Streetwise Professor

Hillary Clinton has announced her program to reform Wall Street. Again.

The actual author of the plan is said to be my old buddy, GiGi: Gary Gensler.

Gensler, if you will recall, was the Igor to Dr. Frankendodd, the loyal assistant who did the hard work to bring the monster to life. Now he is teaming with the Wicked Witch of the West Wing to create Son of Frankendodd.

There are a few reasonable things in the proposal. A risk charge on bigger, more complex institutions makes sense, although the details are devilish.

But for the most part, it is ill-conceived, as one would expect from Gensler.

For instance, it proposes regulating haircuts on repo loans. As I said frequently in the 2009-2010 period, attempting to impose these sorts of requirements on heterogeneous transactions is a form of price control that will lead some risks to be underpriced and some risks to be overpriced. This will create distorted incentives that are likely to increase risks and misallocations, rather than reduce them.

A tax on HFT has received the most attention:

The growth of high-frequency trading (HFT) has unnecessarily burdened our markets and enabled unfair and abusive trading strategies that often capitalize on a “two-tiered” market structure with obsolete rules. That’s why Clinton would impose a tax targeted specifically at harmful HFT. In particular, the tax would hit HFT strategies involving excessive levels of order cancellations, which make our markets less stable and less fair.

This is completely wrongheaded. HFT has not “burdened” our markets. It has been a form of creative destruction that has made traditional intermediaries obsolete, and in so doing has dramatically reduced trading costs. Yes, a baroque market structure in equities has created opportunities for rent seeking by HFT firms, but that was created by regulations, RegNMS in particular. So why not fix the rules (which in Hillary and Gensler acknowledge are problematic) rather than kneecap those who are responding to the incentives the rules create?

Furthermore, the particular remedy proposed here is completely idiotic. “Excessive levels of order cancellations.” Just who is capable of determining what is “excessive”? Furthermore, the ability to cancel orders rapidly is exactly what allows HFT to supply liquidity cheaply, because it limits their vulnerability to adverse selection. High rates of order cancellation are a feature, not a bug, in market making.

It is particularly ironic that Hillary pitches this as a matter of protecting “everyday investors.” FFS, “everyday investors” trading in small quantities are the ones who have gained most from the HFT-caused narrowing of bid-ask spreads.

Hillary also targets dark pools, another target of popular ignorance. Dark pools reduce trading costs for institutional investors, many of whom are investing the money of “everyday” people.

The proposal also gives Gensler an opportunity to ride one of his hobby horses, the Swaps Pushout Rule. This is another inane idea that is completely at odds with its purported purpose. It breaks netting sets and if anything makes the financial system more complex, and certainly makes financial institutions more complex. It also discriminates against commodities and increases the costs of managing commodity price risk.

The most bizarre part of the proposal would require financial institutions to demonstrate to regulators that they can be managed effectively.

Require firms that are too large and too risky to be managed effectively to reorganize, downsize, or break apart. The complexity and scope of many of the largest financial institutions can create risks for our economy by increasing both the likelihood that firms will fail and the economic damage that such failures can cause.[xiv] That’s why, as President, Clinton would pursue legislation that enhances regulators’ authorities under Dodd-Frank to ensure that no financial institution is too large and too risky to manage. Large financial firms would need to demonstrate to regulators that they can be managed effectively, with appropriate accountability across all of their activities. If firms can’t be managed effectively, regulators would have the explicit statutory authorization to require that they reorganize, downsize, or break apart. And Clinton would appoint regulators who would use both these new authorities and the substantial authorities they already have to hold firms accountable.

Just how would you demonstrate this? What would be the criteria? Why should we believe that regulators have the knowledge or expertise to make these judgments?

I have a Modest Proposal of my own. How about a rule that requires legislators and regulators to demonstrate that they have the competence to manage entire sectors of the economy, and in particular, have the competence to understand, let alone manage, an extraordinarily complex emergent order like the financial system? If some firms are too complex to manage, isn’t an ecosystem consisting of many such firms interacting in highly non-linear ways exponentially more complex to control, especially through the cumbersome process of legislation and regulation? Shouldn’t regulators demonstrate they are up to the task?

But of course Gensler and his ilk believe that they are somehow superior to those who manage financial firms. They are oblivious to the Knowledge Problem, and can see the speck in every banker’s eye, but don’t notice the log in their own.

People like Gensler and Hillary, who are so hubristic to presume that they can design and regulate the complex financial system, are by far the biggest systemic risk. Frankendodd was bad enough, but Son of Frankendodd looks to be an even worse horror show, and is almost guaranteed to be so if Gensler is the one in charge, as he clearly aims to be.