Streetwise Professor

While I’m doing the SWP Itoldyasopalooza, three more items.

First, the CFTC has reopened comments on the position limits proposed rule. The CFTC has taken intense incoming fire on the issue of hedge exemptions in particular, and with good reason. There are many problems, but the most egregious is the restriction on “cross hedges” (e.g., using gas futures as a hedge against electricity price risk).

I discussed this issue in my comment letter to the CFTC. Here’s the gist of the problem. The CFTC calculates the hedging effectiveness (measured by the R2 in a regression) of nearby NG futures for spot electricity prices. It finds the effectiveness is low (i.e., the R2 in the relevant regression is small). Looking past the issue of how some risk reduction is better than nothing, this analysis betrays a complete misunderstanding of electricity pricing and how NG futures are used as hedges.

Spot electricity prices are driven by fuel prices, but the main drivers are short term factors such as load shocks (which are driven by weather) and outages. However, these spot-price drivers mean revert rapidly. A weather or outage shock damps out very quickly.

This means that forward power prices are primarily driven by forward fuel prices, because fuel price shocks are persistent while weather and outage shocks are not. So it makes perfect sense to hedge forward power price exposure with gas futures/forwards. The CFTC analysis totally misses the point. Firms don’t use gas forwards/futures to hedge spot power prices. They are using the more liquid gas futures to hedge forward power prices. This is a classic example of hedgers choosing their hedging instrument to balance liquidity and hedging effectiveness. Gas forwards provide a pretty good hedge of power forward prices, and are are more liquid than power forwards. Yes, power forwards may provide a more effective hedge, but that’s little comfort if they turn out to be roach motels that a hedger can check into, but can’t leave if/when it doesn’t need the hedge any more.

The CFTC  ignores liquidity, by the way. How is that possible?

Market participants have strong incentives to make the liquidity-hedging effectiveness trade off efficiently. They do it all the time. Hedgers live with basis risk (e.g., hedging heavy crude with WTI futures) because of the liquidity benefits of more heavily traded contracts. The CFTC position limit rule substitutes the agency’s judgment for that of market participants who actually bear/internalize the costs and benefits of the trade-off. This is a recipe for inefficiency, made all the more severe by the CFTC’s utter failure to understand the economics of the hedge it uses to justify its rule.

As proposed, the rule suggests that the CFTC is so paranoid about market participants using the hedge exemption to circumvent the limit that it has chosen to sharply limit permissible hedges. This is beyond perverse, because it strikes at the most important function of the derivatives markets: risk transfer.

(This issue is discussed in detail in chapter 8 of my 2011 book. I show that the “load delta” for short term power prices is high, but it is low for forward prices. Conversely, the “fuel price delta” is high for power forward prices, precisely because load/weather/outage shocks damp out quickly. The immediate implication of this is that fuel forwards can provide an effective hedge of forward power prices.)

Second, Simon Johnson opines that “Clearing houses could be the next source of chaos.” Who knew? It would have been nice had Simon stepped out on this 5 years ago.

Third, the one arguably beneficial aspect of Frankendodd and Emir-the creation of swaps data repositories-has been totally-and I mean totally-f*cked up in its implementation. Not content with the creation of a single Tower of Babel, American and European regulators have presided over the creation of several! Well played!

Reportedly, less than 30 percent of OTC deals can be matched by the repositories.

This too was predictable-and predicted (modesty prevents me from mentioning by whom). Repositories are natural monopolies and should be set up as utilities. A single repository minimizes fixed costs, and facilitates coordination and the creation of a standard. I went through this in detail in 2003 when I advocated the creation of an Energy Data Hub. But our betters decided to encourage the creation of multiple repositories (suppositories?) with a hodge-podge of reporting obligations and inconsistent reporting formats.

This brings to mind three quotes. One by Ronald Reagan: “‘I’m from the government and here to help you’ are the 8 scariest words in the English language.” The other two by Casey  Stengel. “Can’t anybody play this game?” and “He has third base so screwed up, nobody can play it right.”

Back in Houston after a long trip to Turkey, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands speaking about various commodity and clearing related issues, plus some R&R. Last stop on the tour was Chicago, where the Chicago Fed put on a great event on Law and Finance. Clearing was at the center of the discussion. Trying to be objective as possible, I think I can say that my critiques of clearing have had an influence on how scholars and practitioners (both groups being well-represented in Chicago) view clearing, and clearing mandates in particular. There is a deep  skepticism, and a growing awareness that CCPs are not the systemic risk safeguard that most had believed in the period surrounding the adoption of Frankendodd. Ruben Lee’s lunch talk summarized the skeptical view well, and recognized my role in making the skeptic’s case. His remarks were echoed by others at the workshop. If only this had penetrated the skulls of legislators and regulators when it could have made a major difference.

And the hits keep on coming. Since about April 2010 in particular, the focus of my criticism of clearing mandates has been on the destabilizing effects of rigid marking-to-market and variation margin by CCPs. I emphasized this in several SWP posts, and also my forthcoming article (in the Journal of Financial Market Infrastructure, a Risk publication) titled “A Bill of Goods.” So it was gratifying to read today that two scholars at the LSE, Ron Anderson and Karin Joeveer, used my analysis as the springboard for a more formal analysis of the issue.

The Anderson-Joeveer paper investigates collateral generally. It concludes that the liquidity implications of increased need for initial margin resulting from clearing mandates are not as concerning as the liquidity implications of greater variation margin flows that will result from a dramatic expansion of clearing.

Some of their conclusions are worth quoting in detail:

In addition, our analysis shows that moving toward central clearing with product specialized CCPs can greatly increase the numbers of margin movements which will place greater demands on a participant’s operational capacity and liquidity. This can be interpreted as tipping the balance of benefits and costs in favor of retaining bilateral OTC markets for a wider range of products and participants. Alternatively, assuming a full commitment to centralized clearing, it points out the importance of achieving consolidation and effective integration across infrastructures for a wider range of financial products. [Emphasis added.]

Before the financial crisis, Gazprom CEO Alexi Miller boasted that his firm would be the first $1t market cap firm. Six years on, he’s only off by an order of magnitude: the company’s market cap is around $100 billion. Moreover, it sells for a comical 3x earnings (a little less, actually). The company’s capex is notoriously inefficient, and it is frequently cash flow negative. Other than that, it’s a financial marvel.

But that big China deal must surely have provided a boost for the company, right?

Apparently not. The other day Putin mooted the possibility that the company would have to be recapitalized by the state, i.e., receive an additional injection of capital from one of the state investment funds.

If the China deal were indeed favorable to Gazprom, it would have no problem financing the necessary investment in pipelines and greenfield production through the banks and/or the capital markets, rather than through the state. Putin’s suggestion of state funding strongly suggests that the economics and the risks of the deal are not favorable, and the necessary investments could not be funded externally: direct state funding would also suggest that Russian state banks are either unwilling or unable to fund it (or both), which speaks ill for the economics of the deal, and perhaps the financial strength of the banks. A further implication of this is that politics rather than economics was the main driver of the deal (if it exists, in fact), and that as a project intended to achieve state objectives, the state must fund it.

Reinforcing this perceived need for state rather than external funding  is the fact that obtaining outside funding would require Gazprom to divulge many more details of the deal than it has so far. This would be highly embarrassing to Putin and the government and Gazprom if these details show that Russia got the short end of the stick. So keeping the details out of public view by avoiding outside funding also suggests that there is something to hide, namely, that the Chinese exploited Putin’s needs.

If the government indeed recapitalizes Gazprom, it will be just the latest of a long line of economic policy failures. Another example of where politics or corruption/rent seeking has prevented Russia from putting its natural resource firms on a commercially sensible footing, and another example of where state funds that were generated by resource rents in the first place were ploughed back into inefficient state-controlled resource producers, rather than to help diversify the Russian economy.

This, my friends, is Putinomics. This is why Russia will remain on the hamster wheel from hell.

Putin travels to China this week, and the big item on the agenda is the supposed signing of a long-awaited gas deal.

I’ve seen this show many times before, going back to 2004. Much fanfare ahead of the meeting! A deal is signed! But the price is TBD. Meaning there is no real deal. And then the charade occurs again a couple of years later.

So I’ll believe it when I see it.

The Russians, per usual, are doing all the talking about the impending deal. Apparently understanding that those who have seen the earlier episodes will be skeptical about any deal that doesn’t nail down pricing, they are at pains to claim that the pricing is all but set. Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky said the deal is “98 percent completed.” What does that mean anyways? By word count? Meaningless, if the missing 2 percent relates to price. Gazprom’s Alexi Miller says the deal is “one digit” away from completion. Well, which digit kinda matters. Is it in the hundreds column? The tens? The ones? (Or does the single digit refer to an upraised middle finger?)

If a deal does get done, pay close attention to the price. The Chinese have the bargaining power here. As they always have. But now it is greater because this is now part of Russia’s game with Europe and Ukraine. It very much wants to put pressure on the Europeans. So Putin/Gazprom might be willing to take a lower price to further that strategy.

Just as important, look at the formula. The reports I’ve seen are saying that the Russians will sell at a fixed price, in the range of $350-$380/MCM. If the deal is truly at a fixed price, this would be a major concession, as Gazprom is an ardent defender of oil-linked pricing. If it gives up the oil-link, that would be a major concession, and would put oil-linked deals in Europe under greater pressure than is already the case.

This figure is based on leaks from Gazprom, which is kind of appropriate given the massive leakage that occurs from its pipes. Perhaps the leaker is converting an oil-based formula number to a flat price. Moreover, regardless of how arrived at, is this a number for deliveries over the entire 30 year life of the contract, or just for the near term deliveries? I can’t imagine locking into a price over 30 years. There has to be some kind of indexing, but to what? That matters a lot. Moreover, I would not be surprised if  the Chinese agree to near-term prices that are comparable to European prices in order to give Russia a propaganda victory to use in its battle with the Euros, but get more than compensated at the back end through some convoluted pricing formula that is not publicly disclosed.

It is quite possible that it will be very difficult for outsiders to know exactly what terms the parties have agreed to, and to back out a price, or a price structure over the life of the contract. Recall the Rosneft/Transneft-Chinese oil deal that was signed in 2009. The Chinese made an upfront payment to pay for a pipeline, and presumably received a discount on the price. But the pricing terms were not transparent and who got the better of the deal was hard to figure. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same thing happen here.

Also remember that Russian-Chinese deals are not ended with “and they lived happily ever after.” The Rosneft/Transneft-China ESPO deal has been marked by chronic pricing disputes between the parties. Don’t be surprised if that happens here too. The Chinese are also notorious for re-opening pricing terms after deals are signed. And their performance on contracts generally leaves something to be desired. They are notorious for defaulting on fixed price contracts when spot prices fall below the contract price: for this reason, most iron ore and coal sales to China are on spot terms only. Iran recently canceled a $2.5 billion deal with China to develop an oil field because the Iranians claim the Chinese are not living up to the terms of the deal (though this isn’t related to pricing per se). (H/T Neil C. Levine.) In other words, any deal is just setting the stage for ex post opportunism, by either party or both.

So even if Putin walks away from Beijing beaming a beatific botoxed grin, don’t draw too many conclusions. When two of the least transparent regimes in the world enter into a contract you cannot expect disclosure of the real terms, and the public announcements relating the deal will be intended primarily for propaganda purposes rather than to enlighten the world. When the inscrutable deal with the riddle/mystery/enigma folks, you can’t ever know what is really going on.

Further thoughts (added 5/19/14 at 1730 CDT). If and when a deal is announced, look to see whether there is a take-or-pay clause. The Russians usually insist on these, and they can be a source of major friction between the contracting parties if the price terms in the contract get out of alignment with spot market conditions, as is almost inevitable in a contract that extends over 30 years. I would be surprised if the agreement has take or pay terms and the Chinese also fund the construction of a pipeline upfront. Take-or-pay is usually a mechanism for protecting the party making the investment in the specific asset (like a pipeline or gas field): if the Chinese are funding the project, Gazprom doesn’t need take-or-pay to protect it. If anything, the Chinese would need protection against Gazprom’s opportunism.  If the Chinese indeed provide a substantial sum up front, as has been rumored (with sums of around $20 billion) the pricing terms of the contract become even more important: discounts later on in the life of the contract are necessary to pay the Chinese the principal and interest on the funding. There is no way that Gazprom will get European prices for sales to China if China also finances the investment. If Gazprom boasts that it indeed received European prices for sales to China, and the Chinese fronted the investment, you know there is something being hidden. (This happened with the Rosneft/Transneft deal.)  With respect to pricing, I can’t see any way that the deal would be at a fixed price for 30 years. There must be some sort of indexing. Again, if the boasting is about some price level that is anywhere near what the Russians get currently from Europe, be very suspicious. This is likely part of some sort of Three Card Monte game, with Russia tantalizingly flashing, then palming, the Black Queen to gull the suckers. If the deal is really for thirty years, there must be some sort of indexing mechanism, with a set of discounts, and the details here would be very devilish. Lastly (for now, anyways), I’ll be interested to see if the deal includes some sort of hostage exchange to protect each party against the predations of the other.

There was another fiery derailment of a train carrying crude oil, this one in Lynchburg, Virginia. Some of the cars plunged into the James River, spilling oil into the stream that runs through Virginia via Richmond to the Chesapeake.

This is just the latest of a spate of such accidents. This is, to some extent, the inevitable consequence of the oil boom in the Bakken and Texas. The boom means that more oil has to move, and rail can adjust most rapidly to accommodate that need. Pipelines are cheaper and safer, but they take a while to build. Unfortunately, regulatory obstacles had impeded the more rapid buildout of pipelines.

To give an idea of how unexpected the oil-by-rail movement is, note that the US government (namely the Energy Information Agency) does not collect data on the volume of rail shipments. It tracks shipments by barge and pipeline, but not rail. Because oil by rail volumes were basically rounding error until the shale oil boom.

The recent spate of accidents has led Warren Buffett to call for stronger regulation, most notably, a requirement for safer rail cars.  Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway of course owns the nation’s second largest rail carrier, BNSF.

That Warren, always looking out for the public interest, and willing to sacrifice the interests of one of his major holdings to benefit us hoi polloi.

Not.

First, it’s long been known that some firms in an industry can benefit from the imposition of more stringent safety regulations. Yes, these regulations raise everybody’s costs, but some firms’ costs rise more than others. The less-impacted firms have an incentive to press for the regulations in order to raise their rivals’ costs. This raises market price. The effect on price more than offsets the effect on cost for the less cost-impacted firms.

Which means: always look askance at people like Buffett who are calling for regulation of their industry.

And this goes double for Buffett. For in addition to BNSF, Berkshire Hathaway owns the Union Tank Car Company, one of the largest manufacturers of oil tanker railcars. Meaning that some of the costs from requiring the purchase of more robust railcars goes from Buffett’s BNSF pocket into his UTLX pocket. He is, effectively, hedged against the rise in BNSF’s costs that would result from regulations requiring the use of safer cars. What’s more, his UTLX also pockets some of the costs incurred by his rivals. That’s a double win for Buffett. His rivals’ costs go up, raising prices for rail freight which benefits BNSF, and Buffett also books as profit (at UTLX) some of the higher costs his rivals incur.

Great work if you can get it.

So yeah, Buffett’s call for more stringent regulation of oil carrying railcars is totally altruistic. Totally.

It never ceases to amaze me how Buffett’s kindly grandfather shtick fools the world. He is utterly cynical in his actions and public statements. He demonizes derivatives, but engages in some huge exotic options trades. He claims he supports the estate tax out of interest of fairness and equity, not mentioning that his insurance businesses profit immensely from the estate tax (and that he can of course largely circumvent the tax). He has manipulated the silver market. And he poses as a defender of public safety, not mentioning his very strong economic interests in such regulation.

It’s not surprising that Buffett conceals his interests. What’s more surprising, and more discouraging, is that none of the media stories on his calls for tougher regulation that I have seen mention his economic interest. Reporters are either intimidated,  gulled by his shtick, or shockingly ignorant of how Buffett would benefit from rules requiring railroads to upgrade their car fleets.

Just because reporters are credulous dupes doesn’t mean you have to be. Don’t fall for the Buffett shtick. Don’t pay attention to what he says. Evaluate the costs and benefits of increased safety standards on oil-by-rail shipments on the merits.

And don’t limit your analysis to rail shipments alone. Consider too the effects of expediting the approval and building of oil pipelines. Pipelines aren’t perfect, but they have a much better safety record than rail. Not that Grandpa Warren will tell you that.

I have been working since last year on a whitepaper (sponsored by Trafigura) on The Economics of Commodity Trading Firms. After about a month of limited theatrical release, the paper is now publicly available at the link.

Even if I do say so myself, the paper provides a pretty thorough overview of commodity trading firms, ranging from their economic function as “agents of transformation” (of commodities in space, time, and form), to risks and risk management, to corporate structure (private vs. public), to capital structure, to asset ownership, to the systemic risks (or lack thereof) of commodity trading.

One of the main takeaways for me was the diversity of commodity trading firms. Making generalizations is difficult. Another takeaway (related, in a way) is that some of the conventional wisdom about these firms (e.g., there is a general trend to asset ownership and vertical integration) is not correct.

But rather than discuss the report extensively here, I leave it to you all to read it. Comments welcome.

An exchange chairman believes that all trading should take place on exchanges. In commenting on securities market structure, CME Group Chairman Terry Duffy criticizes fragmentation-especially the existence of dark pools-and touts the lack of fragmentation in futures trading.

The concentration of trading activity on futures exchanges, as opposed to the fragmentation across different exchanges (as well as off-exchange venues) in equities is due to a major difference in the treatment of orders. In futures markets, exchanges own their order flow: hypothetically, if there was another exchange posting a better price in a particular product, CME would not be obligated to direct an order to that better-priced market. When exchanges own their order flow in this way, traders direct orders to the exchange where they expect to get the best price. This is typically the market where most traders are. This creates a centripetal force that causes all activity to tip to a single dominant exchange. That is why CME, Eurex, ICE, etc., have monopolies or near monopolies in the products they trade. (And yes, Terry, even though no one is stopping anyone from competing with you, this order flow effect means that no one can do so effectively, leaving you a de facto monopoly. Only LIFFE’s idiocy in its battle with Eurex in 1998 allowed the Germans to get trading in the Bund futures to tip their way.)

This is the way it used to be in equities too. Prior to the late-2000s, the NYSE effectively owned its order flow, and 80-85 percent of trading volume in NYSE listings took place on the NYSE. The remainder occurred on “third markets” that catered to the verifiably uninformed (more on this below).  But in 2005 the SEC changed the rules in a fundamental way. It passed RegNMS, which socialized order flow by requiring exchanges to route orders to others displaying better prices. Within a very short period, a handful of exchanges executing between 8-20 percent of volume competed fiercely with one another. The NYSE’s effective monopoly had been broken.  This is why Goldman paid $6.5 billion for a specialist unit in 2000, and sold it for $30 million this year. The 2000 price capitalized monopoly rents: there are none to capitalize in 2014.

Duffy says he’s fine with this kind of fragmentation  of trading across exchanges with the associated intense competition (though that’s very easy for him to say because he doesn’t have to worry about that outcome given the lack of a RegNMS-type rule in futures markets), but he thinks dark pools should be shut down.

To evaluate this position, you need to understand what role dark pools play. Just like third markets and block markets of the pre-RegNMS era, dark pools (and internalization of retail order flow) are a ways of screening out informed traders. This reduces the costs of the uninformed who can trade on dark pools be reducing their vulnerability to adverse selection. This is good for them, but the overall effects are much harder to understand. Order flow on exchanges becomes more toxic (i.e., a higher proportion of the order flow is informed) which raises adverse selection costs on exchanges, and thereby raises trading costs there.

The net effect of this is very difficult to determine. This is another application of the second best. Since exchanges may have market power, the additional competition from off-exchange venues can improve efficiency even if it raises adverse selection costs for some traders. Moreover, as I’ve argued in my HFT posts recently, since some informed trading is of the rent seeking variety, by reducing the returns to informed trading dark pools can reduce wasteful investments in information.

This means that Duffy’s criticism of dark pools might be right. But it might be wrong.

One thing is definitely true. Market structure has huge distributive effects. Although the rules on dark pools have very uncertain efficiency effects, there is no doubt that these rules affect the distribution of costs and benefits across different types of traders. It is precisely these distributive effects which make the battles over market structure so divisive and protracted.

I’d also note that Duffy ignoring some features of futures markets, and derivatives markets generally, that perform functions similar to dark pools. For instance, CME allows block trading. Indeed, it is engaged in a tussle with the CFTC, which wants to reduce the amount of block trading in order to force more volume into the order book.

But block trades are a way that less-informed large traders can reduce adverse selection costs. They have long performed this function in equity markets, and are now doing so in futures. And by stripping out that order flow from the order book, block trades have the same effects as dark pools.  Blocks are a form of fragmentation.

Block markets are non-anonymous: that’s how they screen out the informed. Block traders won’t deal with those they believe likely to be informed, and by trading face-to-face traders can develop reputations for not being informed and profiting systematically at the expense of their counterparties.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, but this is how OTC derivatives markets work too. The lack of price transparency in OTC markets is often bewailed, but OTC markets are transparent in another important way that exchanges are not: they offer counterparty transparency, whereas exchanges are counterparty opaque. This benefits, say, firms that are trading to hedge in large volume (who are likely to be uninformed). It’s not a surprise that trading activity migrated from OTC to blocks on CME and ICE after Frankendodd made swaps trading more expensive. Both futures blocks and swaps are ways of reducing the execution costs of large, likely uninformed traders.

Put differently: blocks (and swaps) are a form of fragmentation, in the sense that they divert trading activity away from the limit order book. So Duffy shouldn’t be quite so sure about the superiority of the futures market model. It is fragmented in its own way, and has a lot more market power. But of course Duffy likes the last part, though he would never admit it.

The battle over bank participation in physical commodities is reaching a climax. The deadline for commenting on potential Federal Reserve regulation of this activity is approaching, and many letters from groups representing banks (‘natch) but also from energy and commodity industry groups plead with the Fed to permit continued bank involvement in the markets. However, on Capitol Hill the sentiment largely runs the other way, and Senators Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren submitted a letter demanding that the Fed defenestrate banks’ commodities businesses.

Most of the Brown-Warren letter is stuff I’ve written about before, so I won’t comment more on it now. But this part stood out to me, and deserves a rebuttal:

Commodities activities present risks that are different from financial-market risks, are idiosyncratic, and have the potential to disrupt more than just the financial system. Global supply chain disruptions can affect industries in the broader economy that rely upon raw materials.

First, from a systemic risk perspective, the fact that commodities risks are idiosyncratic, and different (i.e., less correlated) with other risks in the banking system is a good thing. Diversification is beneficial in this regard.

I have looked at some evidence that speaks directly to this issue. Over the period of the crisis, the profits of the biggest physical commodity trading firms (the Glencores, Cargills, Vitols, etc.) did not suffer the same extreme drop as bank profits. Indeed, with a few exceptions (Bunge) profits of the major commodity trading firms rose from 2008 to 2009, when bank profits were in freefall.

This lack of cyclicality in trading firm profits, which is in stark contrast to the extreme cyclicality in prices (especially for energy and metals) is readily understood. Physical trading is a margin and volume business: these factors, not flat prices, drive profits. Due to the inelasticity of supply and demand for commodities, margins and volumes tend to be much more stable than flat prices. Prices, rather than quantities, tend to bear the bulk of the burden of responding to demand shocks. Moreover, some commodity trading activities-notably storage-tend to be countercyclical, providing a source of profit to physical commodity traders during recessions.

Commodity trading firms actually had more issues when prices spiked in 2008, because it was difficult for them to finance inventories at very high prices, and the low prices of 2009 eased these financing constraints.

The lack of cyclicality, which contrasts starkly to the pronounced cyclicality of earnings in traditional banking and capital market activities, means that physical commodity trading could reduce the systemic risk posed by banks. The effect will not be large, because even for the biggest banks  commodity trading revenues are small relative to those generated by the more traditional activities. But directionally, this lack of cyclicality in physical trading profitability makes it an attractive part of a bank’s portfolio, especially from a systemic risk perspective.

Second, the Brown-Warren warning about disruptions beyond the financial system are vastly overblown. Presumably what they mean is that if a large bank or several large banks with commodity trading operations were to run into financial trouble, this could disrupt global supply chains. But especially for the commodities that banks tend to focus on (particularly energy), they represent a small fraction of total physical market trading activity. If they disappeared overnight, others could step in and handle most of the business at a slightly higher cost. (Not to mention that it is kind of strange to justify driving banks out of the business by saying that if they leave the business it could disrupt global supply chains.)

But even more importantly, we know that even major disruptions in global supply chains are likely to have only trivial impacts on the global economy. Look at the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011. It devastated supply chains throughout Asia, far more than the loss of even several major commodity trading firms could have. Yet the effects on global growth were minimal. Several central banks examined the issue, and found that the catastrophe reduced global growth by around .1 percent for a couple of quarters. Even in Asia, the effect was minor.

As another example, the implosion of the merchant energy sector in the US in 2002 had no marked effect on US economic activity.

Another concern raised about bank participation in physical markets is environmental risk. This is potentially a serious concern, but even there legal protections (notably dealing through subsidiaries that protect a bank or bank holding company from liability) and insurance can sharply reduce the risk that legal exposure arising from an oil spill or the like could threaten the viability of a large financial institution. Also, since different commodity trading activities pose different environmental risks, a blanket restriction on commodity trading activities, some of which are not particularly environmentally risky, is not warranted.

In sum, the Brown-Warren arguments are not persuasive. Financially, the nature of physical commodity trading tends to reduce the cyclicality of of bank profits, which tends to reduce systemic risk. The fears about threats to global supply chains from the failure of any major commodity trader leading to adverse macroeconomic consequences are vastly overblown. Finally, the environmental/legal risk issues can be allocated away from banks through organizational structure and insurance. Since there also complementarities between traditional banking activities and commodity trading (which I discussed in posts from last summer) some commodity producers and consumers would pay higher costs if they could not enter into physical trading deals with banks: this is one reason why some of these producers and consumers object to limitations on bank participation in these markets. It’s hard to see the benefits of a ban (or restriction), but some costs are evident.

I doubt that will matter much in the end though. Commodities are a politically sensitive issue. Banks are a politically sensitive issue. Put them together, and the sensitivities are acute. Meaning that politics will largely drive the outcome.

Update. One other amusing part of the Brown-Warren letter. They say:

Some have argued it is preferable to allow commodities activities and physical asset ownership within the regulated banking system, rather than at the more lightly regulated commodity trading houses. As a general matter, the CFTC maintains authority to police fraud and manipulation in the commodities markets, regardless of the party engaging in such behavior.

So are banks somehow less subject to deterrence by the threat of CFTC action? If the objective  is to reduce the amount of manipulation and fraud, to justify forcing banks to eschew commodity trading it is necessary to argue that banks are  somehow less responsive to CFTC action than commodity trading houses. Maybe, but it’s not obviously true and I’ve seen no evidence that would support my view.

This relates to a point I made in earlier posts, namely, that if the economics are such that banks find it tempting to manipulate, non-banks will also find it tempting. Meaning that moving a business (e.g., metal warehousing) from a bank to a non-bank is unlikely to reduce the amount of manipulation.

One other thing needs to be said in this context. The Brown-Warren point is correct to the extent that it demonstrates that the term “lightly regulated” is used far too sloppily. Yes, trading houses are less subject to less of some kinds of regulation than banks, but they are subject to anti-fraud and anti-manipulation rules just as banks are. Similarly,  environmental laws and anti-trust laws and many other laws apply to these firms. “Lightly regulated” does not apply uniformly to all forms of bad conduct. The fact that commodity traders are not subject to some regulations that banks are (e.g., capital requirements) makes sense, given the differences between them.

Whenever anyone says “unregulated” or “lightly regulated”, I get suspicious and skeptical. Often those using these phrases are playing a shell game.

Concerns about the burdens of posting margins on OTC derivatives, especially posting by clients who tend to have directional positions, have led banks to propose “margin sharing.”  This is actually something of a scam.  I can understand the belief that margin requirements resulting from Frankendodd and Emir are burdensome, and need to be palliated, but margin sharing is being touted in an intellectually dishonest way.

The basic idea is that under DFA and Emir, both parties have to post margin.  Let’s say A and B trade, and both have to post $50mm in initial margins.  The level of margins is chosen so that the “defaulter (or loser) pays”: that is, under almost all circumstances, the losses on a defaulted position will be less than $50mm, and the defaulter’s collateral is sufficient to cover the loss.  Since either party may default, each needs to post the $50mm margin to cover losses in the event it turns out to be the loser.

But the advocates of margin sharing say this is wasteful, because only one party will default.  So the $50mm posted by the firm that doesn’t end up defaulting is superfluous.  Instead, just have the parties post $25mm each, leaving $50mm in total, which according to the advocates of margin sharing, is what is needed to cover the cost of default.  Problem solved!

But notice the sleight of hand here.  Under the loser pays model, all the $50mm comes out of the defaulter’s margin: the defaulter pays,  the non-defaulter receives all that it is owed, and makes no contribution from its own funds.  Under the margin sharing model, the defaulter may pay only a fraction of the loss, and the non-defaulter may use some of its $25mm contribution to make up the difference.   Both defaulter and non-defaulter pay.

This is fundamentally different from the loser pays model.  In essence, the shared margin is a combination of collateral and capital.  Collateral is meant to cover a defaulter’s market losses.  Capital permits the non-defaulter to absorb a counterparty credit loss.  Margin sharing essentially results in the holding of segregated capital dedicated to a particular counterparty.

I am not a fan of defaulter pays.  Or to put it more exactly, I am not a fan of mandated defaulter pays.  But it is better to confront the problems with the defaulter pays model head on, rather than try to circumvent it with financial doubletalk.

Counterparty credit issues are all about the mix between defaulter pays and non-defaulter pays.  Between collateral and capital.  DFA and Emir mandate a corner solution: defaulter pays.  It is highly debatable (but lamentably under-debated) whether this corner solution is best.  But it is better to have an open discussion of this issue, with a detailed comparison of the costs and benefits of the alternatives.  The margin sharing proposal blurs the distinctions, and therefore obfuscates rather than clarifies.

Call a spade a spade. Argue that there is a better mix of collateral and capital.  Argue that segregated counterparty-specific capital is appropriate.  Or not: the counterparty-specific, segregated nature of the capital in margin sharing seems for all the world to be a backhanded, sneaky way to undermine defaulter pays and move away from the corner solution.  Maybe counterparty-specific, segregated capital isn’t best: but maybe just a requirement based on a  firm’s aggregate counterparty exposures, and which doesn’t silo capital for each counterparty, is better.

Even if the end mix of capital and collateral that would result from collateral sharing  is better than the mandated solution, such ends achieved by sneaky means lead to trouble down the road.  It opens the door for further sneaky, ad hoc, and hence poorly understood, adjustments to the system down the line.  This increases the potential for rent seeking, and for the abuse of regulator discretion, because there is less accountability when policies are changed by stealth.  (Obamacare, anyone?)  Moreover, a series of ad hoc fixes to individual problems tends to lead to an incoherent system that needs reform down the road-and which creates its own systemic risks.  (Again: Obamacare, anyone?)  Furthermore, the information produced in an honest debate is a public good that can improve future policy.

In other words, a rethink on capital vs. collateral is a capital idea.  Let’s have that rethink openly and honestly, rather than pretending that things like margin sharing are consistent with the laws and regulations that mandate margins, when in fact they are fundamentally different.

Late last year, the company of My Favorite Neanderthal, Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal, sued the London Metal exchange, claiming that the LME’s new rules on load out of aluminum violated Rusal’s human rights.  Yesterday, a judge in Manchester, UK gave Oleg a victory.

Although the judge found the human rights issue “an interesting and difficult question,” he did not rule on it.  Too bad!  That could have been entertaining.

But he did hand Rusal a victory, ruling that the LME’s process in adopting the new rule was flawed (bonus SWP quote).  As a result, the LME will not implement the rule, and has to go back to the drawing board.

Until a new rule is adopted, the bottleneck in the LME aluminum warehouses (notably Metro in Detroit) will remain stoppered.  Premiums will remain high and volatile.

And that’s the point.  By keeping the huge stocks of aluminum that accumulated in LME warehouses during the financial crisis off the market, the bottleneck keeps the prices of aluminum ex-warehouse artificially high.  This harms consumers, but enhances producers’ profits.  Which is precisely why Rusal sued.

But the victory may well by a Pyrrhic one.  For despite the fact that the warehouse bottleneck props up aluminum prices, and despite the fact that Rusal and other producers have reduced capacity, there is still a substantial supply imbalance that has weighed on prices: due to the bottleneck, prices are higher than they would be otherwise, but they are still quite low.  As a result, Rusal just posted a whopping $3.2 billion loss.

The company is heavily indebted, and the chronic losses imperil its ability to pay this debt.  The company has been frantically negotiating with its lenders, and says that if it does not get relief it will default.  Given that Deripaska has pledged shares as collateral for some borrowings, his status as a billionaire is in jeopardy.

Deripaska has been in such straits before.  He is in some ways the Donald Trump of Russia.  Putin bailed him out in 2008/2009.  Will he do it again?