Investment bank Morgan Stanley has disclosed that it will pay only $2.6 billion to settle U.S. Justice Department allegations that it deceived investors in the sale of toxic securities in the run-up to the financial meltdown.
I say “only” because the amount is substantially lower than the figures paid by Bank of America ($16.7 billion), JPMorgan Chase ($13 billion) and Citigroup ($7 billion) in similar cases. Thanks to the efforts of groups such as U.S. PIRG, we know that these amounts are less onerous than they appear because the companies are often allowed to deduct the payouts from their corporate income tax obligations.
My colleagues and I at Good Jobs First have been assembling data that does more to put the payouts in perspective. As part of an expansion of our Subsidy Tracker database to the federal level, we obtained information on the massive bailout programs implemented by the Federal Reserve in 2008 to stabilize the teetering financial system by purchasing toxic assets on the books of financial institutions and by serving as a lender of last resort.
These programs, with esoteric names such as the Term Auction Facility, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility and the Term Securities Lending Facility, are not as well known as the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, but the amounts involved are eye-popping. A 2011 paper by James Fulkerson of the University of Missouri-Kansas City estimates that the Fed made bailout commitments worth a total of more than $29 trillion. Yes, that’s trillion with a t.
We’ve been going through the recipient lists the Fed (reluctantly) made public for 11 bailout programs to match the entities to their parent companies. We’re not quite done with that process, but it appears that the totals for a few large banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase as well as Morgan Stanley, will end up being in excess of $1 trillion each (excluding repayment amounts). Our final figures will be released March 17, both in what we are calling Subsidy Tracker 3.0 and in an accompanying report.
It’s already clear that the settlement amounts paid by the banks (especially in after-tax terms) have been easily absorbed as costs of doing business. The Fed bailout data shows that another reason the banks have been little fazed by their legal expenses is that they received government assistance worth a thousand times more during their time of grave vulnerability in 2008 and 2009 — vulnerability that was largely of their own making due to reckless securitization of subprime mortgages and consumer loans.
After Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, the Fed was apparently willing to spare no expense in rescuing the other big financial players. Its efforts ensured the survival of the big banks that are riding high today. Perhaps the top executives of these banks should keep this fact in mind before criticizing the modest regulations put in place to save them (and us) from their excesses.
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