Morgan Keegan defended itself today against the NY Times report which we commented on yesterday, titled Liquidating Thy Neighbor – Part I.
I do agree with Morgan Keegan’s spokesman that this was a politically motivated attack. I can only guess what the particular motivation was in this case.
- For example, the New York brokerage firms and banks have a much worse record of financially raping local communities, including with derivatives. (Click here and here for JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley in Pennsylvania and here and here for JP Morgan and Morgan Keegan together in Alabama) Surely they would have a vested interest in watching a regional firm take the fall for the municipal woes overtaking our country. Firms like AIG and their law firms would certainly have access to the information they needed to package this story and hand it to the NY Times.
- As the industry consolidates, certainly competitors both global and local can benefit from the loss of market share by as institution as prominent as Regions, including subsidiary Morgan Keegan.
- What could be more politically useful as folks in Tennessee prepare their individual taxes in the face of a Washington-Wall Street engorgement of $12-14 trillion of bailouts, then their ire be turned on their neighbors?
I don’t agree with Morgan Keegan’s defense of its practices. As an investment banker who has closed more than $25 billion in transactions and advised both governments and corporations for decades, including on interest rates swaps (the transaction in question), what happened to Lewisburg, Tennessee should not have happened. But let’s set that aside. There is something much more deeply, seriously wrong here that needs to be addressed.
The important question is not why did Lewisburg use a interest rate swap deal in which it assumed the risk for a default or downgrade by the insurance provider in connection with taking on more debt. The important question is why in the world did Lewisburg take on more debt in the first place? Why did Lewisburg not shift more local capital out of Wall Street and into investment in Lewisburg?
Lewisburg, Tennessee borrowed money to fund water and sewer for economic development. Why were they borrowing for such purposes in the first place?
Typically, municipalities borrow because there is insufficient equity investment and income in the county in the first place.
The county makes a significant investment in educating and rearing young people. What happens to that investment? A few high performers head of to college on scholarships never to return. Many of the rest go to the military or, if entrapped instead into dealing drugs, to prison. The return on investment on their young? It goes to Wall Street and Washington, not to the families and community.
Despite the drain of human capital, numerous hard working members of the community build businesses and careers, live modestly and over a life time accumulate capital. Where is that capital? It is in state and local pension funds, 401k and IRA accounts, and various bank and brokerage accounts, all such as those marketed and managed by Morgan Keegan and Regions Bank.
So as Morgan Keegan and Regions Bank and their competitors attract all of this hard earned capital into their accounts, where is that investment channeled? It is channeled out of the community. It is invested through Wall Street in the stock of Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Wal-Mart, the big defense contractors, the internet stocks, Enron and the telecoms, or, as the powers that be direct, into investments abroad.
How much of it is channeled back into equity investment in the community? Typically, none.
And so, as the human capital in the community is shipped out to Harvard, Iraq and the state penitentiary or the morgue while the equity capital in the community is shipped to Wall Street, the value of the local small business community is drained. Reinvestment into the local businesses slows to a trickle. They do not keep up with technology and globalization.
This means that the franchise businesses financed by Wall Street (including with the state and local equity) can then come in and take over the market, eating into the market share of the local businesses and putting them out of business. The local savers, turning over their capital to Wall Street through firms like Morgan Keegan, Regions and their national counterparts, are financing their own destruction. The theory, of course, is that doing so would make them money. As we have seen over the last year, that theory has not panned out particularly well.
So what happens next? Well some smart fellow from a firm like Morgan Keegan or Regions Bank comes along and proposes that to create new businesses the town should borrow money to do an industrial development park and create the water and sewer infrastructure to attract business.
Note they do not promote the idea that the town should set up an apprentice program for young people to encourage them to stay and build the local small business. They do not propose that the town should create an incubator or a local angel network to support the existing businesses and entrepreneurs. They do not propose a local venture fund with local capital that will allow consumers to enjoy the equity creation from their own purchases. They do not promote that local savings should circulate locally as equity investment. They do not promote any of those ideas. In fact, those who do promote such ideas, such as myself or Franklin Sanders find themselves under attack by the Department of Justice and unable to continue. Those who do not promote centralized control by Wall Street of the savings and capital in the community are driven out and treated like pariahs.
So the town borrows money. Now, what is the difference between equity and debt? Well, if Wall Street had invested equity in Lewisburg, Tennessee, then they would make money if Lewisburg’s projects succeeded and lose money if they failed. However, if they finance Lewisburg with debt, then they don’t need to worry about whether the project succeeds or not. They get paid either way. If Lewisburg’s economic development plans sour, the town will just have to dig deeper or raise taxes to pay the debt.
Debt bondage. Suck up their capital. Use it with rigged government deals to make you rich and hire away all their kids. Get them to borrow their own money back from you. While you are getting bailed out by the government, jack up their interest rate because something went wrong and Washington and Wall Street have no intention of fixing that derivative — just the ones that Goldman Sachs holds.
Is the problem that we need the banks to be able to lend so that we can borrow more money to get the economy going again, as President Obama says?
I think not. We need our equity and income to be rising and our debt to be falling – not vice-versa. Indeed, the time has come to speak seriously about how to shift our capital out of the same old Wall Street and Washington channels and into ways that build greater wealth for us, our children and our communities.
