Competing Takes on the Cost and Benefit of the G-SIB Surcharge

In recent weeks, the battle between bankers and regulators that had been taking place behind the scenes,  started to spill out into public view.   The reason seems clear:  for all of the lobbying they’ve done,  banks have been unsuccessful (so far) in weakening the major provisions of Basel III and Dodd-Frank.

To quickly refresh:   Regulators want [...]

More on Dimon’s “Anti-American”Comment

Last week,the New York Times ran a series of short op-eds in the “Room for Debate”section entitled,  “Are Global Banking Rules ‘Anti-American’?”   -  a reference to the now famous reported run-in between JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon and Mark Carney,  Governor of the Bank of Canada,about Basel III   - the pending package of rules that [...]

Regulating SIFIs

A few months ago, Daniel Tarullo, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, gave a speech entitled Regulating Systemically Important Financial Firms, where he laid out the argument for requiring the largest banks, the so-called SIFIs, to hold an additional layer of capital.   It received a fair amount of notice at the [...]

Is Basel really “anti-American”,or is Dimon just protecting JPMorgan?

On Monday,  Jamie Dimon caused a bit of a kerfuffle during an interview with the Financial Times when he suggested that the stronger Basel regulations were “blatantly anti-American.”    What was most puzzling to me when I heard the news was that, in the past,  Dimon has been either supportive of increased regulatory requirements or, at the very [...]

Banks and Capital

Bank of America can’t seem to get itself out of the news.   In this morning’s Wall Street Journal,  there’s a story that the Fed has asked BofA for contingency plans in case conditions continue to worsen.   It’s an interesting article,  but for me,BofA’s issues point to a larger, more interesting issue than whether or not one [...]