The Devil Is in the Details

Mike Konczal at Rortybomb disagrees with Economics of Contempt's recent post in these pages about the proper regulatory structure for derivatives trading:

To put it a different way, opponents of full financial reform are saying that the a few concentrated market players can be trusted to not manipulate the clearinghouses at exactly the same moment as a few concentrated market players are being investigated by the Department of Justice for manipulating the clearinghouses. Change we can believe in!

I know what the retort is. “Mike, you know that po-po is always fucking with a working man who is just trying to hustle some (financial) product on the corner to feed his kids.” I’m sympathetic to critiques of “po-po” myself. But this was the point of the recent Slate piece on the Lynch Amendment; giving the largest players a legal ability to sit together in the same room and make rules for trading and clearing swaps at the same exact moment they are being investigated for a conspiracy to do that is a terrible idea.

Even better, Mike is not content just to hurl brickbats and criticism. He explains in an accompanying post exactly what it is he is looking for in derivatives trading reform:

Let’s define some terms. Many people are comfortable forcing OTC derivatives to be forced into clearing (though I don’t think the author above does). I like that, but I and others worried about financial reform want to see more. Let’s talk about exchanges versus clearing. Now as opposed to the FT article, I’m not saying everything needs to be forced onto an exchange proper. There are plenty of great innovations going on in the swap execution facility (SEF) world. What I am worried about is that the swap execution facility will move away from a formal “trading facility” definition towards a vague nebulous definition of whatever people can get away with.

So what are the features that I want to see? I want to see pre-trade price transparency. I want a facility where multiple parties can see and execute on offers from other parties. A facility that collects the prices at which multiple parties would be willing to trade a a moment in time, and update those prices as time passes.

The Lynch Amendment: Bizarre and Confused

[This post originally appeared at Economics of Contempt on December 15, 2009. It is reproduced here in its entirety with the kind permission of the author.]

The Lynch amendment has to be one of the most bizarre pieces of legislation relating to derivatives I've ever seen—and that's saying something. Really, the amendment is just illogical. Introduced by Rep. Stephen Lynch, the amendment prohibits swap dealers and "major swap participants" from owning more than 20%, collectively, of a derivatives clearinghouse. Here's how Rep. Lynch justified his amendment on the House floor:

[T]he problem is—and in my view, this is a huge problem with the bill—the bill would allow these same big banks to purchase the clearinghouses that are being created to police the big banks in their derivatives trading. The big banks would be allowed to own and control the clearinghouses and to set the rules for how their own derivatives deals are handled. My amendment would prevent those big banks and major swap participants, like AIG, from taking over the police station—these new clearinghouses.

This makes absolutely no sense. Rep. Lynch appears to be deeply confused about both clearinghouses and the derivatives market. Unfortunately, the Lynch amendment has been cheered on by the blogosphere, which now reliably swoons at any mention of hurting "Wall Street," seemingly without regard for the merits of the proposal.

Honestly, what do supporters of the Lynch amendment think clearinghouses are? The purpose of a clearinghouse is risk mutualization. If one clearing member defaults on a cleared contract, the other members—via the clearinghouse—will pick up the tab. That's why the clearinghouse, as the central counterparty (CCP), interposes itself between counterparties to contracts cleared through the clearinghouse, serving as the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer. The whole purpose of this set-up is to put all the clearing members on the hook for one clearing member's default. (If after applying a defaulting member's margin account, the money the other clearing members have contributed to the clearinghouse's guaranty fund still isn't sufficient to cover the losses from a member's default, the clearinghouse can generally force the other clearing members to make one-time contributions to cover the remaining losses.)