Bank of America dot Gov

It is becoming clearer and clearer what it means to have government involved in the affairs of banks and businesses. Where all the initial talk was about the “moral hazard” presented by government bailing out the private sector and how this just means that in the future banks, and other organizations, will just take on more and more risk because they know that if things go bad, the government will be there with a rescue net to save the institution.

Now, we are seeing the other side of the bailout business. In the AIG case executives and others were angry because the government interfered with bonuses and other executive decisions. And, we have the government putting lids on executive pay. And, we have government wanting to rewrite mortgages, and cap interest rates on credit card debt, and so on and so on.

This is the other side of the coin.

And, now we learn from testimony given by Ken Lewis, the CEO of Bank of America, that Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke put a “sock” in his mouth and strongly advised him that he say nothing to the shareholders or anybody else about the implications of the merger between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch.

Furthermore, we hear from New York’s Attorney General Cuomo that Paulson threatened to fire Lewis and remove the entire Board of Directors it Bank of America did not go through with the merger with Merrill Lynch! The reward—money from the Government to help BOA through the process.

The shareholders? Well, they lost on the value of their stock. And, they also will have higher taxes or an inflation tax that they will have to pay in the future.

In addition, why should any company, financial or non-financial even think of an acquisition in the future because the government may force the management to swallow hard, take on something that is not necessarily desirable for the company, and, of course, not inform investors as to the implications of the merger transaction?

And, why should the stockholders of any company approve any acquisition that is at all questionable? The precedent has been set that they might be approving something that will cost them considerable wealth as the stock of their company tanks, and they are given no information to give them any confidence that the transaction might be a worthy one.

What if the shareholders balk? What if they fail to approve such a merger? Will the government step in and force through the merger anyway?

Talk about a mess!

Two thoughts come to mind that I must express.

First, the combination of Paulson and Bernanke was a disaster as far as I can see. I have written about how Bernanke seemed to panic last fall and the result was the TARP. (See my post “The Bailout Plan: Did Bernanke Panic”, http://seekingalpha.com/article/106186-the-bailout-plan-did-bernanke-panic.)

Paulson didn’t do much better in his handling of the crisis and the creation and oversight of the TARP. I always thought that Paulson found the whole bailout idea not to his taste and had hoped that he would be able to get out of Washington before the collapse. Unfortunately for him—and for us—he didn’t make it. As a consequence here was a man doing something that he despised, and his heart, and mind, was really not in the effort. He has left us a very unhappy legacy!

When I reflect on the events of the last fall I keep coming up with the feeling that we would be hard pressed to have found two people less capable of handling the situation than the two that were then in charge. And, then there was the “Decider”, but he was AWOL!

The second thing has to do with the fact that the bankers, and other business leaders, are getting pelted with all the blame for the financial collapse and crisis that we have experienced. Thus we have the “bad guys” in our sights. Thus, they should pay.

But, what if the conditions that existed were created by the government and these bankers and other business leaders were just responding to the incentives initiated by the government? We had a credit bubble connected with the stock market in the 1990s. The credit bubble resulted in negative real rates of interest and consumers stopped saving. The saving rate fell from 7.7% of disposable income in 1992 to about 2.0% by the end of the decade. Then there was the huge deficits that resulted from the 2001 tax cuts and the “war on terror”. This was accompanied by negative real interest rates gain which resulted in the credit bubble in the 2000s and the housing boom. The consumer savings rate remained around two or below, even becoming negative for a short period of time.

The foreign exchange market in the 2000s indicated a fear of a renewal of inflation as the value of the dollar fell by more than 40% against major currencies. What were financial managers to do in such an environment? Generally, because spreads narrow in such times and arbitrage opportunities are based on smaller differences, you tend to leverage up and mismatch maturities. This response is a normal one to gain the needed returns on equity to keep money from leaving your fund or institution.

Is this greed? Yes, but it is also just the natural response of competitive people to the incentives that are created, in this case, by the government. The Bush 43 administration may have been composed of “Free Market Capitalists” but this “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” did more to harm capitalism than most other administrations in the history of the United States.

So, government gets it both ways. It can create the crisis. And, then it can impose itself on the economy to right the system after the crisis occurs. And, best of all, the blame can all be put on “greedy” bankers and the lack of regulation.

I am sure that before this is over we will hear many more horror stories.