Coyote Blog

I found this fascinating, if unsurprising, via Zero Hedge:

Ran Duchin and Denis Sosyura of the University of Michigan looked at the U.S.’ Capital Purchase Program. You may recall that this became the centerpiece of TARP once Hank Paulson decided that the money would be better spent directly buying into the banks as opposed to overpaying them for dodgy asset-backed bonds. (Mind you, other parts of TARP were spent overpaying for dodgy asset-backed bonds.)

The CPP lasted a little more than a year and invested $205 billion of taxpayer funds into various qualifying institutions. Not every bank that filled out the 2-page application was successful in gaining access. Others were approved but ultimately decided not to take the funds (probably because of the attached restrictions on pay and on paying out dividends.) In the end, 707 financial institutions received the funds.

Duchin and Sosyua looked at a sample of 529 public firms that were eligible for CPP and slotted them into categories based on whether they applied, whether they were approved and whether they ultimately took the money. They controlled for non-random selection (via measures of the banks’ financial condition, performance, size and crisis exposure); for changes in national and regional economic conditions; and finally for potential distinctions in credit demand.

They then viewed the banks’ CPP participation status in comparison with their subsequent risk appetite as demonstrated by (1) their consumer mortgage credit approvals or denials (viewed on a risk-profile controlled, application-by-application basis); (2) their participation in syndicated corporate loans for riskier credits and; (3) the risk profile of their investment asset portfolios. What did they find?

They found more risk, across the board.  There is a lot of detail, so I will leave it to you to go to the source for more, but Zero Hedge concludes:

The bail-out itself increased our chances of having the bail the banks out all over again. Moral hazard is no longer in the realm of the abstract

A few months ago I went through an unbelievable hassle refinancing my loan.  Based on current appraisals, my loan to value was less than 50%, but I still ended up coming to the table with more equity to reduce the new loan size.  I was staggered at how hard it was to close what should have been a dead-safe loan, given the LTV and my income and credit history.  The study actually has a finding related to that:

For mortgages the bailed-out banks increased their risk–

“after CPP capital infusions, program participants tilted their credit origination toward higher-risk loans by tightening credit standards for the relatively safer borrowers and slightly loosening them for riskier borrowers.”

–while at the same time ensuring that they didn’t trip off any alarms

“This pattern would be consistent with a strategy aimed at originating high-yield assets, while improving bank capitalization ratios, since the key capitalization ratios do not distinguish between prime and subprime mortgages.”

This is a fascinating sort of metric manipulation.  Having my loan go from 45% to 40% LTV does nothing, really, for the overall safety of the bank, but it improves their averages and makes them look safer, while all the way they are actually engaging in more risky behavior.