BankThink

Corker-Warner Improves on GSE Model ... Barely

07/01/13

An explicit guarantee is better than the implicit one Fannie and Freddie had. But a more fundamental approach is to demand that financial actors internalize and capitalize the risks themselves.

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'Minority' Bank Designation Has Become Meaningless

07/01/13

Goldman Sachs, one of the owners of a newly designated “minority bank,” has a history of discriminatory behavior.

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EU Accuses Banks of Breaching Anti-Trust Rules: Carney Steps In at Bank of England

07/01/13

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

A Deluge of EU News: You can tell that a U.S. holiday weekend is on the horizon as Monday's news is largely coming from overseas. Reuters reports that EU regulators have charged Markit, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association and 13 banks with breaching anti-trust rules by blocking rival exchanges in the credit derivatives business. The banks include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and JPMorgan. Elsewhere,...

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The Ins and Outs of Bail-Ins and Bailouts; Corker-Warner Revisited

06/28/13

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

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Regulators Double Down on Deposit Advances; Consumers Pay

06/28/13

Three federal agencies are competing for the gold medal in a "regulatory Olympics" over deposit advances. Their proposals would severely constrain banks from offering valuable products and assisting customers.

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Raising Leverage Ratio Weakens Bank Liquidity

06/28/13

Leverage measures, which can zigzag with sudden inflows or outflows of deposits, should be viewed as a backstop to risk-based capital measures, not as a primary capital constraint.

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Regulators Point Finger at Corzine; Bernanke Successors Considered

06/28/13

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Corzine in CFTC Crosshairs: Officials filed a civil lawsuit against John Corzine, the former head of MF Global on Thursday, charging misuse of almost $1 billion in customer funds. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission complaint alleges that the former New Jersey governor and U.S. senator did more than just sit on the sidelines as the company spiraled into bankruptcy, though it's still unclear how deeply he was involved with illegal money transfers....

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Banks Lack Vested Interest in Customers' Financial Health

06/27/13

Too many banks still make too much money at the expense of their customers, and it is one of the biggest reasons the American public has lost faith in them.

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Blocking Newcomers Is Bad for Banking

06/27/13

Show me an industry with artificially high barriers to entry, and you will almost certainly find dissatisfied customers paying higher prices to large, protected providers.

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Don't Fear the Taper, IMF's Lagarde Says; Basel Adds Simple Leverage Ratio

06/27/13

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Basel: Tacitly acknowledging that risk-based capital measures are susceptible to manipulation, the Basel Committee announced a supplementary, simple 3% equity-to-assets requirement that banks worldwide will have to achieve by 2018. Disclosures of leverage ratios under the new formula are to start in 2015. Investment banks will have to count derivatives on a gross basis, rather than netting out collateral or offsetting trades. This will make the U.S. firms look more leveraged than...

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