During a March appearance on Capitol Hill, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell characterized comments in reaction to the July 2023 proposal that would have forced the largest U.S. banks to hold 19% more capital as “voluminous and very substantive.”
The same might be said 24 hours after the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, Michael Barr, previewed a revision to that contentious proposal, which knocks the 19% increase to a 9% one. Here are nine of the most crucial comments.
1. "Obviously 10 is better than 20,” Daniel Pinto, JPMorgan Chase president
“The issue is we have no idea what they have changed,” Pinto, the No. 2 executive at the nation’s largest bank, said Tuesday, according to Reuters.
JPMorgan will look closely at changes in how the revamped proposal considers risks to markets, Pinto said.
“It’s not just the overall number. It’s the composition of it,” he said.
2. “There's an old phrase, 'Show them death, and they'll take despair.' I sometimes feel that that's what we just got," Brian Moynihan, Bank of America CEO
Moynihan, who attended the same Barclays conference Tuesday that Pinto did, said a 10% increase in capital requirements would prevent Bank of America from making $160 billion in loans to small businesses and middle-market companies, according to American Banker.
By the same measure, Moynihan said, “We're fine. We can continue to buy back stock. Now on the other hand, you've had successive chairs of the Federal Reserve saying the capital's right in the industry and suddenly we needed more capital.”
3. “On nearly every point of contention, this is a capitulation to the banks,” Jeremy Kress, University of Michigan professor
By percentage, Tuesday’s preview indicated the increase in capital requirements for the nation’s largest banks would be less than half what it would have been under the July 2023 proposal.
But “this is not a middle-ground re-proposal,” Kress, a former lawyer for the Fed, told the Financial Times,
4. “The revised bank capital standards are a Wall Street giveaway,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA
Warren, a key member of the Senate Banking Committee, has been a perennial and vocal critic of Powell and Tuesday repeated her assertion that he’s a “dangerous man” to run the Fed.
“After years of needless delay, rather than bolster the security of the financial system, the Fed caved to the lobbying of big bank executives,” she said, according to Bloomberg.
5. “Our financial regulators have yet to justify these changes and provide a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis,” Sen. Tim Scott, R-SC
The Senate Banking Committee’s ranking member said he has consistently said the Basel endgame proposal would increase costs and decrease credit access for consumers. Tuesday’s announcement “only underscores that this proposal should be withdrawn and properly re-proposed in its entirety,” Scott said, adding that he “will be closely monitoring these developments and look forward to engaging with the financial regulators directly."
6. “I’ll be a no,” FDIC board member Jonathan McKernan
The Basel proposal is a multiagency one, requiring sign-off from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in addition to the Fed. The FDIC, for its part, is expected to hold a board meeting this month to consider the plan, Reuters reported, citing a person with knowledge of the matter. The revamped plan could be released as early as Sept. 19, Bloomberg reported last week.
“We should be re-proposing in its entirety,” McKernan, a Republican, told Bloomberg on Tuesday. “And I struggle to see how key aspects of this package make conceptual sense.”
Pushback from the FDIC isn’t wholesale, though.
“The Federal Reserve, OCC and the FDIC have worked cooperatively on the Basel III proposal, including the changes outlined in Vice Chairman Barr’s remarks,” FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg, a Democrat, said in a statement seen by Reuters. “I look forward to the agencies working together to bring Basel III to a conclusion that will strengthen bank capital and bolster financial system resilience and stability.”
Still, the biggest divide on the upturn in capital requirements is a political one.
7. “I don’t think the Fed is dumb enough to do that,” Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-NC
The chair of the House Financial Services Committee is demanding a withdrawal of the July 2023 the rule, rather than a re-proposal, telling the Financial Times that lawmakers would invoke the Congressional Review Act to overturn a final rule if it passes before the next U.S. president is sworn in.
“If [regulators] take the deeply political approach that Michael Barr has taken to regulatory policy, you will see the Congress and the courts severely curtail the Fed’s regulatory policy capacity,” McHenry said Monday.
The clock has been ticking ever since the Fed indicated a rewritten proposal was forthcoming. The nuclear option, for the proposal’s Republican opponents, has always been to attempt to yank back the rule even if its largely Democratic supporters were to get it finalized before a transfer of power at the White House in January.
If the revamped plan is released Sept. 19 and given a 60-day comment period, the earliest a rule could be finalized is Nov. 18 — though that risks criticism from opponents that new comments were not taken into account. That would mean the 60-day window for lawmakers to invoke the CRA would end Jan. 17, giving a new Congress about two weeks to launch that effort.
8. "Basel Endgame and [the proposed surcharge for global systemically important banks] will survive no matter who wins," Chris Stanley, banking industry practice lead at Moody’s
Stanley’s comment, seen by Reuters, stands out among a litany of analyst feedback. He said the timeline for the rule — so close to the election — means progress will be slow.
Raymond James analyst Ed Mills went a step further, saying a post-election finalization and subsequent legal challenges would make the rule’s future uncertain.
Ian Katz, managing director of policy research at Capital Alpha Partners, said a Basel endgame proposal “might be possible under Republican regulators, but it would look different and almost surely be easier on the banks."
9. “It is unfortunate that we are more than a year into this process and we are looking at a preview of a re-proposal that’s not yet out,” Kathryn Judge, Columbia University professor
“When we think about the overall time frame, this is not an optimal position to be in for the Federal Reserve and for the other bank regulators,” Judge told the Financial Times.
