The Collapse of Citi

Banking is a commodity business. Banking deals with information…I am holding $100.00of yours in something called a transaction account…I am holding your IOU for $1,000,000.00. Whereas, historically, these sums had to do with a physical quantity…something like gold…now all banking is basically conducted in 0’s and 1’s.

Banking is just information and the movement of information. Banking is a commodity business.

Yes, there are some other products and services connected with the banking business. There is safe keeping…you can get coin and currency back from you transaction account. We will clear payments for you though the banking system so that you can pay people from your account without the use of coin and currency and you can receive payments from other which will be put into your account. That is, we clear transactions through the banking system. We will do your accounting for you and send you a monthly statement. We will make loans to you and provide many different kinds of services for you connected with your loan. And there are many other products and services that banks provide their customers…individuals, businesses, and governments.

Banks used to get paid for these services primarily in interest payments or in deposit balances that were kept at the bank. In the 1980s, however, we got another idea. We can isolate these products and services, account for them, and then charge the customer fees for these particular products and services they use and then we, the banks, won’t have to build in payment for them in the interest rates charged on the loans or by means of the deposit balances that the customer had been required to keep at the bank.

Fees are good because they don’t depend upon loan or deposit balances, but depend upon other products or services rendered.

In the 1980s depository institutions found another way to generate fee income. In the 1970s the government had invented a new financial instrument called a mortgage-backed security that could help financial institutions make more money available to people who wanted to own homes and the depository institution could make these mortgage loans, securitize them so they could sell them and not hold them on their balance sheets, and collect fees for originating and, possibly servicing them. Furthermore, the banks would not have to worry about the interest rate risk that came from holding assets with long term maturities like mortgages and support them with deposits that were available on demand or had short-term maturities.

Banks liked fees and started to build businesses based on fee income. They looked farther and farther in an effort to find more sources of fee income. They built or acquired subsidiaries that generated fee income. And banking companies grew and became diversified…even conglomerate in nature.

But, the banks saw that more than just mortgages could be securitized and they saw that these securitized loans could be traded and in so doing more and more fees could be generated, but they also found that they could make trading profits from dealing in these securitized loans. And so banks began trading in securitized loans…otherwise called derivatives…and developing arbitrage strategies to take advantage of market discrepancies. But, to take advantage of market discrepancies they had to increase the amount of leverage they used so as to earn competitive returns.

Yet, the nature of banking did not change. Banking is a commodity business.

Not only is the business of borrowing money in the form of deposits and lending that money out to businesses and consumers in different kinds of loans a commodity business, the banks found that competition made all the products and services they offered into commodities as well. And, trading…well no one makes money over the longer haul on trading…because it, too, is composed of transactions in commodities.

Banks can earn a return on capital that is equal to what the capital can earn elsewhere given the normal risk a bank assumes. But, banks cannot mold themselves into institutions that can produce and sustain competitive advantages over other firms and industries. The business model they tried did not work. Yet, like other firms and other industries that come to believe in a business model that doesn’t work, their continued efforts to make the business model work only exacerbated the problem. Generally, this extra effort meant taking more and more risks and then even using extra-legal means to produce the results wanted.

I am not saying that banks committed fraud, but I have very serious concerns about the off-balance sheet practices along with other accounting efforts that the banks used in an attempt to generate the higher returns they felt they had to earn. However, the competitive pressure to perform does push people and organizations to walk the edge of ethical practices.

Citi…whatever…had a business model that did not work. And, this model was tested over about a decade…and it never worked. The investment community realized this and was only luke-warm about the company’s stock. Yet, management stuck with the model and tried all the tricks to make its business model work. They were true believers.

No one stood up, however, and mentioned that the emperor didn’t have on any clothes.

Banking is a commodity business. Citi…whatever…is said to be cutting back its organization by a third…and this is from the reduction in size that had already been achieved. They are supposedly getting back to fundamentals…into areas in which they have a core competency. Supposedly, its management has a better appreciation of the markets it will be working in. Let’s hope so.

And so the debt deflation goes on. The example of the banks…and of Citi-whatever…shows why it is so difficult to achieve a turnaround in the financial system and the economy during a time such as this. In the previous forty years or so, many companies, like Citi-whatever, took advantage of the almost continuous expansion of the economy and the government support of that expansion. Now the re-construction of these companies must take place.

The big question on the table right now concerns the stimulus plan being put together by President-elect Obama and his team. With companies…like Citi-whatever…drawing back and restructuring, how much effect can the stimulus plan have on the economy? The stimulus plan must not only attempt to reverse the economic down-term but must overcome the impact of the companies that are deleveraging their financial structure or are withdrawing from markets. The administration is shooting at a target that is moving away from it.