I have a good deal of sympathy for Sheila Bair’s idea that secured creditors should take a hit when a financial institution fails. But there are two problems with her proposal. First, it would kill the triparty repo market, where lenders assume secured really means secured. Second, it is not clear to me why we should want a standardised 20 per cent haircut. Better to estimate the haircut in normal bankruptcy and apply that to any special resolution process.

Moreover, it looks to me like the most promising way of getting some effective discipline from bank creditors is to focus on the more junior categories of debt – sub-debt and potentially reverse convertibles (I like the idea of requiring banks to hold debt that converts into equity when certain thresholds are breached). Read more