10-03-08--Many events in Washington, on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country have led to what has been called the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s. But decisions made at a brief meeting on April 28, 2004, explain why the problems could spin out of control. The agency’s failure to follow through on those decisions also explains why Washington regulators did not see what was coming.
On that bright spring afternoon, the five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks.
They wanted an exemption for their brokerage units from an old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption would unshackle billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments. Those funds could then flow up to the parent company, enabling it to invest in the fast-growing but opaque world of mortgage-backed securities; credit derivatives, a form of insurance for bond holders; and other exotic instruments.
The five investment banks led the charge, including Goldman Sachs, which was headed by Henry M. Paulson Jr. Two years later, he left to become Treasury secretary.
A lone dissenter — a software consultant and expert on risk management — weighed in from Indiana with a two-page letter to warn the commission that the move was a grave mistake. He never heard back from Washington. ...
In letters to the commissioners, senior executives at the five investment banks complained about what they called unnecessary regulation and oversight by both American and European authorities. A lone voice of dissent in the 2004 proceeding came from a software consultant from Valparaiso, Ind., who said the computer models run by the firms — which the regulators would be relying on — could not anticipate moments of severe market turbulence.
“With the stroke of a pen, capital requirements are removed!” the consultant, Leonard D. Bole, wrote to the commission on Jan. 22, 2004. “Has the trading environment changed sufficiently since 1997, when the current requirements were enacted, that the commission is confident that current requirements in examples such as these can be disregarded?”
He said that similar computer standards had failed to protect Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund that collapsed in 1998, and could not protect companies from the market plunge of October 1987.
Mr. Bole, who earned a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Chicago, helps write computer programs that financial institutions use to meet capital requirements.
He said in a recent interview that he was never called by anyone from the commission.
“I’m a little guy in the land of giants,” he said. “I thought that the reduction in capital was rather dramatic.”—NYT A1, A23
--...this is Homer [Simpson’s] first vote in a presidential general election. “It’s time for a change, he says to an electronic voting machine. But ... the machine records the vote (multiple votes, actually) for John McCain, then tries to swallow Homer when he disagrees. “This doesn’t happen in America,” Homer exclaims. “Maybe Ohio, but not in America!”—NYT A20
--Sunspots are Fewest since 1954, but Significance is Unclear—NYT A21
--Sen. Obama has advertised in Indiana for months, and until recently Republicans have ridiculed those efforts. On Tuesday, the RNC made its first advertising buy in the state, a 10-day, $740,000 purchase, after polls showed a statistical tie in a state Mr. Bush won by 31% in 2004. –WSJ A15
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