Bernanke's words suggest 'too big to fail' is now accepted knowledge

Here is Federal Reserve chairman Bernanke, from a speech given to the Council on Foreign Relations, March 10. He is talking about the relationship of the largest banks to the stability of the entire system, and the 'imperative' to save these large-scale institutions, lest we face significant systemic ruin.

In a crisis, the authorities have strong incentives to prevent the failure of a large, highly interconnected financial firm, because of the risks such a failure would pose to the financial system and the broader economy. However, the belief of market participants that a particular firm is considered too big to fail has many undesirable effects. For instance, it reduces market discipline and encourages excessive risk-taking by the firm. It also provides an artificial incentive for firms to grow, in order to be perceived as too big to fail. And it creates an unlevel playing field with smaller firms, which may not be regarded as having implicit government support. Moreover, government rescues of too-big-to-fail firms can be costly to taxpayers, as we have seen recently. Indeed, in the present crisis, the too-big-to-fail issue has emerged as an enormous problem.

In the midst of this crisis, given the highly fragile state of financial markets and the global economy, government assistance to avoid the failures of major financial institutions has been necessary to avoid a further serious destabilization of the financial system, and our commitment to avoiding such a failure remains firm. Looking to the future, however, it is imperative that policymakers address this issue by better supervising systemically critical firms to prevent excessive risk-taking and by strengthening the resilience of the financial system to minimize the consequences when a large firm must be unwound.

Achieving more effective supervision of large and complex financial firms will require a number of actions. First, supervisors need to move vigorously--as we are already doing--to address the weaknesses at major financial institutions in capital adequacy, liquidity management, and risk management that have been revealed by the crisis. In particular, policymakers must insist that the large financial firms that they supervise be capable of monitoring and managing their risks in a timely manner and on an enterprise-wide basis. In that regard, the Federal Reserve has been looking carefully at risk-management practices at systemically important institutions to identify best practices, assess firms' performance, and require improvement where deficiencies are identified.3 Any firm whose failure would pose a systemic risk must receive especially close supervisory oversight of its risk-taking, risk management, and financial condition, and be held to high capital and liquidity standards.4 In light of the global reach and diversified operations of many large financial firms, international supervisors of banks, securities firms, and other financial institutions must collaborate and cooperate on these efforts.

Second, we must ensure a robust framework--both in law and practice--for consolidated supervision of all systemically important financial firms organized as holding companies. The consolidated supervisors must have clear authority to monitor and address safety and soundness concerns in all parts of the organization, not just the holding company. Broad-based application of the principle of consolidated supervision would also serve to eliminate gaps in oversight that would otherwise allow risk-taking to migrate from more-regulated to less-regulated sectors.

Third, looking beyond the current crisis, the United States also needs improved tools to allow the orderly resolution of a systemically important nonbank financial firm, including a mechanism to cover the costs of the resolution. In most cases, federal bankruptcy laws provide an appropriate framework for the resolution of nonbank financial institutions. However, this framework does not sufficiently protect the public's strong interest in ensuring the orderly resolution of nondepository financial institutions when a failure would pose substantial systemic risks. Improved resolution procedures for these firms would help reduce the too-big-to-fail problem by narrowing the range of circumstances that might be expected to prompt government intervention to keep the firm operating.

Developing appropriate resolution procedures for potentially systemic financial firms, including bank holding companies, is a complex and challenging task. Models do exist, though, including the process currently in place under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (FDIA) for dealing with failing insured depository institutions and the framework established for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. Both models allow a government agency to take control of a failing institution's operations and management, act as conservator or receiver for the institution, and establish a "bridge" institution to facilitate an orderly sale or liquidation of the firm. The authority to "bridge" a failing institution through a receivership to a new entity reduces the potential for market disruption while limiting moral hazard and mitigating any adverse impact of government intervention on market discipline.

The new resolution regime would need to be carefully crafted. For example, clear guidelines must define which firms could be subject to the alternative regime and the process for invoking that regime, analogous perhaps to the procedures for invoking the so-called systemic risk exception under the FDIA. In addition, given the global operations of many large and complex financial firms and the complex regulatory structures under which they operate, any new regime must be structured to work as seamlessly as possible with other domestic or foreign insolvency regimes that might apply to one or more parts of the consolidated organization.