by Lew Rockwell, Lew Rockwell:
On May 1, government bank officials sold Republic Bank to JP Morgan Chase, the largest bank in the country. Even the New York Times report about the sale recognized that the normal rules had been suspended when the interests of the big government-big bank cabal were at stake: “Lawmakers and regulators have spent years erecting laws and rules meant to limit the power and size of the largest U.S. banks. But those efforts were cast aside in a frantic late-night effort by government officials to contain a banking crisis by seizing and selling First Republic Bank to the country’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase.
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At about 1 a.m. Monday, hours after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation had been expected to announce a buyer for the troubled regional lender, government officials informed JPMorgan executives that they had won the right to take over First Republic and the accounts of its well-heeled customers, most of them in wealthy coastal cities and suburbs.
But the resolution of First Republic has also brought to the fore long-running debates about whether some banks have become too big to fail partly because regulators have allowed or even encouraged them to acquire smaller financial institutions, especially during crises.
‘Regulators view them as adults and business partners,’ said Tyler Gellasch, president of Healthy Markets Association, a Washington-based group that advocates greater transparency in the financial system, referring to big banks like JPMorgan. ‘They are too big to fail and they are afforded the privilege of being so.’
He added that JPMorgan was likely to make a lot of money from the acquisition. JPMorgan said on Monday that it expected the deal to raise its profits this year by $500 million.
JPMorgan will pay the F.D.I.C. $10.6 billion to acquire First Republic. The government agency expects to cover a loss of about $13 billion on First Republic’s assets.
Normally a bank cannot acquire another bank if doing so would allow it to control more than 10 percent of the nation’s bank deposits — a threshold JPMorgan had already reached before buying First Republic. But the law includes an exception for the acquisition of a failing bank.”
Why should we care about this? Isn’t the massive graft of crony capitalism an everyday event? We should care because this takeover is just the tip of the iceberg. Our whole banking system might be insolvent. Manuel Garcia Gojon points out, “The taming of monetary policy necessary to slow price inflation has triggered a corrective trend in the valuation of financial instruments. Many big banks in the United States have substantially increased their use of an accounting technique that allows them to avoid marking certain assets at their current market value, instead using the face value in their balance sheet calculations. This accounting technique consists of announcing that they intend to hold such assets to maturity.
As of the end of 2022, the bank with the largest amount of assets marked as ‘held to maturity’ relative to capital was Charles Schwab. Apart from being structured as a bank, Charles Schwab is a prominent stockbroker and owns TD Ameritrade, another prominent stockbroker. Charles Schwab had over $173 billion in assets marked as ‘held to maturity.’ Its capital (assets minus liabilities) stood at under $37 billion. At that time, the difference between the market value and face value of assets held to maturity was over $14 billion.
If the accounting technique had not been used the capital would have stood at around $23 billion. This amount is under half the $56 billion Charles Schwab had in capital at the end of 2021. This is also under 15 percent of the amount of assets held to maturity, under 10 percent of securities, and under 5 percent of total assets. An asset ten years from maturity is reduced in present value by 15 percent with a 3 percent increase in the interest rate. An asset twenty years from maturity is reduced in present value by 15 percent with a 1.5 percent increase in the interest rate.
The interest rates for long-term financial instruments have remained relatively stable throughout the first quarter of 2023, but this may be subject to change as many of the long-term assets of recently failed Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank must be sold off for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to replenish its liquidity. The long-term interest rate is also heavily dependent on inflation expectations, as with higher inflation a higher nominal rate is necessary to obtain the same real rate. It is also important to remember that the US Congress has persisted in not raising the debt ceiling for the government, which is currently projected to not be able to meet all its obligations by August. This could impact the value of treasuries held by the banks.
