Exile on Wall Street: One Analyst’s Fight to Save the Big Banks from Themselves by Mike Mayo is one of the more important books to be published since the start of the financial crisis. Part memoir, part revelatory narrative of Mike’s career, this highly personal but informative book provides some very important information about how Wall Street works – or doesn’t – and confirms the view of many people than most deals are bad deals, done only to enrich the parties but not investors.
By way of disclosure, I need to say that Mike and I both worked at Prudential Securities in the early 2000s, he as an analyst and myself as a tech banker, so we never really got to know each other. It may interest readers of The Big Picture to know that I have just joined Tangent Capital Partners in New York. I will be focusing on financial advisory and asset management opportunities, but remain Vice Chairman of Lord, Whalen LLC, parent of Institutional Risk Analytics. Maybe I’ll get to serve as receiver for Bank of America when they go belly up, but I digress.
A decade before Prudential, Mike and I almost crossed paths at the Fed, but he worked at the Board of Governors in Washington while I was at the Fed of New York. The former is supposedly in charge of the central bank’s operations, but the latter is the older and more important part of the Fed system. When Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was President of the New York Fed, he dispensed gifts and subsidies to Goldman Sachs and other banks without the prior knowledge or objection of Chairman Ben Bernanke and the other members of the Fed Board of Governors. Suffice to say that there are no tennis courts at the New York Fed.
Mayo provides a lot of important detail about how the major Wall Street firms operate and, in particular, why the larger banks and their clients are more concerned about making money than creating value. Mike learned as did I that truth is not beauty on Wall Street, except in those few, generally smaller firms that have been able to preserve a culture of client service and quality. As Mike points out several times in Exile, many large cap mergers are done simply to cash out the managers.
“Two things are worth noting about these super-size banks,” Mayo writes. “First, much of their growth has come from mergers and acquisitions. They are not growing like Google, by creating a product and doing it better than anyone else. Instead they are just buying out their competitors… Secondly, many of these banks would likely not have grown to their current size without federal assistance in the past. In all the bank crises of previous decades, bank failures were thought to be too economically disruptive. But government bailouts – including the most recent round – didn’t resolve that problem. They merely delayed it, allowing banks to keep growing in size and scope, making the potential cataclysm next time that much bigger.”
This quote hints at one of my criticisms of Exile on Wall Street, namely that Mike does not yet appreciate that nobody in Washington or on Wall Street wants banks, especially the largest banks, to behave. There are many places in the book where I expected Mike to turn that corner of epiphany and state this case, but let me do it for him.
Whether you talk of the National Bank Act of 1865, the creation of the Fed in 1913 or the subsequent birthing of the housing GSEs in the 1930s, both the business community and their lackeys in Washington were more concerned about stoking employment and sales today than in safety and soundness of money or banks. I touched on this point in my 2010 book, Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream, which begins with this quote from Hayek’s “Denationalization of Money” essay:
“I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that it is wholly impossible for a central bank subject to political control, or even exposed to serious political pressure, to regulate the quantity of money in a way conducive to a smoothly functioning market order. A good money, like good law, must operate without regard to the effect that decisions of the issuer will have on known groups or individuals. A benevolent dictator might conceivably disregard these effects; no democratic government dependent on a number of special interests can possibly do so.”
If you look at the decision to allow national banks to make real estate loans three quarters of a century ago or the S&L crisis in the 1980s, the point was jobs, jobs, jobs. This is why the socialists in the neo-Keynesian economic camp led by Paul Krugman chatter constantly about printing more money to grow nominal employment, even if these “workers” cannot afford to buy food at the grocery story due to galloping inflation.
The other, related point to make about Mayo’s memoir is his somewhat embarrassing paean to Paul Volcker. Like Mike, I have great personal regard for Chairman Volcker as a public citizen, but we cannot allow the author of a book about the bad behavior of large banks to get away with this omission. Simply stated, Paul Volcker is the father of “too big to fail.” A former Chase banker, Paul Volcker has always been an advocate of bailouts going back to the Penn Square Bank failure. As I wrote in Inflated:
“In his 2010 book Senseless Panic: How Washington Failed America, former FDIC Chairman William Issac confirms that Mike Bradfield, then general counsel of the Fed and now in the same position at the FDIC, demanded that the FDIC bail out Penn Square Bank, no doubt with the knowledge of Volker and other Fed governors. Issac responded that he would if the central bank shared the cost, but the Fed balked.”
Overall, Mike Mayo deserves great kudos for writing this readable and very personal narrative of his years on Wall Street. Like Mike, I have spent a lot of my career fighting the tendency of big banks and politicians alike to paper over the truth in the name of expediency. Exile on Main Street is a valuable, firsthand account of why in our democracy big banks and the people who run then tend to be less concerned about creating value for investors than in extracting value for themselves. And as long as America remains a messy, ill-managed free market system, it is likely to remain so.
House Republicans are refusing to extend the payroll tax cut, which expires on December 31. If it does, taxes will go up for 160 million working Americans. Nearly everyone--from President Obama to Congressional Democrats to Republicans in the Senate--is committed to making sure that doesn't happen, but a faction in the House is dragging their feet.
Ending the payroll tax cut will cost the typical family making $50,000 a year about $1,000 a year, which is a lot of money for struggling families. President Obama explained today:
Our failure to do this could have effects not just on families but on the economy as a whole. It’s not a game for the average family, who doesn’t have an extra 1,000 bucks to lose. It’s not a game for somebody who’s out there looking for work right now, and might lose his house if unemployment insurance doesn’t come through. It’s not a game for the millions of Americans who will take a hit when the entire economy grows more slowly because these proposals aren’t extended.
That $1,000 a year works out to about $40 a paycheck that families won’t have to spend or save. Although opponents of the payroll tax cut might say $40 isn't much, we know that’s not the case. So we’re asking Americans to explain what that tax increase would look like in their house.
What does $40 mean to you? What will you and your family have to cut or go without if Congress refuses to pass the payroll tax cut?
Here are some of the stories we’ve collected so far. Tell us your own story here, or tweet @WhiteHouse with the hashtag #40dollars, to help us add to the list.
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I can buy lunch from the cafeteria for almost a whole month for my twins, I can buy food, or pay for gas. I can save it for my daughter’s prescriptions deductibles. To some people $40 is nothing, but $40 is big money for us.
L.A., Hamden, Connecticut
Forty dollars a paycheck is a lot of money. I am the primary care giver for my 91 year old father who is living with me. Though his estate pays me for his care, the $40 will help with groceries, gasoline and miscellaneous expense for his care. I work a part time job so $40 a paycheck is a lot of money extra in my pocket.
I.O., Arlington Heights, Illinois
After everything that comes out, including my mortgage my take home pay is $150.00 every two weeks. So minus forty would be $110.00. I can barely get by now, that forty bucks is my gas for my car to get to work. Taking forty away from my pay would, just about put me under.
R.T., Charleston, West Virginia
$40 less a paycheck means I will have to pick between my insulin and the water bill. It means never being able to see my doctor - even though I have insurance.
B.T., Roswell, New Mexico
A single mother of two, with no financial support from my children's father, 40 dollars means lunch money for my children at school. It means a tank of gas, and it means covering my weekly visit copays to the doctor.
L.O., Gaithersburg, Maryland
90 days of prescription drugs
P.B., Milledgeville, Georgia
$40.00 a week will provide gas to get to work for the week, or, it will pay our electric bill, or, it will pay a third of our prescription drug bill, or, one third of our grocery bill for the week.
C.W., Glen Alen, Virginia
That buys my gas for a week to drive to work or buys my groceries for a week. it's hard enough making ends meet and $40 is a lot of money to me.
T.S., Kernersville, North Carolina
$40 dollars equals no car insurance for the month, which is required in the state of Wisconsin. A huge risk to take. Let me ask you this--would you drive without insurance?
H.L, Waukesha, Wisconsin
$40.00 a paycheck takes care of my son's lunch money and transporation to Palm Middle School where he is a 6th grade honor student. My husband and I both work and we have a family of 6.
T.M., Moreno Valley, California
That is almost 1 weeks of groceries for me or how much it costs to fill my gas tank for 1 1/2 weeks or medical copay at the specialist office. Which one am I to go without? This is going to hurt. Please don't let this happen.
C.H, Denton, Texas
Right now, I am unable to pay all my bills every month; forty dollars less would mean my son and I would be going without groceries or another bill would have to wait and be late.
P.B., Liberal, Kansas
The forty dollars means that my kids can continue to wear decent clothes and I can afford to give them them opportunity to participate in school programs that are not funded through the State and Federal funding.
J.R., Brainerd, Minnesota
$40.00 a paycheck will allow me to continue to pay co-pays to doctors for necessary medical treatments needed to control debilitating disease.
J.R., Arlington, Texas
$40 a paycheck for my family helps pay for insulin, syringes, and blood sugar testing strips for my daughter, who was diagnosed with type I diabetes 5 years ago.
N.F., Midwest City, Oklahoma
$40.00 per paycheck means the difference in putting gas in my car or walking to work. I am the only one working in my family, 30 hrs a week, my husband is on Social Security. We have had to cut all extras' from our budget.
K.H., Kalispell, Montana
$40 means a tank of gas to my husband and me for getting to work for him or for me to run errands and take my father-in-law to his doctors's appointments. $40 means less groceries we can buy. $40 means less money to pay our light bill, water bill or other essential bills.
V.C., Russellville, Tennessee
The $40 I would lose is money I send to help my brother. He has had a myriad of health problems over the past two years and has only been able to work intermittently. He was recently diagnosed with inoperable cancer and has no health insurance. Without what some say isn't a lot of money, my brother wouldn't have food in his refrigerator.
S.K., Somerville, Massachusetts
$40 means the difference to me in buying gas or paying my electric bill. I am disabled so I am on a very extreme tight monthly income. Food is always an issue for me as well.
L.P., Forest Grove, Oregon
$40 is the tank of gas I need to get to work every two weeks. $40 is less than what I spend on groceries every week. $40 could also be the cost of me taking my fiancee out to dinner, or to see a movie. $40 could be the deciding factor on whether I can afford to buy a new car. $40 is less than half the cost of my electric bill every month. $40 might not be a lot to someone who makes more than $500,000 a year, like most of our Senators and Representatives. But when someone makes less than $30,000 a year, it makes an impact.
C.D., Phoenix, Arizona
$40 can make a huge difference to me. It can pay for my most needed medicine that will allow me to keep working so that I can pay my rent and utility bills. It will keep my kids warm and dry. To those of us that only take home about $40 a day, it is a whole days work!
D.P., San Antonio, Texas
Normally any extra money I have. I give to the needy. Salvation Army is my favorite charity. So I wont be giving to charites or buying anything for anyone.
P.C., Lakeville, Minnesota
$40.00 means the world to me It's the equivilant of 5 hours work or feeding my family for 3 nights. I am a single income of a family of 3 and I don't even make 50K.
T.K., Gaylord, Michigan
Our cable internet bill is $49 per month. If we lose this payroll tax cut then we will have to give up either or internet access or possibly our 'Friday Family Pizza' night. Either way, we will lose something that brings us together as a family.
K.Z., Frederick, Maryland
Tell us what $40 means to you
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