How it’s done in the USA (Bank Regulation)

There are often calls for stricter regulation, in particular the idea that in the US they arrest people in banks with greater ease/faster (which is in itself not ‘regulation’ it is policing). Anyway, I thought it was worth mentioning that in the US it isn’t a ‘one Regulator fits all’, and that the problems we had in the past through division of regulatory responsibility [splitting Central Bank and Regulator] still exist there.

Below is a graph of how responsibility is divided out in America.

As you can see, the OCC takes care of national banks, then the very popular state & community bank sector is elsewhere. Taking State banks in particular, they either have access to the Federal Reserve or not, if they do they are SMB and the State Authority and Fed are the regulators, if not then they are SNMB and the State Authority and the FDIC are the regulators.

That is why you hear about the FDIC ‘going into banks’ – these are state banks that …

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Federal Reserve news

The Federal Open Market committee (FOMC) have decided to keep ‘exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period’. Below is a verbatim excerpt:

“Activity in the housing sector has increased over recent months. Household spending appears to be expanding but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, sluggish income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Businesses are still cutting back on fixed investment and staffing, though at a slower pace; they continue to make progress in bringing inventory stocks into better alignment with sales. Although economic activity is likely to remain weak for a time, the Committee anticipates that policy actions to stabilize financial markets and institutions, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and market forces will support a strengthening of economic growth and a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability.

With substantial resource slack likely to continue to dampen cost pressures and with longer-term inflation expectations stable, the Committee expects that inflation will remain subdued for some …

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Rock bottom, when you reach it, you won't know it

Capitulation, the point in the market cycle of emotions when right before despondency. Despondency is actually the point of the opportunity for greatest profit, and reaching that point requires going through a painful process. The primary factor is that before any recovery we will need to see all of the dead-wood clear from the system, and that is not a pleasant process, it is however, an important part of the process and anybody who says we can have ‘painless recovery’ is not telling the truth.

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Rock bottom, when you reach it, you won’t know it

Capitulation, the point in the market cycle of emotions when right before despondency. Despondency is actually the point of the opportunity for greatest profit, and reaching that point requires going through a painful process. The primary factor is that before any recovery we will need to see all of the dead-wood clear from the system, and that is not a pleasant process, it is however, an important part of the process and anybody who says we can have ‘painless recovery’ is not telling the truth.

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ECB release half a Trillion just in case…

The ECB released a further 500 billion, Bank of England 10 billion and the Fed 20 billion This was done as a follow on the the USA’s liquid injection rather than rate cut, the idea is to lower interbank rates, increase liquidity and at the same time not promote inflation.

Thankfully and historically we are seeing a trend here. The Fed, ECB, Canadian Central Bank, Bank of England and the Swiss Central Bank all acted in unison, traditionally this was not the case and its great to see that internationally we can start acting in a global way in a global world. Prior to this we acted in a national way in a global world, central banks didn’t refer to eachother before making a move.

All the banks with the qualifying collateral could buy from the ECB at 4.21% which is what the old Euribor was, this will mean that the people selling from euribor rates will only be able to sell to institutions which don’t qualify for this money, it may also mean that the people who are most …

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