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A growth in auto loan defaults does signal serious financial duress for borrowers, said Mayra Rodríguez Valladares, managing principal of MRV Associates, told Benzinga. “Auto loans tend to be the last loan that borrowers default, since they need their car to drive to work.”

For some, this sort of attempt at disrupting the $6 trillion-a-day currency market was only a matter of time. Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal at capital markets consultancy MRV Associates, says she is “surprised that it has taken the buy-side this long” to challenge the FX market’s status quo. “There is no reason that with blockchain and other technological innovations, giant asset managers such as Vanguard, [Charles] Schwab, and Fidelity could not participate in foreign exchange markets more significantly without banks as intermediaries,” according to Valladares. With Vanguard alone trading $2.5 trillion worth of currencies annually, it is an opportunity “that would reduce the buy-side’s costs significantly,” she notes.  

“There’s going to be a tremendous amount of attention on him from the House Financial Services Committee, and certainly on the Senate side from Senators Warren and [Sherrod] Brown,” says Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal at capital markets consultancy MRV Associates. “They’re going to be looking at everything he does, and analyzing it with a fine-toothed comb… He’s not going to have any honeymoon.”

To increase profits, banks have focused on risky assets with higher returns. “Because banks have not shed some of their riskier assets, they don’t have the liquidity they need,” says banking regulation consultant Mayra Rodriguez Valladares. “Bankers are constantly talking about how they’re private companies and shouldn’t have such regulation. But they’re wayward teenagers and want Daddy Federal Reserve to save them.”

“This is a market signal [from Sewing] that, “I understand that Sewing is doing this to send a signal about his commitment to the bank and the restructuring, but I think a lot of things here are out of his control,” says Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal at capital markets consultancy MRV Associates.  ‘Yes, I believe in this, and I’m going to turn this ship around’—but it’s the market that long ago stopped believing, and there are a lot of unknowns yet to come,” Valladares says. “To me, this looks like a desperate measure.”

“Prepare to present document showing what your business is,” Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal with MRV Associates, suggests. “Have financial statements ready, especially ones that show revenues and expenses. Having a cash flow statement with sources and uses of funds for the business is also useful.”