Standard Chartered reported a massive yearly loss for 2015, the bank’s first in almost thirty years. The results were so bad that the company has publicly stated it might even “claw back” bonuses from about 140 executives. If the firm is truly interested in assigning blame, however, it might first look to Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen (as primary representatives of the international central banking cabal of economists). Perhaps more so than any other bank, save Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered was the epitome of following the global recovery story; literally placing the institution’s money where Yellen declared.
Standard Chartered, an Asia-focused bank based in London, reported on Tuesday an unexpectedly large loss of $2.36 billion for 2015 after being pummeled by its exposure to emerging markets and bad loans.
The word that clearly doesn’t belong in that paragraph above is “unexpectedly.” If you still believe that the world is on the right track (even though it has been deviated in “transitory” fashion by the “strong dollar”) then this doesn’t make much sense. But Standard Chartered, like Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs, sits at the extremely important nexus between the structural problems of the eurodollar standard as it careens faster toward its exit and the more recent “cyclical” nature of the acceleration. In other words, the losses are picking up pace and magnitude but that is no surprise at all, only the amplification of the same trend in place since August 2007 (reborn in 2011).
Just last year, Standard went through a management shakeup that conspicuously occurred at the very same time as several other banks that similarly shared its orthodox enthusiasm. Pieced together, the idea was clear – management teams that had pushed the FICC envelope even after the 2013 “warning” were fired in the middle of 2015 because it was then that what was coming (losses and more) became frighteningly evident. I wrote last June:
There are other management departures around the global banking community as well as serious realignments much more quietly being implemented. Standard Chartered’s CEO and the head of its Asian unit resigned in late February due to “unrest” at that global bank, traced to poor banking performance in India. The big business of big global banking does not seem so glamorous in 2015 particularly in comparison to a decade ago. These titans were everything then, and their rearrangements now, at this particular moment, are poignant.
To an economist in the Yellen bubble, that was all just unrelated or idiosyncratic maneuvering that is typical for banks or any business in any environment. Banks make bad trades as any investors do, and sometimes there are repercussions. But such a view of the trees misses the great forest:
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