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The financial sector has undergone major changes in response to the Great Recession and post-crisis regulatory reform, as a result of the Dodd-Frank Act and Basel III. These changes have created serious questions about the sector’s role in supporting economic growth and how it affects financial and overall economic stability.

On June 8, the Initiative on Business and Public Policy at Brookings explored the intersection of the financial system and economic growth with the goal of informing the public policy debate. The event featured a keynote address by Richard Berner, director of the Office of Financial Research and other participants with a wide range of views from a variety of backgrounds. Among other issues, the experts considered the changing landscape of the financial sector; growth-promoting allocation and investment decisions; credit availability for low- and moderate-income households; the ideal balance between growth and stability; and the impact of the 2014 midterm elections on regulatory reform.

 Follow the conversation at @BrookingsEcon or #Finance.

Video

• Keynote remarks by Richard Berner
• The financial sector: How has it changed?
• The view from the trenches
• The future of the U.S. financial sector

Audio

• Can the financial sector promote growth and stability?

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• Aaron Kleins presentation
• 20150608 BAER slides
• 20150608 MEHTA slides
• 20150608_financial_sector_stability_transcript

Financial advisors offer their clients many advantages, such as setting reasonable savings goals, avoiding fraudulent investments and mistakes like buying high and selling low, and determining the right level of risk for a particular household. However, these same advisors are often incentivized to choose funds that increase their own financial rewards, and the nature and amount of the fees received by advisors may not be transparent to their clients, and small-scale savers may not be able to access affordable advice at all.  What is in the best interest of an individual may not be in the best interest of his or her financial advisor.

To combat this problem, the Department of Labor (DoL) recently proposed a regulation designed to increase consumer protection by treating some investment advisors as fiduciaries under ERISA and the 1986 Internal Revenue Code.  The proposed conflict of interest rule is an important step in the right direction to increasing consumer protections.  It addresses evidence from a February 2015 report by the Council of Economic Advisers suggesting that consumers often receive poor recommendations from their financial advisors and that as a result their investment returns on IRAs are about 1 percentage point lower each year.   Naturally, the proposal is not without its controversies and it has already attracted at least 775 public comments, including one from us .

For us, the DoL’s proposed rule is a significant step in the right direction towards increased consumer protection and retirement security.  It is important to make sure that retirement advisors face the right incentives and place customer interests first.  It is also important make sure savers can access good advice so they can make sound decisions and avoid costly mistakes.  However, some thoughtful revisions are needed to ensure the rule offers a net benefit. 

If the rule causes advisors’ compliance costs to rise, they may abandon clients with small-scale savings, since these clients will no longer be profitable for them.  If these small-scale savers are crowded out of the financial advice market, we might see the retirement savings gap widen.  Therefore we encourage the DoL to consider ways to minimize or manage these costs, perhaps by incentivizing advisors to continue guiding these types of clients.  We also worry that the proposed rule does not adequately clarify the difference between education and advice, and encourage the DoL to close any potential loopholes by standardizing the general educational information that advisors can share without triggering fiduciary responsibility (which DoL is trying to do).  Finally, the proposed rule could encourage some advisors to become excessively risk averse in an overzealous attempt to avoid litigation or other negative consequences.  Extreme risk aversion could decrease market returns for investors and the ‘value-add’ of professional advisors, so we suggest the DoL think carefully about discouraging conflicted advice without also discouraging healthy risk.

The proposed rule addresses an important problem, but in its current form it may open the door to some undesirable or problematic outcomes.  We explore these issues in further detail in our recent paper.

Americans are enjoying longer lifespans than ever before. Living longer affords individuals the opportunity to make more contributions to the world, to spend more time with their loved ones, and to devote more years to their favorite activities – but a longer life, and particularly a longer retirement, is also expensive. The retirement security landscape is evolving as workers, employers, retirees, and financial services companies find their needs shifting. Once, many workers planned to stay with a single employer for most or all of their careers, building up a sizeable pension and looking forward to a comfortable retirement. Today, workers more and more workers will be employed by many different employers.  Additionally, generous defined benefit (DB) retirement plans are less popular than they once were – though they were never truly commonplace – and defined contribution (DC) plans are becoming ever more prevalent.  

Figure 1, below, shows the change from DB to DC that has occurred over the past three decades.

In the past many retirees struggled financially towards the end of their lives, just as they do now, but even so, the changes to the retirement security landscape have been real and marked, and have had a serious impact on workers and retirees alike. DB plans are dwindling, DC plans are on the rise, and as a result individuals must now take a more active role in managing their retirement savings. DC plans incorporate contributions from employees and employers alike, and workers much choose how to invest their nest egg.  When a worker leaves a job for retirement or for a different job he or she will often roll over the money from a 401(k) plan into an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). While having more control over one’s retirement funds might seem on its face to be a net improvement, the reality is that the average American lacks the financial literacy to make sound decisions (SEC 2012).

The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) expressed concern earlier this year that savers with IRA accounts may receive poor investment advice, particularly in cases where their financial advisors are compensated through fees and commissions. “[The] best recommendation for the saver may not be the best recommendation for the adviser’s bottom line” (CEA 2015). President Obama echoed these concerns in a speech at AARP in February, asking the Department of Labor (DoL) to update its rules for financial advisors to follow when handling IRA accounts (White House 2015). The DoL receives its authority to craft such rules and requirements from the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) (DoL 2015a).

The DoL recently proposed a regulation designed to increase consumer protection by treating some investment advisors as fiduciaries under ERISA and the 1986 Internal Revenue Code (DoL 2015b). The proposed rule has generated heated debate, and some financial advisors have responded with great concern, arguing that it will be difficult or impossible to comply with the rule without raising costs to consumers and/or abandoning smaller accounts that generate little or no profit. Advisors who have traditionally offered only the proprietary products of a single company worry that the business model they have used for many years will no longer be considered to be serving the best interests of clients.

Rather than offering detailed comments on the DoL proposals, this paper will look more broadly at the problem of saving for retirement and the role for professional advice. This is, of course, a well-travelled road with a large literature by academics, institutions and policy-makers, however, it is worthwhile to think about market failures, lack of information and individual incentives and what they imply for the investment advice market.

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With keynote addresses by Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell and Counselor to the Treasury Secretary Antonio Weiss

Bond markets are the principal source of credit for businesses and governments in the United States, with almost $40 trillion of outstanding debt. They are also the main mode of investment for pension funds, mutual funds, and many other investors, which is why the safety and efficiency of these markets is, therefore, crucial.

On August 3, the Economic Studies program at Brookings hosted a number of experts to discuss the structure of bond markets in the U.S. and how changes over the last few years are affecting market liquidity, volatility, and overall safety and efficiency. Keynote addresses by Governor Jerome Powell and Counselor Antonio Weiss focused on the Treasury bond market with a panel of experts examining corporate bond markets.

After each session, the speakers and panelists took audience questions.

Antonio Weiss with Jerome Powell and Douglas Elliott (l-r)

Martin Baily with Kashif Riaz, Annette Nazareth, Steve Zamsky and Dennis Kelleher (r-l)

Video

• Keynote Addresses on the U.S. Treasury Markets
• Panel on the Corporate Bond Markets

Audio

• Are there structural issues in U.S. bond markets?

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20150803_bond_markets_transcript
• 20150803_liquidity_kelleher_presentation

Introduction

I would like to thank the Department for giving me the opportunity to testify on this important issue. The document I submitted to you is more general than most of the comments you have received, talking about the issues facing retirement savers and policymakers, rather than engaging in a point-by-point discussion of the detailed DOL proposal¹.

Issues around Retirement Saving

1. Most workers in the bottom third of the income distribution will rely on Social Security to support them in retirement and will save little. Hence it is vital that we support Social Security in roughly its present form and make sure it remains funded, either by raising revenues or by scaling back benefits for higher income retirees, or both.

2. Those in the middle and upper middle income levels must now rely on 401k and IRA funds to provide income support in retirement. Many and perhaps most households lack a good understanding of the amount they need to save and how to allocate their savings. This is true even of many savers with high levels of education and capabilities.

3. The most important mistakes made are: not saving enough; withdrawing savings prior to retirement; taking Social Security benefits too early² ; not managing tax liabilities effectively; and failing to adequately manage risk in investment choices. This last category includes those who are too risk averse and choose low-return investments as well as those that overestimate their own ability to pick stocks and time market movements. These points are discussed in the paper I submitted to DoL in July. They indicate that retirement savers can benefit substantially from good advice.

4. The market for investment advice is one where there is asymmetric information and such markets are prone to inefficiency. It is very hard to get incentives correctly aligned. Professional standards are often used as a way of dealing with such markets but these are only partially successful. Advisers may be compensated through fees paid by the investment funds they recommend, either a load fee or a wrap fee. This arrangement can create an incentive for advisers to recommend high fee plans.

5. At the same time, advisers who encourage increased saving, help savers select products with good returns and adequate diversification, and follow a strategy of holding assets until retirement provide benefits to their clients.

Implications for the DoL’s proposed conflicted interest rule

1. Disclosure. There should be a standardized and simple disclosure form provided to all households receiving investment advice, detailing the fees they will be paying based on the choices they make. Different investment choices offered to clients should be accompanied by a statement describing how the fees received by the adviser would be impacted by the alternative recommendations made to the client.

2. Implications for small-scale savers. The proposed rule will bring with it increased compliance costs. These costs, combined with a reluctance to assume more risk and a fear of litigation, may make some advisers less likely to offer retirement advice to households with modest savings. These households are the ones most in need of direction and education, but because their accounts will not turn profits for advisors, they may be abandoned. According to the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), the proposed rule will save families with IRAs more than $40 billion over the next decade. However, this benefit must be weighed against the attendant costs of implementing the rule. It is possible that the rule will leave low- and medium-income households without professional guidance, further widening the retirement savings gap. The DoL should consider ways to minimize or manage these costs. Options include incentivizing advisors to continue guiding small-scale savers, perhaps through the tax code, and promoting increased financial literacy training for households with modest savings. Streamlining and simplifying the rules would also help.

3. Need for Research on Online Solutions. The Administration has argued that online advice may be the solution for these savers, and for some fraction of this group that may be a good alternative. Relying on online sites to solve the problem seems a stretch, however. Maybe at some time in the future that will be a viable option but at present there are many people, especially in the older generation, who lack sufficient knowledge and experience to rely on web solutions. The web offers dangers as well as solutions, with the potential for sub-optimal or fraudulent advice. I urge the DoL to commission independent research to determine how well a typical saver does when looking for investment advice online. Do they receive good advice? Do they act on that advice? What classes of savers do well or badly with online advice? Can web advice be made safer? To what extent do persons receiving online advice avoid the mistakes described earlier?

4. Pitfalls of MyRA. Another suggestion by the Administration is that small savers use MyRA as a guide to their decisions and this option is low cost and safe, but the returns are very low and will not provide much of a cushion in retirement unless households set aside a much larger share of their income than has been the case historically.

5. Clarifications about education versus advice. The proposed rule distinguished education from advisement. An advisor can share general information on best practices in retirement planning, including making age-appropriate asset allocations and determining the ideal age at which to retire, without triggering fiduciary responsibility. This is certainly a useful distinction. However, some advisors could frame this general information in a way that encourages clients to make decisions that are not in their own best interest. The DoL ought to think carefully about the line between education and advice, and how to discourage advisors from sharing information in a way that leads to future conflicts of interest. One option may be standardizing the general information that may be provided without triggering fiduciary responsibility.

6. Implications for risk management. Under the proposed rule advisors may be reluctant to assume additional risk and worry about litigation. In addition to pushing small-scale savers out of the market, the rule may encourage excessive risk aversion in some advisors. General wisdom suggests that young savers should have relatively high-risk portfolios, de-risking as they age, and ending with a relatively low-risk portfolio at the end of the accumulation period. The proposed rule could cause advisors to discourage clients from taking on risk, even when the risk is generally appropriate and the investor has healthy expectations. Extreme risk aversion could decrease both market returns for investors and the “value-add” of professional advisors. The DoL should think carefully about how it can discourage conflicted advice without encouraging overzealous risk reductions.

The proposed rule is an important effort to increase consumer protection and retirement security. However, in its current form, it may open the door to some undesirable or problematic outcomes. With some thoughtful revisions, I believe the rule can provide a net benefit to the country.

^{1. Baily’s work has been assisted by Sarah E. Holmes. He is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Director of The Phoenix Companies, but the views expressed are his alone.}

^{2. As you know, postponing Social Security benefits yields an 8 percent real rate of return, far higher than most people earn on their investments. For most of those that can manage to do so, postponing the receipt of benefits is the best decision.}

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Executive Summary ¹

The regional banks play an important role in the economy providing funding to consumers and small- and medium-sized businesses. Their model is simpler than that of the large Wall Street banks, with their business concentrated in the U.S.; they are less involved in trading and investment banking, and they are more reliant on deposits for their funding. We examined the balance sheets of 15 regional banks that had assets between $50 billion and $250 billion in 2003 and that remained in operation through 2014.

The regionals have undergone important changes in their financial structure as a result of the financial crisis and the subsequent regulatory changes:

• Total assets held by the regionals grew strongly since 2010. Their share of total bank assets has risen since 2010.

• Loans and leases make up by far the largest component of their assets. Since the crisis, however, they have substantially increased their holdings of securities and interest bearing balances, including government securities and reserves.

• The liabilities of the regionals were heavily concentrated in domestic deposits, a pattern that has intensified since the crisis. Deposits were 70 percent of liabilities in 2003, a number that fell through 2007 as they diversified their funding sources, but by 2014 deposits made up 82 percent of the total.

• Regulators are requiring large banks to increase their holdings of long term subordinated debt as a cushion against stress or failure. The regionals, as of 2014, had not increased their share of such liabilities.

• Like the largest banks, the regionals increased their loans and leases in line with their deposits prior to the crisis. And like the largest banks, this relation broke down after 2007, with loans growing much more slowly than deposits. Unlike the largest banks, the regionals have increased loans strongly since 2010, but there remains a significant gap between deposits and loans.

• The regional banks’ share of their net income from traditional sources (mostly loans) has been slowly declining over the period.

• The return on assets of the regionals was between 1.5 and 2.0 percent prior to the crisis. This turned sharply negative in the crisis before recovering after 2009. Between 2012 and 2014 return on assets for these banks was around 1.0 percent, well below the pre-crisis level.

As we saw with the largest banks, the structure and returns of the regional banks has changed as a result of the crisis and new regulation. Perhaps the most troubling change is that the volume of loans lags well behind the volume of deposits, a potential problem for economic growth. The asset and liability structure of the banks has also changed, but these banks have a simpler business model where deposits and loans still predominate.

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Earlier this summer, we examined how the Big Four banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo – performed before, during, and after the 2007-09 financial crisis.  We also blogged about the lending trends within these large banks, expressing concern about the growing gap between deposits taken and loans made by the Big Four, and calling on policymakers to explore the issue further.  We have conducted a similar analysis on the regional banks - The regional banks: The evolution of the financial sector, Part II - and find that these smaller banks are actually faring somewhat better than their bigger counterparts.

Despite the mergers and acquisitions that happened during the crisis, the Big Four banks are a smaller share of banking today than they were in 2007.  The 15 regionals we evaluated, on the other hand, are thriving in the post-crisis environment and have a slightly larger share of total bank assets than they had in 2007.  The Big Four experienced rapid growth in the years leading up to the crisis but much slower growth in the years since.  The regionals, however, have been chugging along: with the exception of a small downward trend during the crisis, they have enjoyed slow but steady growth since 2003.

There is a gap between deposits and loans among the regionals, but it is smaller than the Big Four’s gap.  Tellingly, the regionals’ gap has remained basically constant in size during the recovery, unlike the Big Four’s gap, which is growing.  Bank loans are important to economic growth, and the regional banks are growing their loan portfolios faster than the biggest banks.  That may be a good sign for the future if the regional banks provide more competition for the big banks and a more competitive banking sector overall.

Mercutio: I am hurt. A plague a’ both your houses! I am sped. Is he gone and hath nothing? — Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, scene 1, 90–92

The eurozone crisis, which includes the Greek crisis but is not restricted to it, has undermined the credibility of the EU institutions and left millions of Europeans disillusioned with the European Project. The euro was either introduced too early, or it included countries that should never have been included, or both were true. High rates of inflation left countries in the periphery uncompetitive and the constraint of a single currency removed a key adjustment mechanism. Capital flows allowed this problem to be papered over until the global financial crisis hit.

The leaders of the international institutions, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, together with the governments of the stronger economies, were asked to figure out a solution and they emphasized fiscal consolidation, which they made a condition for assistance with heavy debt burdens. The eurozone as a whole has paid the price, with real GDP in the first quarter of 2015 being about 1.5 percent below its peak in the first quarter of 2008, seven years earlier, and with a current unemployment rate of 11 percent. By contrast, the sluggish U.S. recovery looks rocket-powered, with GDP 8.6 percent above its previous peak and an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent.

The burden of the euro crisis has been very unevenly distributed, with Greece facing unemployment of 25 percent and rising, Spain 23 percent, Italy 12 percent, and Ireland 9.7 percent, while German unemployment is 4.7 percent. It is not surprising that so many Europeans are unhappy with their policy leaders who moved too quickly into a currency union and then dealt with the crisis in a way that pushed countries into economic depression. The common currency has been a boon to Germany, with its $287 billion current account surplus, but the bane of the southern periphery. Greece bears considerable culpability for its own problems, having failed to collect taxes or open up an economy full of competitive restrictions, but that does not excuse the policy failures among Europe’s leaders. A plague on both sides in the Greek crisis!

During the Great Moderation, it seemed that the Bretton Woods institutions were losing their usefulness because private markets could provide needed funding. The financial crisis and the global recession that followed it shattered this belief. The IMF did not foresee the crisis, nor was it a central player in dealing with the period of greatest peril from 2007 to 2009. National treasuries, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank were the only institutions that had the resources and the power to deal with the bank failures, the shortage of liquidity, and the freezing up of markets. Still, the IMF became relevant again and played an important role in the euro crisis, although at the cost of sharing the unpopularity of the policy response to that crisis.

China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is the result of China’s growing power and influence and the failure of the West, particularly the United States, to come to terms with this seismic shift. The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations have deliberately excluded China, the largest economy in Asia and largest trading partner in the world. Reform of the governance structure of the World Bank and the IMF has stalled with disproportionate power still held by the United States and Europe. Unsurprisingly, China has decided to exercise its influence in other ways, establishing the new Asian bank and increasing the role of the yuan in international transactions. U.S. policymakers underestimated China’s strength and the willingness of other countries to cooperate with it, and the result has been to reduce the role and influence of the Bretton Woods institutions.

Can the old institutions be reinvented and made more effective? In Europe, the biggest problem is that bad decisions were made by national governments and by the international institutions (although the ECB policies have been generally good). The World Bank and IMF do need to reform their governance, but it may be too late to bring China back into the fold.

Community banks play a key role in their local communities by offering traditional banking services to households and lending to nearby small businesses in the commercial, agriculture, and real estate sectors. Because of their close relationship with small businesses, they drive an important segment of economic growth. In fact, compared to all other banks (and to credit unions), small banks devote the greatest share of their assets to small business loans.

In this paper, titled "The community banks: The evolution of the financial sector, Part III," (PDF) Baily and Montalbano examine the evolution of community banks before, through, and after the financial crisis to assess their recovery.

The authors find that despite concerns about the long-term survival of community banks due a decline in the number of banks and increased Dodd-Frank regulations, they continue to recover from the financial crisis and are in fact out-performing the Big Four banks in several key measures.

Although the number of community banks has been steadily declining since before 2003, most of the decline has come from the steep drop in the smallest banking organizations—those with total consolidated assets of less than $100 million. Community banks with total consolidated assets that exceed $300 million have in fact increased in number. Most of the decline in community banks can be attributed to the lack of entry into commercial banking.

In a previous paper, Baily and Montalbano showed that the gap in loans and leases among the Big Four has widened since the financial crisis, but the new research finds that community banks seem to be returning to their pre-crisis pattern, although slowly, with the gap between deposits and loans shrinking since 2011. While total deposits grew gradually after 2011, though at a pace slower than their pre-crisis rate, loans and leases bottomed out in 2011 at $1.219 trillion.

The authors also examine community banks' return on assets (ROA), finding it was lower overall than for the Big Four or for the regionals, and has come back to a level closer to the pre-crisis level than was the case for the larger banks. The level of profitability was slightly lower for community banks in 2003 than it was for the larger banks—about 1.1 percent compared to 1.7 percent for the regional banks—but it did not dip as low, reaching a bottom of about -0.1 percent compared to -0.8 percent for the regional banks.

Baily and Montalbano also find that total assets of the community banks increased 22.5 percent (adjusted for inflation, the increase was 7 percent); the average size of community banks has increased substantially; total bank liabilities grew steadily from 2003-2014; the composition of liabilities in post-crisis years looked largely similar to the composition in the pre-crisis years; and securitization—which plays a relatively small role in the community banking model—has been steadily increasing in the time period both before and after the crisis. 

To read more, download the full paper here.

The paper is the third in a series that examines how the financial sector has evolved over the periods both before and after the financial crisis of 2007-2008. The first paper examines the Big Four banks, and the second takes a closer look at regional banks.

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Neel Kashkari, the newly appointed President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, is super-smart with extensive experience in the financial industry at Goldman Sachs and then running the government’s TARP program, but his call to break up the big banks misses the mark.

Sure, big banks, medium-sized banks and small banks all contributed to the devastating financial crisis, but so did the rating agencies and the state-regulated institutions (mostly small) that originated many of the bad mortgages.  It was vital that regulation be strengthened to avoid a repetition of what happened – and it has been.  There should never again be a situation where policymakers are faced with either bailing out failing institutions or letting them fail and seeing financial panic spread.

That’s why the Dodd-Frank Act gave the authorities a new tool to avoid that dilemma titled “Orderly Liquidation Authority,” which gives them the ability to fail a firm but sustain the key parts whose failure might cause financial instability.  Kashkari thinks that the authorities will not want to exercise this option in a crisis because they will be fearful of the consequences of imposing heavy losses on the original owners of the largest banks.  It’s a legitimate concern, but he underestimates the progress that has been made in making the orderly liquidation authority workable in practice.  He also underestimates the determination of regulators not to bail out financial institutions from now on.

To make orderly liquidation operational, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) devised something called the “single point of entry” approach, or SPOE, which provides a way of dealing with large failing banks.  The bank holding company is separated from the operating subsidiaries and takes with it all of the losses, which are then imposed on the shareholders and unsecured bond holders of the original holding company, and not on the creditors of the critical operating subs and not on  taxpayers.  The operating subsidiaries of the failing institution are placed into a new bank entity, and they are kept open and operating so that customers can still go into their bank branch or ATM and get their money, and the bank can still make loans to support household and business spending or the investment bank can continue to help businesses and households raise funds in securities markets.  The largest banks also have foreign subsidiaries and these too would stay open to serve customers in Brazil or Mexico.

This innovative approach to failing banks is not magic, although it is hard for most people to understand.  However, the reason that Kashkari and other knowledgeable officials have not embraced SPOE is that they believe the authorities will be hesitant to use it and will try to find ways around it.  When a new crisis hits, the argument goes, government regulators will always bail out the big banks.

First, let’s get the facts straight about the recent crisis.  The government did step in to protect the customers of banks of all sizes as well as money market funds.  In the process, they also protected most bondholders, and people who had lent money to the troubled institutions, including the creditors of Bear Stearns, a broker dealer, and AIG, an insurance company.  This was done for a good reason because a collapse in the banking and financial system more broadly would have been even worse if markets stopped lending to them.  Shareholders of banks and other systemically important institutions lost a lot of money in the crisis, as they should have.  The CEOs lost their jobs, as they should have (although not their bonuses).  Most bondholders were protected because it was an unfortunate necessity.

As a result of Dodd-Frank rules the situation is different now from what it was in 2007.  Banks are required to hold much more capital, meaning that there is more shareholder equity in the banks.  In addition, banks must hold long-term unsecured debt, bonds that essentially become a form of equity in the event of a bank failure.  It is being made clear to markets that this form of lending to banks will be subject to losses in the event the bank fails—unlike in 2008.  Under the new rules, both the owners of the shares of big banks and the holders of their unsecured bonds have a lot to lose if the bank fails, providing market discipline and a buffer that makes it very unlikely indeed that taxpayers would be on the hook for losses.

The tricky part is to understand the situation facing the operating subsidiaries of the bank holding company — the parts that are placed into a new bank entity and remain open for business.  The subsidiaries may in fact be the part of the bank that caused it to fail in the first place, perhaps by making bad loans or speculating on bad risks.  Some of these subsidiaries may need to be broken off and allowed to fail along with the holding company—provided that can be done without risking spillover to the economy.  Other parts may be sold separately or wound down in an orderly way.  In fact the systemically important banks are required to submit “living wills” to the FDIC and the Federal Reserve that will enable the critical pieces of a failing bank to be separated from the rest.

It is possible that markets will be reluctant to lend money to the new entity but the key point is that this new entity will be solvent because the losses, wherever they originated, have been taken away and the new entities recapitalized by the creditors of the holding company that have been “bailed in.”   Even if it proves necessary for the government to lend money to the newly formed bank entity, this can be done with reasonable assurance that the loans will be repaid with interest.  Importantly, it can be done through the orderly liquidation authority and would not require Congress to pass another TARP, the very unpopular fund that was used to inject capital into failing institutions.

There are proposals to enhance the SPOE approach by creating a new chapter of the bankruptcy code, so that a judge would control the failure process for a big bank and this could ensure there is no government bailout.  I support these efforts to use bankruptcy proceedings where possible, although I am doubtful if the courts could handle a severe crisis with multiple failures of global financial institutions.  But regardless of whether failing financial institutions are resolved through judicial proceedings or through the intervention of the FDIC (as specified under Title II of Dodd-Frank) the new regulations guaranty that shareholders and unsecured bondholders bear the losses so that the parts of the firm that are essential for keeping financial services going in the economy are kept alive.  That should assure the authorities that bankruptcy or resolution can be undertaken while keeping the economy relatively safe.

The Federal Reserve regulates the largest banks and it is making sure that the bigger the bank, the greater is the loss-absorbing buffer it must hold—and it will be making sure that systemically important nonbanks also have extra capital and can be resolved in an orderly manner.  Once that process is complete, it can be left to the market to decide whether or not it pays to be a big bank.  Regulators do not have to break up the banks or figure out how that would be done without disrupting the financial system.

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in Bloomberg Government. 

The support for Bernie Sanders among young people has stirred a debate about the merits of the American style of a market economy versus the European version, and particularly the Nordic version of capitalism seen in Denmark.

Of course, the chances that Sanders will actually become president are remote and the chances of his enacting his program, if he were to become president, are even more remote. Still, the debate is an interesting one. David Brooks (writing in his New York Times column February 12, 2016) says that Denmark and similar economies in Europe are stagnant and lack the dynamism of America. Sanders’ supporters wrote in response, pointing to the strengths of Denmark: the absence of extreme poverty, the guaranty of good quality health care, and the availability of free college education.

Denmark gets a lot of things right. It provides universal health care of high quality at only a fraction of the cost of the U.S. system. Health outcomes are at least as good as in the United States with Danish wait-times similar to those we have here and infant mortality much lower. Denmark also does well in its primary and secondary education and in its labor market programs. They use tough love on those who are out of work, providing generous income support and training, but if they do not find a job or accept one that is found for them, the unemployed lose their benefits. The Danish “flexicurity” system is much admired because it combines a flexible labor market with income security. People are not guaranteed to keep the job they are in, but they are pretty much guaranteed that they can have a job.

Brooks is correct in pointing to the negative impact of very high tax rates on work. In the Nordic economies and in Germany, the employment rate is high but people work a lot fewer hours than workers in the U.S. On average, employed workers work 1,788 hours a year in the U.S. and only 1,438 in Denmark, and even less in Germany at 1,363, according to the OECD. Of course the Europeans are choosing to work shorter hours, but that choice is made in the face of very high taxes. Consider a busy professional couple in Denmark who want a renovation done to their home. They take home only a fraction of their salary after paying taxes and then they pay a plumber or an electrician to work on their house, and each of these tradespeople gets to keep only a fraction of what they charge for their services. The couple may find it is better to forget about the renovation, or hire people off the books to avoid the prohibitive double taxation.

In terms of innovation, Europe does not have the equivalent of Silicon Valley or the innovation hubs around Cambridge, Massachusetts, or the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. These creative centers generate innovations made in the U.S. that spread around the world and benefit everyone. Denmark is too small to sustain such centers by itself, but the problem extends to Europe more broadly, where policymakers struggle to match American innovation. Brooks is also correct about the danger of universal free college education. Those who graduate from four-year colleges will usually be in the upper half of the income distribution and should not expect to get a free ride from taxpayers who are making far less themselves. At the same time, creating broad financial support to allow children from low-income families to attend college while avoiding crippling debts is absolutely the right policy.

The U.S. is an exceptional country with a dynamic and successful economy. Europe would profit from copying the innovation culture of America. American capital markets, notwithstanding the financial crisis, are much more efficient than those in Europe and offer financial support and mentoring to start-up companies. Going the other way, America could learn about ways to retrain workers and avoid the desperate poverty that afflicts too many of our citizens. We could learn about the benefits of negotiating for lower prices from doctors, hospitals and drug companies. Whoever wins the White House should be secure in their belief about America’s strengths and vitality, while admitting that we can learn from what other countries do well.

For more than a decade, the economy’s rate of productivity growth has been dismal, which is bad news for workers since their incomes rise slowly or not at all when this is the case. Economists have struggled to understand why American productivity has been so weak. After all, with all the information technology innovations that make our lives easier like iPhones, Google, and Uber, why hasn’t our country been able to work more productively, giving us either more leisure time, or allowed us to get more done at work and paid more in return?

One answer often given is that the government statisticians must be measuring something wrong – notably, the benefits of Google and all the free stuff we can now access on our phones, tablets and computers. Perhaps government statisticians just couldn’t figure out how to include those new services in a meaningful way into the data?

A new research paper by Fed economists throws cold water on that idea. They think that free stuff like Facebook should not be counted in GDP, or in measures of productivity, because consumers do not pay for these services directly; the costs of providing them are paid for by advertisers. The authors point out that free services paid for by advertising are not new; for example, when television broadcasting was introduced it was provided free to households and much of it still is.

The Fed economists argue that free services like Google are a form of “consumer surplus,” defined as the value consumers place on the things they buy that is over and above the price they have paid. Consumer surplus has never been included in past measures of GDP or productivity, they point out. Economist Robert Gordon, who commented on the Fed paper at the conference where it was presented, argued that even if consumer surplus were to be counted, most of the free stuff such as search engines, e-commerce, airport check-in kiosks and the like was already available by 2004, and hence would not explain the productivity growth slowdown that occurred around that time.

The Fed economists also point out that the slowdown in productivity growth is a very big deal. If the rate of growth achieved from 1995 to 2004 had continued for another decade, GDP would have been $3 trillion higher, the authors calculate. And the United States is not alone in facing weak productivity; it is a problem for all developed economies. It is hard to believe that such a large problem faced by so many countries could be explained by errors in the way GDP and productivity are measured.

Even though I agree with the Fed authors that the growth slowdown is real, there are potentially serious measurement problems for the economy that predate the 2004 slowdown.

Health care is the most important example. It amounts to around 19% of GDP and in the official accounts there has been no productivity growth at all in this sector over many, many years. In part that may reflect inefficiencies in health care delivery, but no one can doubt that the quality of care has increased. New diagnostic and scanning technologies, new surgical procedures, and new drugs have transformed how patients are treated and yet none of these advances has been counted in measured productivity data. The pace of medical progress probably was just as fast in the past as it is now, so this measurement problem does not explain the slowdown. Nevertheless, trying to obtain better measures of health care productivity is an urgent task. The fault is not with the government’s statisticians, who do a tremendous job with very limited resources. The fault lies with those in Congress who undervalue good economic statistics.

Gordon, in his influential new book The Rise and Fall of American Growth, argues that the American engine of innovation has largely run its course. The big and important innovations are behind us and future productivity growth will be slow. My own view is that the digital revolution has not nearly reached an end, and advances in materials science and biotechnology promise important innovations to come. Productivity growth seems to go in waves and is impossible to forecast, so it is hard to say for sure if Gordon is wrong, but I think he is.

Fortune reported in June 2015 that 70% of its top 500 CEOs listed rapid technological change as their biggest challenge. I am confident that companies will figure out the technology challenge, and productivity growth will get back on track, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared in Fortune.

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The financial crisis is now eight years behind us, but its legacy lingers on. Many Americans are concerned about their financial security and are particularly worried about whether they will have enough for retirement. Guaranteed benefit pensions are gradually disappearing, leaving households to save and invest for themselves. What role could equities play for retail investors?

Another concern about the lingering impact of the crisis is that business investment and overall economic growth remains weak compared to expectations. Large companies are able to borrow at low interest rates, yet many of them have large cash holdings. However, many small and medium sized enterprises face difficulty funding their growth, paying high risk premiums on their borrowing and, in some cases, being unable to fund investments they would like to make. Equity funding can be an important source of growth financing.

On Friday, April 15, the Initiative on Business and Public Policy at Brookings examined what role equity markets can play for individual retirement security, small business investment and whether they can help jumpstart American innovation culture by fostering the transition from startups to billion dollar companies.

You can join the conversation and tweet questions for the panelists at #EquityMarkets.

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• Keynote address by Richard G. Ketchum
• Panel Discussion
• Keynote address by Roger Ferguson

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• Not just for the professionals? Understanding equity markets for retail and small business investors

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• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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• Equity Markets Retirement Security 2016 Apr 15 (2)
• 20160415_equity_markets_transcript

American voters are angry. But while the ill effects of globalization top their list of grievances, nobody is well served when complex economic issues are reduced to bumper-sticker slogans – as they have been thus far in the presidential campaign.

It is unfair to dismiss concerns about globalization as unfounded. America deserves to have an honest debate about its effects. In order to yield constructive solutions, however, all sides will need to concede some inconvenient truths – and to recognize that globalization is not the same phenomenon it was 20 years ago.

Protectionists fail to see how the United States’ eroding industrial base is compatible with the principle that globalization boosts growth. But the evidence supporting that principle is too substantial to ignore.

Recent research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) echoes the findings of other academics: global flows of goods, foreign direct investment, and data have increased global GDP by roughly 10% compared to what it would have been had those flows never occurred. The extra value provided by globalization amounted to $7.8 trillion in 2014 alone.

And yet, the shuttered factories dotting America’s Midwestern “Rust Belt” are real. Even as globalization generates aggregate growth, it produces winners and losers. Exposing local industries to international competition spurs efficiency and innovation, but the resulting creative destruction exacts a substantial toll on families and communities.

Economists and policymakers alike are guilty of glossing over these distributional consequences. Countries that engage in free trade will find new channels for growth in the long run, the thinking goes, and workers who lose their jobs in one industry will find employment in another.

In the real world, however, this process is messy and protracted. Workers in a shrinking industry may need entirely new skills to find jobs in other sectors, and they may have to pack up their families and pull up deep roots to pursue these opportunities. It has taken a popular backlash against free trade for policymakers and the media to acknowledge the extent of this disruption.

That backlash should not have come as a surprise. Traditional labor-market policies and training systems have not been equal to the task of dealing with the large-scale changes caused by the twin forces of globalization and automation. The US needs concrete proposals for supporting workers caught up in structural transitions – and a willingness to consider fresh approaches, such as wage insurance.

Contrary to campaign rhetoric, simple protectionism would harm consumers. A recent study by the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers found that middle-class Americans gain more than a quarter of their purchasing power from trade. In any event, imposing tariffs on foreign goods will not bring back lost manufacturing jobs.

It is time to change the parameters of the debate and recognize that globalization has become an entirely different animal: The global goods trade has flattened for a variety of reasons, including plummeting commodity prices, sluggishness in many major economies, and a trend toward producing goods closer to the point of consumption. Cross-border flows of data, by contrast, have grown by a factor of 45 during the past decade, and now generate a greater economic impact than flows of traditional manufactured goods.

Digitization is changing everything: the nature of the goods changing hands, the universe of potential suppliers and customers, the method of delivery, and the capital and scale required to operate globally. It also means that globalization is no longer exclusively the domain of Fortune 500 firms.

Companies interacting with their foreign operations, suppliers, and customers account for a large and growing share of global Internet traffic. Already half of the world’s traded services are digitized, and 12% of the global goods trade is conducted via international e-commerce. E-commerce marketplaces such as Alibaba, Amazon, and eBay are turning millions of small enterprises into exporters. This remains an enormous untapped opportunity for the US, where fewer than 1% of companies export– a far lower share than in any other advanced economy.

Despite all the anti-trade rhetoric, it is crucial that Americans bear in mind that most of the world’s customers are overseas. Fast-growing emerging economies will be the biggest sources of consumption growth in the years ahead.

This would be the worst possible moment to erect barriers. The new digital landscape is still taking shape, and countries have an opportunity to redefine their comparative advantages. The US may have lost out as the world chased low labor costs; but it operates from a position of strength in a world defined by digital globalization.

There is real value in the seamless movement of innovation, information, goods, services, and – yes – people. As the US struggles to jump-start its economy, it cannot afford to seal itself off from an important source of growth.

US policymakers must take a nuanced, clear-eyed view of globalization, one that addresses its downsides more effectively, not only when it comes to lost jobs at home, but also when it comes to its trading partners’ labor and environmental standards. Above all, the US needs to stop retrying the past – and start focusing on how it can compete in the next era of globalization.

Editor's note: this piece first appeared on Project-Syndicate.org.

Event Information

On June 23, voters in the United Kingdom will go to the polls for a referendum on the country’s membership in the European Union. As one of the EU’s largest and wealthiest member states, Britain’s exit, or “Brexit”, would not only alter the U.K.’s institutional, political, and economic relationships, but would also send shock waves across the entire continent and beyond, with a possible Brexit fundamentally reshaping transatlantic relations.

On May 6, the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) at Brookings, in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Stiftung North America, the UK in a Changing Europe Initiative based at King's College London, and Wilton Park USA, will host a discussion to assess the range of implications that could result from the United Kingdom’s referendum. 

After each panel, the participants will take questions from the audience.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #UKReferendum

Audio

• Brexit—in or out? Implications of the United Kingdom’s referendum on EU membership

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160506_uk_eu_brexit_transcript

There are lots of ways for Syria to go wrong for Russia. Analysts have tended to focus on Moscow’s military shortcomings in that theater, wondering if Syria will become Russia’s Vietnam. They’ve also pointed to Russia’s deep economic troubles—exacerbated, of course, by very low oil prices—which call into question its ability to pay for the military campaign over time.

One of the understudied aspects of Russia’s involvement in the Syrian conflict is the ramifications it could have for the Russian government’s relations with Muslims back at home. Moscow is now home to the largest Muslim community of any city in Europe (with between 1.5 and 2 million Muslims out of a population of around 13 million, although illegal immigration has distorted many of the figures). Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders have consciously avoided choosing sides in the Sunni-Shiite divide in the Middle East—recognizing that doing so could provoke a backlash among Russian Muslims.

The rise of an extremist, Salafi- or Wahhabi-inspired, religious state in Syria—an Islamic caliphate established either by the Islamic State or by any religiously-based extremist group in the region—could pose a significant problem for Russia. That’s both because of how it’s likely to behave toward other states in the region (including key Russian partners like Israel, Egypt, and Iran) and because of what it could inspire in Mother Russia, where efforts by militant groups to create their own “caliphate” or “emirate” in the North Caucasus have created headaches for Moscow since the early 2000s. 

Islam and Russia go way back

Russia is a Muslim state. Islam is arguably older than Christianity in traditional Russian territory––with Muslim communities first appearing in southeastern Russia in the 8th century. It is firmly established as the dominant religion among the Tatars of the Volga region and the diverse peoples of the Russian North Caucasus. These indigenous Sunni Muslims have their own unique heritage, history, and religious experience. The Tatars launched a reformist movement in the 19th century that later morphed into ideas of “Euro-Islam,” a progressive credo that could coexist, and even compete, with Russian Orthodoxy and other Christian denominations. Sufi movements, rooted in private forms of belief and practice, similarly prevailed in the Russian North Caucasus after the late 18th century. 

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when Central Asia and the South Caucasus were also part of the state, the USSR’s demography was in flux. The “ethnic” Muslim share of the population was rising as a result of high birthrates in Central Asia, while the Slavic, primarily Orthodox, populations of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine were declining from high mortality and low birthrates. Since the dissolution of the USSR, Russia’s nominal Muslim population has swelled with labor migration from Central Asia and Azerbaijan, which has brought more Shiite Muslims into the mix, in the case of Azeri immigrants. As in other countries, Russia has also had its share of converts to Islam as the population rediscovered religion in the 1990s and 2000s after the enforced atheism of the Soviet period came to an end.

The foreign fighter problem

The Kremlin cannot afford the rise of any group that fuses religion and politics, and has outside allegiances that might encourage opposition to the Russian state among its Muslim populations. The religious wars in the Middle East are not a side show for Russia. Thousands of foreign fighters have flocked to Syria from Russia, as well as from Central Asia and the South Caucasus, all attracted by the extreme messages of ISIS and other groups.

Extremist groups have been active in Russia since the Chechen wars of the 1990s and 2000s. A recent Reuters report reveals how Russia allowed—and even encouraged—militants and radicals from the North Caucasus to go and fight in Syria in 2013, in an effort to divert them away from potential domestic terrorist attacks ahead of the February 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. The Kremlin now worries that these and other fighters will return from Syria and further radicalize and inflame the situation in the North Caucasus and elsewhere in Russia. Putin intends to eliminate the fighters, in place, before they have an opportunity to come back home.

Putin also knows a thing or two about extremists from his time in the KGB, as well as his reading of Russian history. As a result, he does little to distinguish among them. For Putin, an extremist is an extremist—no matter what name he or she adopts. Indeed, Russian revolutionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries wrote the playbook for fusing ideology with terror and brutality; and Putin has recently become very critical of that revolutionary approach––moving even to criticize Soviet founder and Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin for destroying the Russian state and empire one hundred years ago in the Russian Revolution of 1917. For Putin, anyone whose views and ideas can become the base for violence in opposition to the legal, legitimate state (and its leader) is an extremist who must be countered. Syria is a crucial front in holding the line.

The long haul

With this in mind, we can be sure that Putin sees Russia in for the long haul in Syria. Recent signs that Russia may be creating a new army base in Palmyra to complement its bases in Latakia and Tarsus, underscore this point. Having watched the United States returning to its old battlegrounds in both Afghanistan and Iraq to head off new extremist threats, Putin will want to prepare contingencies and keep his options open. 

The fight with extremists is only beginning for Russia in Syria, now that Moscow has bolstered the position of Bashar Assad and the secular Alawite regime. For Putin and for Russia, Syria is the focal point of international action, and the current arena for diplomatic as well as military interaction with the United States, but it is also a critical element for Putin in his efforts to maintain control of the homefront.

Twenty-five years ago, in March 1991, shaken by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of nationalist-separatist movements in the Soviet Baltic and Caucasus republics, Mikhail Gorbachev held a historic referendum. He proposed the creation of a new union treaty to save the USSR. The gambit failed. Although a majority of the Soviet population voted yes, some key republics refused to participate. And so began the dissolution of the USSR, the event that current Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.

Today, in the wake of the referendum on leaving the European Union, British Prime Minister David Cameron seems to have put the United Kingdom on a similar, potentially catastrophic, path. Like the fall of the wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fallout from Brexit could have momentous consequences. The U.K. is of course not the USSR, but there are historic links between Britain and Russia and structural parallels that are worth bearing in mind as the U.K. and the EU work out their divorce, and British leaders figure out what to do next, domestically and internationally.

A quick Russian history recap

The British and Russian empires formed at around the same time and frequently interacted. Queen Elizabeth I was pen pals with Ivan the Terrible. The union of the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707 that set the United Kingdom on its imperial trajectory coincided with the 1709 battle of Poltava, in which Peter the Great ousted the Swedes from the lands of modern Ukraine and began the consolidation of the Russian empire. The Russian imperial and British royal families intermarried, even as they jockeyed for influence in Central Asia and Afghanistan in the 19th century. The last Czar and his wife were respectively a distant cousin and granddaughter of British Queen Victoria. The Irish Easter Uprising and the Russian Revolution were both sparked by problems at home, imperial overstretch, and the shock of the World War I. 

Like the fall of the wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fallout from Brexit could have momentous consequences.

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.K. and Russia have both had difficulty figuring out their post-imperial identities and roles. The U.K. in 2016 looks structurally a lot like the USSR in 1991, and England’s current identity crisis is reminiscent of Russia’s in the 1990s. After Gorbachev’s referendum failed to shore up the union, the Soviet Union was undermined by an attempted coup (in August 1991) and then dismantled by its national elites. In early December 1991, Boris Yeltsin, the flamboyant head of the Russian Federation, holed up in a hut deep in the Belarusian woods with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus and conspired to replace the USSR with a new Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). With Gorbachev and the Soviet Union gone by the end of December, the hangover set in. Boris Yeltsin was the first to rue the consequences of his actions. The CIS never gained traction as the basis for a new union led by Russia. 

The Ukrainians, Belarussians, and everyone else gained new states and new identities and used the CIS as a mechanism for divorce. Russians lost an empire, their geopolitical anchor, and their identity as the first among equals in the USSR. The Russian Federation was a rump state. And although ethnic Russians were 80 percent of the population, the forces of disintegration continued. Tatars, Chechens, and other indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation, with their own histories, seized or agitated for independence. Ethnic Russians were “left behind” in other republics. Historic territories were lost. Instead of presiding over a period of Russian independence, Boris Yeltsin muddled through a decade of economic collapse and political humiliation.

Separating the U.K. from Europe...could be as wrenching as pulling apart the USSR.

Is Britain laying the same trap?

Another Boris, the U.K.’s Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London and main political opponent of David Cameron, risks doing the same if he becomes U.K. prime minister in the next few months. Separating the U.K. from Europe institutionally, politically, and economically could be as wrenching as pulling apart the USSR. People will be left behind—EU citizens in the U.K., U.K. citizens in the EU––and will have to make hard choices about who they are, and where they want to live and work. The British pound has already plummeted. The prognoses for short- to medium-term economic dislocation have ranged from gloomy to dire. The U.K is a multi-ethnic state, with degrees of devolved power to its constituent parts, and deep political divides at the elite and popular levels. Scotland and Northern Ireland, along with Gibraltar (a contested territory with Spain), clearly voted to stay in the European Union. The prospect of a new Scottish referendum on independence, questions about the fate of the Irish peace process, and the format for continuing Gibraltar’s relationship with Spain, will all complicate the EU-U.K. divorce proceedings. 

Like Russia and the Russians, England and the English are in the throes of an identity crisis.

Like Russia and the Russians, England and the English are in the throes of an identity crisis. England is not ethnically homogeneous. In addition to hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens living in England, there are many more English people with Irish as well as Scottish ancestry––David Cameron’s name gives away his Scottish antecedents––as well as those with origins in the colonies of the old British empire. And there are the EU citizens who have drawn so much ire in the Brexit debate. 

As in the case of the USSR and Russia where all roads led (and still lead) to Moscow, London dominates the U.K.’s population, politics, and economics. London is a global city that is as much a magnet for international migration as a center of finance and business. London voted to remain in Europe. The rest of England, London’s far flung, neglected, and resentful hinterland, voted to leave the EU—and perhaps also to leave London. At the end of the divorce process, without careful attention from politicians in London, England could find itself the rump successor state to the United Kingdom. If so, another great imperial state will have consigned itself to the “dust heap of history” by tying its future to a referendum. 

Event Information

In a close referendum last week, voters in the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, setting off financial and political shockwaves in Europe and around the world. British PM David Cameron has resigned, while Scotland has renewed calls for another independence referendum, global stock markets lost nearly $2 trillion on Friday, and the British pound is at a 30-year low. Many view the British referendum as commentary not only on economic and immigration trends in the UK, but as a possible forecast of the broader wave of anti-globalization and nationalistic political movements in the U.S. and Europe.

On June 29, Brookings hosted a discussion of the immediate fallout and medium- to long-term consequences of Britain’s departure from the EU. Panelists addressed how the process of exiting the EU might unfold, effects on the U.S.-U.K. and U.S.-EU security and trade relationships, on global development, and the future of the EU project.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #Brexit.

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• Brexit sends shockwaves: What now?

Audio

• Brexit sends shockwaves: What now?

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160629_brexit_transcript

Fiona Hill, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy, discusses the decision of a majority of voters in Britain to leave the E.U. and the consequences of Brexit for the country’s economy, politics, position as a world power, and implications for its citizens.

Show Notes

Mr. Putin (New and Expanded)

The "greatest catastrophe" of the 21st century?

Brexit and the dissolution of the U.K. Brexit—in or out? Implications of the United Kingdom’s referendum on EU membership

EU: how to decide (Anand Menon)

Thanks to audio engineer and producer Zack Kulzer, with editing help from Mark Hoelscher, plus thanks to Carisa Nietsche, Bill Finan, Jessica Pavone, Eric Abalahin, Rebecca Viser, and our intern Sara Abdel-Rahim.

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