It Really Does Pain Me to Say I Told You So About Clearing, But . . .
In the aftermath of the last crisis, I played the role of Clearing Cassandra, warning that in the next crisis, supersizing of derivatives clearing would create systemic risks not because clearinghouses would fail, but because of the consequences of what they would do to survive: hike initial margins and collect huge variation margin payments that would suck liquidity out of the system at the same time liquidity supply contracted. This, in turn, would lead to asset fire sales, that would distort asset prices which would lead to further knock-on effects.
I wrote a lot about this 2008-2012, but here is a convenient link. Key quote from the abstract:
The author also believes that the larger collateral mandates and frequent marking‐to‐market will make the financial system more vulnerable since margin requirements tend to be “pro‐cyclical.” And more rigid collateralization mechanisms can restrict the supply of funding liquidity, and lead to spikes in funding liquidity demand that can reduce the liquidity of traded instruments and generate destabilizing feedback loops.
Well, the next crisis is here, and these (conditional) predictions are being borne out. In spades.
Here’s what I wrote a few days ago as a contribution to the Regulatory Fundamentals Group newsletter:
In the aftermath of the last crisis of 2008-2009, G20 nations decided to mandate clearing of standardized OTC derivatives transactions. The current coronavirus crisis is the first since those reforms were implemented (via Dodd-Frank in the US, for example), and this therefore gives the first opportunity to evaluate the performance of the supersized clearing ecosystem in “wartime” conditions.
So far, despite the extreme price movements across the entire derivatives universe–equities, fixed income, currencies, and commodities (especially oil)–there have been no indications that clearinghouses have faced either financial or operational disruption. No clearing members have defaulted, and as of now, there have been no serious concerns than any are on the verge of default.That said, there are two major reasons for concern.
First, the unprecedented volatility and uncertainty show no signs of dissipating, and as long as it continues, major financial institutions–including clearing firms–are at risk. The present crisis did not originate in the banking/shadow banking sector (as the previous one did), but it is now demonstrably affecting it. There are strong indicators of stress in the financial system, such as the blowouts in FRA-OIS spreads and dollar swap rates (both harbingers of the last crisis). Central banks have intervened aggressively, but these worrying signs have eased only slightly.Second, as I wrote repeatedly during the debate over clearing mandates in the post-2008 crisis period, the most insidious systemic risk that supersized clearing creates is not the potential for the failure of a clearinghouse (triggered by the failure of one or more clearing members). Instead, the biggest clearing-related systemic risk is that the very measures that clearinghouses take to ensure their integrity–specifically, frequent variation margining/marking-to-market–lead to large increases in the demand for liquidity precisely during circumstances when liquidity is evaporating. Margin payments during the past several weeks have hit unprecedented–and indeed, previously unimaginable–levels. The need to fund these payments has inevitably increased the demand for liquidity, and contributed to the extraordinary demand for liquidity and the concomitant indicators stressed liquidity conditions (e.g., the spreads and extraordinary central bank actions mentioned earlier). It is impossible to quantify this impact at present, but it is plausibly large.
In sum, the post-2008 Crisis clearing system is operating as designed during the 2020 Crisis, but it is unclear whether that is a feature, or a bug.
It is becoming more clear: Bug, and the bugs are breeding. There have been multiple stories over the last couple of days of margin calls on hedging positions causing fire sales, with attendant price dislocations in markets like for mortgages. Like here, here, and here. I guarantee there are more than have been reported, and there will be still more. Indeed, I bet if you look at any pricing anomaly, it has been created by, or exacerbated by, margin calls. (Look at the muni market, for instance.)
But those in charge still don’t get it. CFTC chairman Heath Tarbert delivers happy talk in the WSJ, claiming that everything is hunky dory because all them margins bein’ paid! and as a result, derivatives markets are functioning, CCPs aren’t failing, etc.
This is exactly the kind of non-systemic thinking about systemic risk that I railed about a decade ago. Mr. Tarbert has a siloed view: he is assigned some authority over a subset of the financial system, sees that it is working fine, and concludes that rules regarding that subset are beneficial for the system as a whole.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. WRONG.
You have to look at the system as a whole, and how the pieces of the system interact.
In the post-last-crisis period I wrote about the “Levee Effect”, namely, that measures designed to protect one part of the financial system would flood others, with ambiguous (at best) systemic consequences. The cascading margins and the effects of those margin calls are exactly what I warned about (to the accompaniment a collective shrug by those who mattered, which is why we are where we are).
What we are seeing is unintended consequences–unintended, but not unforeseeable.
Speaking of unintended consequences, perhaps one good effect of September’s repo market seizure was that it awoke the Fed to its actual job–providing liquidity in times of stress. The facilities put in place in the aftermath of the September SNAFU are being expanded–by orders of magnitude–to deal with the current spike in liquidity demand (including the part of the spike due to margin issues). Thank God the Fed didn’t have to think this up on the fly.
It also appears that either (a) the restrictions on the Fed imposed by Frankendodd are not operative now, or (b) the Fed is saying IDGAF so sue me and blowing through them. Either way, such liquidity seizure are what the Fed was created to address.