Barbara Rehm noted recently in this newspaper that JPMorgan Chase is widely acclaimed as the Michelangelo of risk management because it "came through the 2008 crisis better than most of its peers."
Jamie Dimon deserves no credit for that.
Citi, an agglomerated mess that Jamie had worked mightily to heap up, didn't come through the crisis on its feet. Its former CEO, Sandy Weil, was the only boss Jamie had ever had. Sandy's ambition was to run the biggest bank ever. Which Jamie now does—after Sandy fired him. Coincidence?
The other large lenders that most notably failed in the crisis, such as IndyMac, Countrywide, Wachovia and Washington Mutual, failed because they created large volumes of unsound mortgages—mortgages with stated income, teaser payments, loan-to-value ratios above 100%, and other fatal defects—whether or not the borrowers had subprime scores, which they often did not.
Prior to the crisis, Chase Mortgage was a top mortgage lender. But it didn't participate in the race to the bottom—either before or after Jamie Dimon arrived. Indeed, in his first annual report after taking charge, Jamie said, "We maintained our high underwriting standards." Why?
Not because some brilliant chief risk officer ran the "parallel outcomes analysis" that Barbara advocates—and then reined in the CEO of Chase Mortgage. A more convincing explanation: Chase Mortgage was a ponderous, sluggish bureaucracy, distrustful of innovation and unable to introduce changes to products or policies at any speed above dead slow.
After Jamie arrived, this didn't change, though he's put the business through four CEO's in six years.
Another reason Chase didn't follow the lead goats may be that Jamie has long shown a personal aversion to nonprime consumer lending. Perhaps that dates back to his days with Sandy Weil at the totally subprime Commercial Credit. Or maybe he acquired it as CEO of Bank One, with its dreadful portfolio of broker-originated home equity loans. Or else he's noticed that subprime lenders don't rise to stardom and top positions in Washington.
His aversion to higher-risk consumers also explains why, when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. handed him WaMu, which had previously bought for over $6 billion the subprime card issuer Providian—led for the previous six years by the much-admired Joe Saunders (now head of Visa)—Jamie chose simply to run down the portfolio. Count that as a $6 billion destruction of value. He could afford it because he got WaMu for almost nothing, after Sheila Bair was terrorized by a run. (Full disclosure: In the 1980's, I founded the credit card business that eventually became Providian.)
In fact, pre-Jamie, Chase issued some subprime cards, but Jamie ended that. Too bad, because subprime cards, like subprime auto loans, performed well through the crisis (when many people paid on their cards and not on their mortgages), and have since been highly profitable.
"I won't lend to nonprime consumers" represents the pinnacle of risk management expertise only if the safest car would have no gear higher than first—or if buying only bonds, never stocks, deserves the risk management Nobel prize.
Speculation on derivatives is gambling. Nonprime consumer lending is not gambling—as Capital One, for instance, has shown for over 20 years. Some argue that Jamie's credit derivatives gamble lost "only" some billions, so no big deal. Wrong. What's important is the management weaknesses that this loss reveals. Here's a comparable:
Regardless, look at our own Federal Government gentlemen. This has me more worried than any large banking institution being TBTF. Banking institutions can be covered with additional capital and insurance, what do we do about our off the wall Federal Government that continues to borrow 40cents against every dollar it spends? Dollars it does not have to spend! Talk about to big to fail. California is basically Bankrupt. Is it not TBTF? Stockton is already done with many other cities in line to follow. What does California do when they realize that they have a $24 billion dollar deficit? They raise taxes again, just what got them where they are today. More business and individuals will leave for other states and even to Canada/Mexico etc.
How can our Federal Government look at what is happening in Spain, Greece, Italy, California, etc., and continue on the same path of destruction? What our large banking institutions do is obviously important, but meaningless if our Federal Government destroys our currency any further and the economy along with it!!!
With regard to Rob's point: When the sovereign becomes the greatest source of systemic risk to the health, safety and soundness of the financial, social, and international system(s), precisely how is the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to act?
Rob is right on the mark: the biggest systemic risk is presented by our Federal Government and its appendages (e.g., GSEs, quasi-government agencies, and endless subsidy and welfare systems), not the banks. One is the seemingly insurmountable problem of a radical downsizing of the Federal Government; the second is the complex but achievable challenge of "sterilizing" the TBTF banks. Our proper course of action is not to ignore either threat, but to address BOTH the disastrous policies and over-reach of a pernicious new form of Neo-Federalism gone amok (((including, for example, activist judges - like those on the Supreme Court - who today, by exceptionally poor reasoning, redefined in a particularly odious fashion the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause))) as well as quasi-GSEs like the TBTF banks.
Great article, excellent comments, and thank you American Banker!