That’s not really how it works. The way the market doesn’t let banks get away with this is owners of the bank losing money (equity), and getting wiped out in a bank run is just a special case of that. Equity holders of banks don’t get bailed out by the FDIC so they’re not really getting away with anything.
That said, the (separate) Fed bailout for not-officially-failed banks is likely preventing banks that don’t experience runs from correcting properly.
Agree that equity incentives are the relevant forces in market self-regulation here.
That said, the (separate) Fed bailout for not-officially-failed banks...
I am reasonably confused about the BTFP commentary that I’ve read suggesting it’s equivalent to a bailout. My reading of the terms is that it’s basically the Fed offering to lend you $100 at (1yr) SOFR+10bp collateralized by (let’s say) $75 face value of Treasurys, with general recourse.
If they were lending $100 at SOFR+10bp against $100 face value of Ts, that wouldn’t even be a subsidy—SOFR is supposed to be defined as the going rate for term lending secured by Ts.
And I feel reasonably confident that if a bank went to the Fed with an asset book that was $75mln face value of qualifying securities and said “I would like to use $57mln face = $76mln par of these to borrow $76mln in the BTFP”, the Fed would say “yes, here’s your money”, and then also that bank would get seized by the FDIC that Friday afternoon. So the “bailout” in the par-value detail only matters to banks who wanted to borrow more than 100% of the face value of their qualifying assets, and the only way you pump money out of the government is if you do actually go bankrupt (in which case the Fed has accidentally done a 0% interest T-secured loan to your bankruptcy estate, not the usual definition of “bailout”).
My understanding is that the government subsidy is the rate: no one else will give you a loan so close to the risk-free rate when the whole purpose of the loan is that you’re a bad credit risk.
Another way of looking at it is that if there was no subsidy, this would be unneccessary because banks could get this loan from someone else.
the government subsidy is the rate: no one edse will give you a loan so close to the risk-free rate when the whole purpose of the loan is that you’re a bad credit risk.
For unsecured credit, absolutely. But the BTFP specifically is secured by rounds-to-Treasurys, and the rate it gives is the market-indexed rate for T-secured lending. Your credit really shouldn’t come into the economic rate for your secured borrowing.
To the extent that a bank gets cheaper financing from BTFP, it seems to me much more like “other banks would charge you 1% over their economic costs, but the Fed will undercut them and charge only 10bp”, which seems more like a (barely profitable) public option, rather than a bailout.
(When the government runs the postal service at a profit but undercuts the theoretical price of private mail, is that helpfully described as a “bailout” to mail-senders?)
The government is agreeing to pretend that this is more-secured than it actually is, since they’re treating treasuries that everyone knows are worth $85 (or whatever) are actually worth $100. If these treasuries were actually worth $100, the banks could just sell them for that price instead of needing loans. Also I suspect the cost of a loan from someone else would be much more than 1% higher since the banks needing these loans are very bad credit risks (you’d only take this loan if you’re insolvent and hoping no one will notice). The government is taking on a fairly large credit risk in exchange for basically nothing here.
That’s not really how it works. The way the market doesn’t let banks get away with this is owners of the bank losing money (equity), and getting wiped out in a bank run is just a special case of that. Equity holders of banks don’t get bailed out by the FDIC so they’re not really getting away with anything.
That said, the (separate) Fed bailout for not-officially-failed banks is likely preventing banks that don’t experience runs from correcting properly.
Agree that equity incentives are the relevant forces in market self-regulation here.
I am reasonably confused about the BTFP commentary that I’ve read suggesting it’s equivalent to a bailout. My reading of the terms is that it’s basically the Fed offering to lend you $100 at (1yr) SOFR+10bp collateralized by (let’s say) $75 face value of Treasurys, with general recourse.
If they were lending $100 at SOFR+10bp against $100 face value of Ts, that wouldn’t even be a subsidy—SOFR is supposed to be defined as the going rate for term lending secured by Ts.
And I feel reasonably confident that if a bank went to the Fed with an asset book that was $75mln face value of qualifying securities and said “I would like to use $57mln face = $76mln par of these to borrow $76mln in the BTFP”, the Fed would say “yes, here’s your money”, and then also that bank would get seized by the FDIC that Friday afternoon. So the “bailout” in the par-value detail only matters to banks who wanted to borrow more than 100% of the face value of their qualifying assets, and the only way you pump money out of the government is if you do actually go bankrupt (in which case the Fed has accidentally done a 0% interest T-secured loan to your bankruptcy estate, not the usual definition of “bailout”).
My understanding is that the government subsidy is the rate: no one else will give you a loan so close to the risk-free rate when the whole purpose of the loan is that you’re a bad credit risk.
Another way of looking at it is that if there was no subsidy, this would be unneccessary because banks could get this loan from someone else.
For unsecured credit, absolutely. But the BTFP specifically is secured by rounds-to-Treasurys, and the rate it gives is the market-indexed rate for T-secured lending. Your credit really shouldn’t come into the economic rate for your secured borrowing.
To the extent that a bank gets cheaper financing from BTFP, it seems to me much more like “other banks would charge you 1% over their economic costs, but the Fed will undercut them and charge only 10bp”, which seems more like a (barely profitable) public option, rather than a bailout.
(When the government runs the postal service at a profit but undercuts the theoretical price of private mail, is that helpfully described as a “bailout” to mail-senders?)
The government is agreeing to pretend that this is more-secured than it actually is, since they’re treating treasuries that everyone knows are worth $85 (or whatever) are actually worth $100. If these treasuries were actually worth $100, the banks could just sell them for that price instead of needing loans. Also I suspect the cost of a loan from someone else would be much more than 1% higher since the banks needing these loans are very bad credit risks (you’d only take this loan if you’re insolvent and hoping no one will notice). The government is taking on a fairly large credit risk in exchange for basically nothing here.