in volatility and relative economic calm, and making the financial system more stable, all so-called regulation has done, is paid lip service to the underlying problems, hoping that should the next crisis appear the Fed will be able to delay it yet again by throwing countless amounts of taxpayer money at the problem. In the meantime, the biggest banks have gotten so big that the failure of one JPM or Deutsche Bank, and their hundreds of trillions in gross notional derivatives, would lead to the biggest financial and economic catastrophe ever witnessed and make 2008 seem like a fond memory of economic euphoria.
So finally, with a 6 year delay, the western world’s “government leaders” have finally decided to do something about a TBTF problem that has never been more acute. According to Reuters, in November said leaders will agree “that the world’s top banks must issue special bonds to increase the amount of capital which can be tapped in a crisis instead of calling on taxpayers to come to the rescue, industry and G20 officials said.” In other words, suddenly the $2.8 trillion in Fed injected excess reserves, split roughly equally between US and European banks, are no longer sufficient, and while regulators are on one hand delaying the implementation of Basel III and its tougher capital rules, on the other they are tacticly admitting that whatever “generous” capital buffer banks have on their books right now will not be sufficient when the next crisis strikes.
