Thursday, May 23, 2013

Money Market Funds and Repo Remain Vulnerabilities to the System

Author: David Schwartz J.D. CPA
Treasury Secretary J. Lew still sees money market funds and tri-party repo as unfinished business in the nation's quest to control risks to financial stability. In May 21, 2013 testimony before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Lew delivered the Financial Stability Oversight Council's (FSOC) annual report to Congress. Secretary Lew summarized the conclusions and recommendations made by the FSOC in its third annual report, assessing significant financial market and regulatory developments, potential emerging threats to financial stability, and recommendations to strengthen the financial system. Among the conclusions, Secretary Lew testified that FSOC remains very worried about the risks posed by wholesale funding markets, particularly, money market funds and tri-party repo. Despite the long list of rules, regulations, and structural changes already implemented in other areas, money market fund tri-party repo regulations are still a work in progress. According to Lew, this leaves the financial system still very vulnerable to destabilizing fire-sales in the money fund and tri-party repo markets. Such events can rapidly cross borders and economies, and wreaking havoc on fragile economic recoveries.
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Monday, October 15, 2012

FSOC Taps a Novel Power to Tame Money Funds

Author: David Schwartz J.D. CPA
Both the President's Working Group on Financial Markets and the Financial Stability Oversight Council have consistently called for the SEC to pursue additional reforms to address structural vulnerabilities in [money market funds], including unanimous recommendations in the [FSOC's] 2011 and 2012 annual reports. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act gives the Council both the responsibility and the authority to take action to address risks to financial stability if an agency fails to do so.  (emphasis added) Accordingly, I would like the [FSOC] to consider taking a series of steps to address this challenge. With Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the Financial Stability Oversight Council taking the lead on further reforms to money market mutual funds, Geithner and the FSOC will be testing the limits of the super-regulatory powers granted by the Dodd-Frank Act.  Section 12(a)(1) of the Dodd-Frank Act set forth the essential duties and powers of the FSOC. Among these are: identifing systemically important financial market utilities and payment, clearing, and settlement activities (as that term is defined in title VIII); and making recommendations to primary financial regulatory agencies to apply new or heightened standards and safeguards for financial activities or practices that could create or increase risks of significant liquidity, credit, or other problems spreading among bank holding companies, nonbank financial companies, and United States financial markets. As his September 27, 2012 letter to the FSOC makes clear, Geithner intends for the FSOC to use its Section 12(a)(1) power to bring money market funds into the ambit of the Dodd-Frank Act by declaring them systematically important nonbank financial companies.
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Thursday, September 20, 2012

GAO Wants Greater Transparency from the FSOC

Author: David Schwartz J.D. CPA
In a recently concluded study, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) says, among other things, that Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and Office of Financial Research (OFR) could benefit from more transparency. Though both the FSOC and OFR issue annual reports on their activities and created web pages that provide some information to the public, the GAO concluded that the FSOC's and OFR's management mechanisms to carry out their missions could be improved to provide greater accountability and transparency.
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