CAPITAL: We Are All Victims of the Mirage

Last week, a BankInnovation.net member asked me whether I thought there were differences between the Enron scandal that came to light in October 2001 and the most recent financial crisis, which is still coursing its way through the veins of the world’s economy.

In fact, I think there are profound differences, and these differences point to a metaphysical dilemma that our nation faces when it comes to financial services in general.

While I am no expert on the Enron episode, in the case of the Houston company, there was a concerted off-balance-sheet effort to muddle the perceptions of Enron’s actual performance. Enron exemplified financial “re-engineering” at it ugliest, and because of that, its scandal centered on a corporation fudging its numbers.

This is not necessarily the case in the most recent financial crisis. The financial crisis is comprised in nearly equal parts of negligence, of blue-sky optimism, of greed, of altruism, of just simple folly. The players in this crisis were so much greater in number than in the Enron scandal. Additionally, they were much more varied and diverse, both in the aims and in their roles. This makes the financial crisis worse, as well as “better,” than the Enron crisis.

Let me put it this way. It is difficult to find a silver lining in fudging accounting figures, to hiding assets off-balance sheet. Yet, it is simply not true that every subprime mortgage borrower, for example, received no benefit from his loan. On the contrary. The vast majority of subprime mortgage borrowers derived great benefit from the credit extended to them. But that’s the tragedy of this: everyone was in on it. You, me, our friends in Washington — everyone derived some degree of benefit from the booming economy that resulted from a too-accommodative monetary policy. Did we collectively benefit from Enron’s action? I may be wrong, but I don’t think so.

In one way Enron and the financial crisis were very much alike, however. In both cases, we all fell victim to a mirage, and this says much about American culture and the role financial services plays in it. In truth, Americans will never fully understand Wall Street, and this leads to the glamorization of returns and the equal demonization of financial failures. To put it another way, great financial returns are never as good as they seem; the purported evils of financiers are never as pointed as they are made out to be. Think about the regulators’ conflicted stance. They want to limit “too big to fail,” but they don’t want to eliminate the largest financial institutions. We all feel that way, on some level. When financial engineering benefits us, we cheer. When it does not, we tar and feather financial purveyors.

You saw this dichotomy during last week’s AIG hearings. To some, the actions of the federal government were viewed as “a cover up.” To those like Geithner, the government’s actions were laudable. How can actions be viewed as evil to some and laudable to others? Because that is the American conflict when it comes to financial services. The prism on financial services shines in two colors: financial services is both good and bad. Sure, it is good that the federal government saved the financial services sector, as the recent SIGTARP report shows, but the financial services sector is also bad because it effectively holds the nation’s economy hostage. You want mortgages; you had better allow for mortgage capital markets. You want deposits; you had better allow for banks to buy derivatives to hedge their risk. I would argue that no other industry presents such a perplexing scenario to the average American. And I would equally argue that this perplexing scenario will not change in our lifetimes.