The Treasury plan to buy illiquid financial assets has been widely criticized as being unfair to taxpayers, who will have to bear losses ahead of shareholders of the institutions that will be bailed out.
There is a better alternative to stabilize the markets: Invest the $700 billion of taxpayer money in senior preferred stock of the troubled financial institutions that pose systemic risks. Let's call this the "Preferred plan." In fact, it is the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac model -- which the Treasury Department has already endorsed and used in practice. It is also the approach Warren Buffett used for his investment in Goldman Sachs.
There are major problems with the Treasury plan. First, by buying banks' worst assets at above-market prices, taxpayers take an immediate economic loss -- while transferring wealth to shareholders and executives of the very institutions that brought on the financial crisis.
Second, this plan puts too much discretionary power in the hands of Treasury officials. Who determines what financial assets are purchased and at what prices? Who determines which bank gets to benefit from these taxpayer subsidies? Will bank shareholders continue to receive dividends, and executives continue to get paid huge bonuses?
When financial institutions borrow massive amounts of money to invest in assets that are now found to be illiquid and poorly performing, it is not the responsibility of taxpayers to bear the resulting losses. These losses should be borne by the shareholders.
If taxpayers have to step in and provide capital to keep operating enterprises that the government decides are key to the functioning of the economy as a whole, taxpayers must receive protection.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said at the Senate Banking Committee hearing this week, "[the] Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac [interventions] worked the way they were supposed to." These enterprises continued to function, maintaining homeowner access to and lowering the cost of mortgage financing. However, managements of these companies had to leave and forfeit the compensation packages they had negotiated.
Shareholders had their dividends blocked and remain first in line to bear losses, as they should have been. Taxpayers came both first and last -- first to get paid back, as the new preferred stock is senior to all shareholders; and last in realizing losses, as common and other preferred equity would be extinguished before the taxpayers would be at risk.
This mechanism -- purchases of senior preferred stock with warrants in troubled institutions -- addresses the problems with the Treasury plan. The financial market is stabilized, companies get recapitalized, failures are avoided, debt securities are supported, and time is gained for illiquid assets to mature.
The institutions continue to function, their cost of funding will decline as equity capital increases, and innocent third parties like bank depositors, broker/dealer clients and insurance-policy holders are all protected. The only difference is that potential losses are kept with the shareholders where they belong.
The Treasury plan would also entail larger outlays than the Preferred plan. By allowing all banks to sell their worst assets to Treasury at inflated prices, taxpayers would be subsidizing healthy banks which have access to private capital (Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, for example) as well as banks that don't have a private alternative. But under a Preferred plan, only banks that don't have a private alternative will be given federal assistance. This would reduce the outlay otherwise required to solve the crisis.
Few people familiar with the issues deny that Treasury action is needed to stabilize the financial markets. However, the question is who should bear the cost?
Under the Treasury plan the taxpayer pays the price. Under a Preferred plan, the shareholders of the firms who created the problems bear the first loss. Who do you think should pay?
Before committing $700 billion of our money, we should encourage Congress to take a few extra days to get this legislation right.
By JOHN PAULSON
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