The And Soundness And Stability Of The International Banking System

The Basel III can reduce the probability and severity of future financial crisis through stronger capital requirement; lower leverage

Basel III is a global comprehensive collection of restructured regulatory standards on bank capital adequacy and liquidity. It was developed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to strengthen the regulation, supervision and risk management of the banking sector (bis.org, 2010). It introduces new regulatory requirements on bank liquidity and bank leverage in response to the financial downturn caused by the Global Financial Crisis. Stefan Walter, Secretary General of the Basel Committee on banking supervision said in November 2010:

Firstly, the Dodd–Frank Act pushes forward the reformation of America's financial regulatory system. Several new regulatory authorities are set up to enhance the government supervision and administration of the industry. The Financial Stability Oversight Council is established to identify material risks to financial stability, with the support from Office of Financial Research. Moreover, Fed is entitled to exercise additional superintendence beyond banks.

Investment Banking is now at a crucial junction, where Investment and Commercial Banking are splitting up due to the ring fence which is being built around these two banking areas. As well, the new upcoming regulation, Basel III, will have a huge impact in the investment banks, with higher liquidity and capital requirements, in order to increase solvency and stability in financial industries.

The reality of systemic risk made the task of regulating the financial system increasingly complicated, as the crises aren’t contained in one country or market. The extreme inter-dependence between the different agents is the main reason why we need regulation today, as some misconducts can cause a domino effect, affecting markets globally. The structure of the banking system in itself explains this process. In the finance industry, banks borrow money from other banks. If one bank fails, the one who lent the funds in the first place might also follow the same path, creating panic in the markets. The government’s first prerogative is to protect its citizens from these

First, high capital requirements could enable institutions to be more flexible facing financial stress and crises. Second, the CFPB strengthens the oversight responsibilities, lessens the regulatory infrastructure risky gaps, and improves the protection for consumers. Third, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) single-point-of-entry strategy installs standard procedures to wind down failed financial institutions,

The American Banking system has always focused on order, resiliency and the ability to withstand the storm. When comparing banking systems, it is required analyze both the strengths and the weaknesses of each system. While examining the American banking system, a key strength that is presented is the pride if its resiliency, “these improvements in the resiliency of the banking system have been reinforced by a series of key capital and liquidity rules that have been enacted in the United States, including the Basel III capital and liquidity frameworks as adopted in more stringent form” (The State of American Banking).

One cannot say that U.S banking system is designed to fail; however, it is the relentless deregulation in the financial sector and competing for financial sector activities in the globalized financial market as means towards higher growth resulted in its instability over the centuries. The U.S. central bank and federal government did not see the impending crisis on the horizon due to the deregulation of financial market. The central bank believed that there could be evolving economic imbalances or risk in the financial markets, but that these were best managed by market forces themselves. But they failed to realize that some time market fails on its own. Deregulation of the financial sector was initiated and reinforced through legislative changes, followed by regulatory policies consistent with the philosophy of deregulation. As the US was losing comparative advantage in agriculture, manufacturing, and services to developing and emerging market economies, while they continued to have advantage in the financial sector. Hence, the United States perhaps felt that national interest lies in their dominating financial sector activity, and hence development of the financial sector was coterminous with their national interest. This approach could have led to a race to the bottom in financial sector regulation in their jurisdiction. The US banking system and financial sector was source of so much instability was due to relentless deregulation of the financial market.

The crises showed just how interconnected the banking system is throughout the world. The Lehman Brothers bank closure in 2008 created a major financial crisis around the world due to its influence (The Economist, 2013). It took the government’s massive bail outs to prevent total collapse of the financial system and to some extent economic collapse of the country. This government action set a precedent and to some sent a message that the reckless action by the banks in the name of profit is fine because they now have a safety net. It is a good example of how the collapse of a big financial institution that has national and global influence can affect several interrelated firms to the detriment of the country’s economic interests. This paper therefore, examines the notion “too big to fail” in relation to banking.

The post-crisis regulatory framework has shifted from a framework which was centred on a single regulatory constraint – the risk-weighted capital ratio – to one with multiple constraints. In addition to the risk-weighted ratio, the post-crisis framework also includes a leverage ratio, large exposure limits and two liquidity standards (ie the Liquidity Coverage Ratio and the Net Stable Funding Ratio). And supervisory stress testing is playing an increasingly important role across a number of jurisdictions. Each regulatory measure has strengths and weakness. The multiple metrics framework is more robust to arbitrage and erosion

regulation of financial markets and bank liquidity. In the next few years, national and international

Economists throughout the world have agreed that there is a need of regulation of the financial system in its entirety. This is because, as the financial crisis from 2008 has shown, the micro orientated regulation measures do not suffice. They neglect the build-up of systemic risk and the interconnections within the financial system, which have shown to lead to the amplification of the effects of shocks. Therefore, as a complement to the microprudential framework, a new type of regulation tools is being developed- macroprudential. It aims to prevent the accumulation of systemic risk and improve the stability of the financial system.

After the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the G-20 became the most important forum for economic cooperation . Its positive impact in the realm of financial regulation can be determined by two main results. Firstly, the most important emerging nations were included in the premier league, thus rebalancing most part of worldwide financial authorities, increasing the number of players who now participate in financial regulation. Secondly, the G-20 started several initiatives regarding worldwide financial regulation. It set important deadlines that in some cases were not met. Even though the G-20 is a political organization, the management of the global financial regulatory agenda has been mostly performed by the IMF and FSB. The IMF performed an important task via its Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP). The FSAP became in 2010 an important regular feature within 25 nations, hence providing a comprehensive assessment of a nations’ financial stability. The FSB has a multidimensional role and is still evolving. It established, usually under the request of the G-20 authorities, several working groups, as well as it manages tasks in numerous fronts. Nonetheless, the actual effort of rulemaking and standard-setting rests at the specialized global authorities’ realm. Several of its reports are directed to global bodies, which have FSB memberships, such as the IOSCO and the Basel Committee. Therefore, the contribution given by the

Further, Acharya et al. (2014) develop a model, which sees banks overleveraged because they invest too much in low risk-weighted instead of diversifying the risk. Korte and Steffen build on this model to develop their hypothesis for the research paper.

This chapter is about the background of 2007-2008 financial crisis. The 2007-2008 financial crisis has a huge impact on US banking system and how the banks operate and how they are regulated after the financial turmoil. This financial crisis started with difficulty of rolling over asset backed commercial papers in the summer of 2007 due to uncertainty on the liquidity of mortgage backed securities and questions about the soundness of banks and non-bank financial institutes when interest rate continued to go up at a faster pace since 2004. In March 2008 the second wave of liquidity loss occurred after US government decided to bailout Bear Stearns and some commercial banks, then other financial institutions took it as a warning of financial difficulty of their peers. In the meantime banks started hoarding cash and reserve instead of lending out to fellow banks and corporations. The third wave of credit crunch which eventually brought down US financial system and spread over the globe was Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy in August 2008. Many major commercial banks in US held structured products and commercial papers of Lehman Brother, as a result, they suffered a great loss as Lehman Brother went into insolvency. This panic of bank insolvency caused loss of liquidity in both commercial paper market and inter-bank market. Still banks were reluctant to turn to US government or Federal Reserve as this kind of action might indicate delicacy of