Credit, Currency, or Derivatives: Instruments of Global Financial Stability Or crisis?: Volume 10

The current US financial crisis has elicited unprecedented responses by various government agencies and institutions. The current crisis is the most serious since the 1930s in terms of its financial and economic impacts and global repercussions, but its origin in the largest developed country in the world contrasts with other crises originated in emerging markets. We survey the issues pertaining to the similarities and differences in the causes and policy responses in the current US financial crisis versus the Asian financial crisis in 1997–1998. We discuss the implications for prevention and management of similar financial crises in the future.

This paper examines the role of structured products in the 2008–2009 financial crisis. The growth of asset securitization has allowed loans that used to be funded by traditional intermediaries, including commercial banks, to be funded in securities markets. As credit-related services became unbundled, layers of transactions were added to the financial intermediation process. These layers were added as structured products, e.g., credit default swaps, in the over-the-counter market. This paper looks at the evolution of credit markets and the importance of using off-balance-sheet-based measures as an alternative in assessing the financial sector.

We test the hypothesis that credit quality deteriorates during credit booms. The test case is a pronounced cycle in connection with a banking crisis, ranked among the most extreme in international studies. A unique data set allows us to rate household borrowers during the cycle, and aggregate the ratings to the macroeconomic level. The post-crisis period is also studied to find changes in credit quality.

The method reveals significant variation in average ratings of household borrowers during the crisis cycle and its aftermath. We find that ‘point-in-time’ ratings, calculated with realised data, do not indicate deterioration in average credit quality during the credit boom. In contrast, ‘through-the-cycle’ ratings, constructed by using data that is cleaned from cyclical variation, behave in accordance with the hypothesis. By all measures used, a significant improvement in the average quality of borrowers is found during the post-crisis period.

In July 2008 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published three proposals relating to the use of credit ratings in its rules and forms. The proposals were designed to address concerns that the misuse of credit ratings may have contributed to the current crisis. The SEC sought market feedback regarding the effect the removal of credit rating references may produce on the markets.

This article examines the use of ratings by various market constituents, analyzes the details of the SEC proposals, and reviews the provided feedback. The main finding is that the majority of the market participants opposed the SEC proposals. Fiduciaries and regulated entities are looking to regulators to offer a common measure of risk, stable, accurate and free of conflict of interests.

This paper views the housing and credit bubble 2001–2008 as a sequence starting with a financial innovation in 2001 followed by the superimposition of other financial innovations leading to the prevalence of uncertainty in Knight's sense and ending in the last quarter of 2008 with both market failure and regulation failure. To the extent that financial innovations were an important factor in the development of the bubble, the most obvious question is whether anything can be done to prevent destabilizing innovations from entering the market. The paper outlines a policy proposal to keep pace with financial innovation and strike a balance between innovation and financial stability.

The 2007 BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity Report shows a substantial increase in turnover in foreign exchange and OTC derivatives markets. Turnover in traditional FX markets increased to reach $3.2 trillion. The largest contributor to this 71% increase between April 2004 and April 2007 occurred in FX swaps. It was like a prelude to the financial crisis of 2007–2008 driven by transactions carried out between banks and other financial institutions due to the significance of hedge funds and major engagement of emerging market currencies which have sought new configurations of portfolio diversification worldwide.

This paper investigates the nature of the causal relationship between stock price and exchange rate related to five emerging countries – Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, and Malaya – by applying the techniques of unit root, a test proposed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995), the variance decomposition analysis, and the impulse response function. Empirically, we have found that there is a unidirectional Granger causality for all these countries. This relationship is very important, especially for the case of Malaya. Our results also suggest that total convertibility strengthens the relation between the two markets, but cannot be considered as a crucial determining factor.

The aim of this article is to present the influence of exchange rate changes on the price dynamics in Poland. The knowledge concerning exchange rate pass-through to prices allows assessing how exchange rates affect inflation and monetary policy in the country. The article consists of two parts. The first part deals with theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of incomplete exchange rate pass-through to prices, including reasons and factors determining this phenomenon. In the next part the range of exchange rate pass-through to prices in Poland is analyzed by using the vector autoregression (VAR) model.

The development of the Russian banking sector was subject to numerous criticisms and pessimistic forecasts in the recent years. The observers pointed out the low ability of the Russian banking sector to provide financial intermediation in the economy and thus to perform the key functions which society expects from the banking sector – mobilization of savings and financing investments in the real sector of the economy. The study seeks to explain above-mentioned features from institutional, economic, and political perspective on the basis of the existing knowledge of the nature of transition banking.

The expanded sovereign bond portfolios from the sizeable public interventions in the financial sector during the current crisis need close monitoring and analysis of emerging vulnerabilities. This chapter presents some conventional and new measures of market, credit, and liquidity risks for government bond portfolios, considered from the perspective of a sovereign debt manager. In particular, it examines duration, convexity, and VaR statistics as measures of market exposure; the contingent-claims approach as the most promising measure of credit risk exposure; and a VaR statistic as a measure of liquidity risk.

This case study examines the controversial practice by the Commonwealth of Australia during the period 1988–2002 of using currency swaps as part of its debt management strategy. Although the strategy provided a positive return overall, the impact of currency swap usage created significant year-by-year variations in returns, which posed a risk to debt interest and financing requirements. This suggests that the risk limits imposed on this strategy were both inappropriate and insufficient. Nonetheless, these findings provide insights into how such a policy could best be implemented given recent proposals (OECD, 2007) for derivatives use by public debt managers.

This paper uses contingent claims analysis to evaluate the implicit government guarantee to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to their placement into conservatorship. The main findings of the paper indicate that the expected value of the guarantee was in line with the size of capital injections under the Treasury Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement and that the market expected the government to cover nearly all expected losses on senior debt. However, simulations reveal that the eventual total cost to recapitalize the GSEs may be significantly higher than provided for under the original terms of the conservatorship.

The central bank policy instruments have become less effective in an environment where economies are integrated with sophisticated financial products. We argue that economic stability is a function of interactions between financial and commodity markets. We utilize MGARCH models to identify volatility comovements between these markets in the United States since 2000. Our results suggest that financial markets have strong impacts on prices and volatility in commodity markets which could be due to intertemporal capital mobility. Thus, understanding commodity markets is inseparable from understanding financial market activities, and must now be included in an economic equation to achieve an effective policy.

The global recession has strongly affected the credibility of the international banking system, damaging also the real economy.

Developing countries, not fully integrated with international markets, seem less affected and local microfinance institutions might also allow for a further shelter against recession, even if foreign support is slowing down and collection of international capital is harder and more expensive.

Intrinsic characteristics of microfinance, such as closeness to the borrowers, limited risk and exposure and little if any correlation with international markets have an anti-cyclical effect. In hard and confused times, it pays to be little, flexible and simple.

This paper analyzes the role of trade credit in financial crises. Using newly collected data, we investigate the impact of negotiated agreements between debtor and creditor countries on bilateral trade. Our results indicate that exports to creditor countries rise considerably after debt restructuring agreements in the period 1980–1997, while we find no effect for imports and for the more recent period. We identify trade credit as one key channel behind this positive effect. Apparently, crisis resolution efforts, in particular agreements to extend and roll over trade credits, play a crucial role for export recoveries. This gives some support to current worldwide efforts to sustain trade financing via coordinated policy interventions.

Starting in 2007 financial markets experienced a time of serious crisis that spread from the United States housing market and affected banks worldwide. In this article, we analyze the spreading of the crisis from Wall Street to Main Street in the specific context of the different European Markets and based on reactions of deposit holders. We show how elements of crisis affect Main Street and discuss the policy moderation of that transmission. This allows to collect evidence for the implication of the described moderation in an integrated financial market and the role of deposit insurances in financial turmoil.

In December 2008, as the financial and economic crisis continued on its devastating course, a new scandal erupted. After the 1998s failure of Long-Term Capital Management, Madoff's fraud once again discredits the hedge funds industry. This scandal is, however, of a different kind. Indeed, Madoff's firm is not a standard hedge fund but a developed Ponzi scheme. By explaining Madoff's system and exploring the reasons for its collapse, this paper draws risk management lessons from this fraud, especially for operational risk management, due diligence processes, and the use of quantitative replication, regulatory, and standardizing approaches of the hedge fund industry.

Financial markets have become a central aspect of our daily lives. This is due to the liberalization of global capital markets during the last two decades. This has led to increased liquidity and enhanced volatility within the financial system as the amounts traded daily, monthly, annually are sometimes larger than total global GDP. This has affected our daily lives profoundly and indeed, as the current global financial crisis, leaves no country untouched. In examining the present financial crisis, the paper argues that we have enough regulations and systems but we do not have effective regulative practices to enable compliance, control, and oversight. Indeed, the regulatory response to current developments in the financial sector has been both slow and inadequate. The paper starts by providing a context and the evolution of the “new” financial system and its attendant practices. The paper argues that the crisis could have been averted had there been a proper and effective governance mechanism and appropriate instruments employed to effect such compliance. Such mechanisms and instruments would also need to critically interrogate the epistemological foundations of accepted practices and wisdom. The paper suggests that the present crisis provides a circuit broker for a radical rethink of the present financial system and practices.