Everything You Wanted to Know about CLOs, But Were Afraid to Ask

Well, not exactly. But for anyone who is interested, here is my written Congressional testimony for a House Financial Services Committee, Subcommittee on Capital Markets and GSEs hearing on "The Dodd-Frank Act's Impact on Asset-Backed Securities".  If you've been dying to understand the Volcker Rule's impact on ABS and on CLOs in particular, then this testimony is for you! 

Four main points of interests to non-technical readers: 

(1) The loan/security distinction regarding CLOs (securitizations of high yield corporate loan syndication interests) seems silly, but it's also really hard to say what makes a CLO different from a hedge fund.  

(2) The ultimate Volcker Rule concern about any type of ownership interest in an investment fund (be it a hedge fund, a private equity fund, a CLO, or any other type of ABS) is that there will be an implicit guarantee and we'll have deposit insurance funding a bailout of an uninsured, speculative investment fund, like we had with the SIVs. 

(3) skin-in-the-game credit risk retention for securitizations is unlikely to work when dealing with too-big-to-fail institutions.  If downside is socialized, credit risk retention won't align incentives of securitizers and investors.

 (4) The SEC needs to start taking its systemic stability mandate seriously. You're not just an investor protection shop any more SEC!