CIT Group Battlelines

The issue of the day is obviously CIT.  It’s hard to sort out the real news from clever PR/planted stories in this situation, but it looks like the FDIC is coming out strongly against being involved in a rescue package.  Given Sheila Bair’s successful political positioning and strong popular appeal, it’s hard to see how – once dug in – the FDIC can be moved.

The lobbying frenzy has concentrated on CIT’s role in financing small and medium-sized business; “the recession will be deeper if CIT fails” is the refrain.  This is a weak argument – it would be straightforward to refinance this part of CIT’s business without bailing out CIT’s creditors, and definitely without keeping top CIT Group (CIT) executives in place; this is the essence of “negotiated conservatorship,” which is a proven model in the US.

More plausible is the concern that given Treasury’s generous handouts to date for financial firms, if they are now tough on CIT’s creditors, this will send a new signal about how they may treat other firms – and maybe raise fears of Hank Paulson-like flipflopping.   Citigroup’s (C) CDS spread is still at worrying levels, and Treasury/National Economic Council watches this closely – for both organizational and personal reasons.

Essentially, by trying to refloat an undercapitalized banking system, Treasury has created pervasive financial vulnerabilities to CIT-sized shocks.  These are now the basis for more bailouts and even great fiscal costs.

If CIT is determined to be “too big to fail” in today’s context, this has far reaching implications.  Instead of financial entities with assets of at least $500bn creating systemic risk, we now have to worry about anyone who has not much more than $50bn.  This is a profound change – and a point that seems to have escaped the Financial Services Roundtable, which is pushing hard for a CIT rescue.

Mr. Geithner is travelling back from the Middle East today.  Once he lands, I would guess that a bailout package will go through (on the weekend, if they can get that far) and creditors are unscathed.  But I still suspect that there will be management change at CIT.

How the CIT deal impacts current Capitol Hill discussion on system risk and regulatory reform remains to be seen.  The effects there could be more profound than expected.

Some discussion of these issues with TNR is here.

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About Simon Johnson 101 Articles

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management. He is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., a co-founder of BaselineScenario.com, a widely cited website on the global economy, and is a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers.

Mr. Johnson appears regularly on NPR's Planet Money podcast in the Economist House Calls feature, is a weekly contributor to NYT.com's Economix, and has a video blog feature on The New Republic's website. He is co-director of the NBER project on Africa and President of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies (term of office 2008-2009).

From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, Professor Johnson was the International Monetary Fund's Economic Counsellor (chief economist) and Director of its Research Department. At the IMF, Professor Johnson led the global economic outlook team, helped formulate innovative responses to worldwide financial turmoil, and was among the earliest to propose new forms of engagement for sovereign wealth funds. He was also the first IMF chief economist to have a blog.

His PhD is in economics from MIT, while his MA is from the University of Manchester and his BA is from the University of Oxford.

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