Nicole Gelinas has been one of the most astute observers of how government has screwed up the financial system and her column in the Washington Examiner is an excellent summary of why the Dodd-Frank bill is a step in the wrong direction.
For 25 years, Washington has done everything in its power to subsidize Americans’ profligate borrowing habits. Debt became the fuel for economic growth. Washington subsidized the financial industry’s borrowing through implicit guarantees against loss.
The feds first started rescuing creditors to “too big to fail” banks in 1984. Since then, it’s become clear to lenders — Wall Street’s global bondholders and trading counterparties — that the government would save them anytime a large financial firm foundered.
Indemnified against losses, bondholders could lend nearly infinitely to Wall Street. Wall Street found creative ways to lend that money right back to the public, through mortgage brokers and credit card marketers.
…The Dodd-Frank bill is a monument to the status quo. Despite promises that the bill will end bailouts, it enshrines bailouts into law.
It provides for an “orderly liquidation authority,” for example, which allows “systemically important” financial firms to escape bankruptcy and to escape, too, consistent losses for their creditors. It also sets up a fast-track procedure through which the White House can ask Congress for guarantees for Wall Street’s lenders in a future crisis.
In effect, the government is saying to Wall Street’s lenders: Carry on as you did before 2008.
Ordinary Americans, though, understand that they can’t go on as before. Since 2008, they’ve started paying their debt back.
The process is painful. As Americans borrow less, they spend less and pay less for houses.
But as Americans pare back their debt, the economy will begin to heal permanently. As house prices fall, for example, because less borrowed money exists to send them higher, Americans will have more money left over after paying the mortgage.
They can invest that money in the stock market for retirement. Those funds, in turn, will go to entrepreneurs who create jobs outside of the financial industry.
The Dodd-Frank bill would pervert this healthy process. It would pit Washington’s too-big-to-fail subsidies and Wall Street’s creativity against Americans who are trying to do the right thing for themselves and the country.
