WHIPPANY, N.J. – MetLife Investment Management (“MIM”), MetLife, Inc.’s (NYSE: MET) institutional asset management platform, announced today that it originated $2.9 billion in global agricultural loans in 2017. The strong investment activity pushed MIM’s total agricultural mortgage loans managed to a record level of more than $15.3 billion, ranking the firm as the largest non-government sponsored, agricultural mortgage lender in the United States¹.

Eakinomics: FSOC and the Courts

The Dodd-Frank Act created the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and empowered it to designate non-bank financial entities as Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs). That is as it should be — Congress creates law. At the outset, FSOC followed an entity-based approach to designating SIFIs — for all practical purposes, a focus on the size of entities — and used this to designate the insurers MetLife, Prudential, and AIG as SIFIs. Again, that is how policy should be made — the Administration implements law.

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“Earlier this year the Treasury Department invited AAF to participate in a roundtable discussion with other think tanks and academics as it researched and wrote its report on banks and credit unions, pursuant to Executive Order 13772. At least three other Treasury reports are due for publication this fall. For the next report, in lieu of further roundtables, however, interested groups and individuals are invited to submit written comments on FSOC-specific matters. Below are written comments from AAF President Douglas-Holtz-Eakin and AAF Director of Financial Services Policy Meghan Milloy to Treasury staff regarding FSOC and recommendations for reform.”

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Earlier this year MetLife asked the DC Circuit Court to hold off on issuing an opinion in their court case against the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) until the Treasury Department completed its report on FSOC as directed by the administration’s Presidential Memorandum from April. The court granted MetLife’s request, but only for 60 days, or until July 11^th. That means that unless the court extends the abeyance to the full 180 days, it could deliver a ruling on the case well before the Treasury report is due later this fall. Therefore, the court should extend the abeyance for another 120 days to give Treasury ample time to complete the report so that the court will have the full report and all of Treasury’s research and findings at its disposal while making its decision.

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Metlife, Inc.’s motion to hold appeal in abeyance pending the Secretary of the Treasury’s forthcoming report on the FSOC designation process.

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The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) hosted its first meeting under the Trump administration this week. This super council of federal financial regulators represents but one of the enormous powers granted to the executive branch by the Dodd-Frank Act. In the Trump administration, it may ironically prove to be the most powerful tool to implement the president’s promise to rethink Dodd-Frank, particularly as major financial services reform legislation likely stalls in the Senate.

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The Financial Stability Oversight Council is a political body masquerading as an analytical one. A dubious creation of the Dodd-Frank Act, it reflects that law’s urge to expand the power of bureaucrats, in turn reflecting the implausible credo that they can control “systemic risk” because they know the financial future better than other people. They don’t.

The expected result of a committee of heads of federal agencies chaired by the Treasury secretary is a politicized process. This was undoubtedly the case with the council’s attempt to designate MetLife as a “systemically important financial institution.” It should not be surprising that a U.S. District Court judge threw out the designation, ruling that it was “arbitrary and capricious,” and “hardly adhered to any standard when it came to assessing MetLife’s threat to financial stability.” In dissenting from the council’s action on MetLife, S. Roy Woodall — FSOC’s statutorily-required independent member with insurance expertise — said the designation relied on “implausible, contrived scenarios.”

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The top Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee called on the Treasury Department Tuesday to end the policy of designating non-bank financial companies as Too Big To Fail.

In a letter sent Tuesday, Senator Tom Cotton and nine other Republican Senators urged Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “use the all tools available” to reverse the Obama administration’s policy of having a federal council designate non-bank financial companies as “systemically important financial institutions,” a designation that brings with it stringent supervision by the Federal Reserve, new capital requirements, and costly regulatory burdens.

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