There is much positive publicity about the new rules agreed upon at the Basel Committee. And there is no doubt that on their face they are much stricter than the old ones, requiring banks to double their level of real core capital and add a buffer of 2.5%. This means that, while banks could...
Before anyone ever discusses the subject again, or listens to another banker bellyaching about how increased capital requirements will slow down economic growth and hurt everybody, he or she must read the scholarly study by an international group of researchers entitled “Fallacies, Irrelevant Facts, and Myths in the Discussion of Capital Regulation: Why Bank...
It’s Our Money, (sung to the tune, “It’s My Party”) It’s our money and we’ll pry if we want to Pry if we want to Pry if we want to You would pry too if it happened to you Congress heads back to work a week from Monday. Consider this a late-summer serenade. Perhaps...
The Journal of Regulation & Risk North Asia has just published its issue for the Summer/Autumn 2010. Do not be misled by the title: a sign of these global times is that the issue is full of mutually relevant commentary on issues concerning US, European and international financial regulation and is going to be...
As we move for a moment beyond the pitched partisan battles surrounding financial, health care, environmental and immigration reform, many are beginning to think more earnestly about the challenge of regulation itself. My own work, along with that of a growing band of others influenced by dramatic developments in the natural and social sciences,...
The Obama Administration has been steadily losing its luster in many areas, but perhaps nowhere more so than in the field of financial regulation, where leadership is more urgently needed than anywhere else. Today’s American Banker (proprietary content, unfortunately) carries a story, appropriately entitled “White House backs itself into a corner letting CFPB remain...
Let’s face it. Very few people have a clue how much money gets deducted from their mutual funds and then used to pay sales, marketing and service expenses. These ongoing, “hidden” deductions are above and beyond management fees that also reduce investors’ returns. And these fees can be in excess of the out-of-pocket, front-end...
Here is Planet Money (including our Duke Law alumna, Barbara Matthews) on what’s going on at Basel. This is more important than most realize because the rules being developed internationally will apply to US banks, and they are about the most important ones there will be. Round rooms, not smoke-filled (anymore), but obscure and...
follow: RSS