Bonus interview: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew talks legacy and the economy's future

As Treasury Secretary Jack Lew prepares to leave the office he’s held for nearly four years, he spoke with David Brancaccio about his economic legacy. Lew shared his thoughts about the Great Recession of ’07-‘08, and the steps he and his colleagues took to institute regulations on the financial industry – a framework he hopes will stay in place as a safeguard against future economic crises. As the nation prepares for the transfer of power between President Obama and President-Elect Trump, Lew addressed the concerns of Americans across the country who have felt dislocated by the economy, and what he believes should be done to support the working class moving forward.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

David Brancaccio: After financial markets nearly froze up in 2008 and 2009, triggering the Great Recession, new rules were put into place to keep Wall Street from ever again taking the sort of risks that would require a government bailout. With the new administration in the wings the pendulum could swing back. A top agenda item for the new team is deregulating Wall Street. Is there room now for some deregulation of financial services and financial markets?

Jack Lew: I think you have to start by remembering how far we've come. In 2007, 2008 our financial system was in terrible shape. We were surprised by a financial crisis that led to the worst recession since the Great Depression and it led to the most expansive overhaul of our financial regulatory system since the Great Depression. Today we have financial institutions that have deeper capital and I think they're the best capitalized financial institutions in the world. We have transparency where we used to have opacity so that complicated financial products will in the future not be some mysterious box of potential exploding problems. If a financial institution hit a speed bump in ’07, ’08, the uncertainty of what was inside those institutions was an accelerant to the financial crisis. We have procedures in place to resolve failing institutions so the taxpayers should never again have to step in and become the equity holders of financial institutions. So I think before one asks what could change we have to remember how far we've come, and with a bit of humility recognize that until tested in a financial crisis, we don't know whether what we've done is as effective as we think it is. The fact there hasn't been a financial crisis is not a reason to unwind what we've done. We built the system to withstand a shock that hasn't come, and happily has not come on my watch but will come because there are cycles, and shocks come.

I think that if you look at the questions that people raise often about where reform might be debated one issue is small banks. And I think there's very broad openness to thinking about treating the smallest banks differently from large ones.

Brancaccio: Some of them feel that the added regulation is onerous.

Lew: We have a lot of flexibility, and that flexibility has been used to not have a one size fits all approach. But the problem is when people advocate for small bank special rules, they sometimes jump exponentially to a size of institution that meets no definition of small. So for example, under the Dodd-Frank law, there is a threshold of $50 billion for the size of an institution that you pay a certain level of scrutiny to. If there were a debate about raising that from 50 to 100, I think reasonable people would probably find a way to agree that there are small institutions that should get some special consideration. But the last major proposal put forth to reform Dodd-Frank didn't go from 50 to 100. It went from 50 to 500, and at $500 billion you're talking about some of the largest financial institutions in the country, so reform has to be incremental and sensible. It can't be painted with such a broad brush that we undo some of the basic protections we have.

I actually am pretty confident that, because it would take 60 votes in the United States Senate to do major changes to our financial rules, that there will be kind of careful consideration and caution except in the area potentially of budgetary changes where a simple majority could suffice. The last remaining tool that future Treasury secretary will have if there is a financial crisis is something called the “orderly liquidation authority,” because under our budget rules there is an assumption that at some point in 10 years there will be a crisis. You can theoretically save money by repealing that authority. What would happen if it got repealed it would mean that there would be no way to help a failing financial institution to work itself through a crisis. And the way the provision works is it's a quasi-bankruptcy kind of proceeding where the kind of financing can be put in place to keep an institution for failing. I would approach that with extreme concern if there were proposals to repeal that.

The other two things that come up with some regularity...

Aired January 11, 2017

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