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I think it's hilarious that it isn't already considered a tier I asset. What a fucking joke these banksters are.
Seems like a ploy to get people to let banks hold gold for them, so they can loan it out, like they do with paper. If you read the fine print, it'll probably also state that the gold isn't really yours anymore.
Never trust the banks!
Absolutely spot on Mike! Well said man, well said. Never ever trust a bank. They are simply corporations working in their own self interests. Nothing more and nothing less. They no more have your best interests in mind than a burglar breaking in to your home does. They are profit centers and nothing matters to them but making more and more money.
The same could be said for any company. This is the heart of capitalism. Everyone is out to help themselves.
The problem is when you can pay off, I mean lobby, politicians to pass laws to help you or your company.
This is the heart of capitalism. Everyone is out to help themselves.
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Q. Treatment of Collateralized Transactions
The proposal allows banking organizations to recognize the risk mitigating benefits of financial collateral in risk-weighted assets, and defines financial collateral to include:
•cash on deposit at the bank or third-party custodian;
•gold;
•investment grade long-term securities (excluding resecuritizations);
•investment grade short-term instruments (excluding resecuritizations);
•publicly-traded equity securities;
•publicly-traded convertible bonds; and,
•money market mutual fund shares; and other mutual fund shares if a price is quoted daily.
In all cases the banking organization would be required to have a perfected, first priority interest in the financial collateral.
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Gold bullion, hopefully not paper.
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Way back, on October 6, 2011, I wrote an article that addressed the probable return of gold to reserve asset status, in the private banking world. Now, the first steps are being taken. Once these rules are passed into law, for example, gold bullion will fulfill bank capital requirements better than Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac bonds. This reflects the real world reality. The proposal is a reform that could prevent future financial instability.
Perhaps, the most interesting thing about the notice, is its choice of words to describe an unspecified US "central bank". Why describe the central bank in an amorphous manner? Why not refer directly to Federal Reserve? Perhaps, many people, in high places, including the top people on the Federal Reserve Board itself, have concluded, as I have, that Fed will not survive this crisis.
The most important thing from the standpoint of precious metals investors is that gold is slated to return to the center of the financial universe. Under this joint proposal, co-sponsored by FDIC, OCC and the Federal Reserve, gold will once again be a zero risk asset in the private banking world. It has been legally barred from that most important of positions for 80 years now. That return will have profound implications.
Gold's return to the top tier in banking assets will result in a big increase in demand. Increased demand will eventually be reflected in an increased price. Other precious metals, like silver (iShares Silver Trust ETF: SLV) and platinum, will probably be floated alongside, because the price of both are now, and have always been, intrinsically linked to the price of gold.
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Friday, November 9, 2012, 2:58pm CST
Federal banking regulators today announced they will delay the Basel III capital requirements.
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Many industry participants have expressed concern that they may be subject to a final regulatory capital rule on Jan. 1, without sufficient time to understand the rule or to make necessary systems changes, the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said in a joint press release
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The federal agencies said they haven’t determined new implementation dates and associated transition periods.
The U.S. federal banking agencies issued three notices of proposed rulemaking in June that would revise and replace the current regulatory capital rules. The proposals suggested an effective date of January 1, 2013. Many industry participants have expressed concern that they may be subject to a final regulatory capital rule on January 1, 2013, without sufficient time to understand the rule or to make necessary systems changes.
In light of the volume of comments received and the wide range of views expressed during the comment period, the agencies do not expect that any of the proposed rules would become effective on January 1, 2013. As members of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the U.S. agencies take seriously our internationally agreed timing commitments regarding the implementation of Basel III and are working as expeditiously as possible to complete the rulemaking process. As with any rule, the agencies will take operational and other considerations into account when determining appropriate implementation dates and associated transition periods.
On November 9, 2012, the US federal banking agencies released a joint press release indefinitely delaying the January 1, 2013 implementation date for their proposed rules that would revise and replace the current regulatory capital rules according to Basel III and certain provisions of Dodd-Frank
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Meanwhile, on November 9, 2012, the EU issued a press release stating that it still plans to meet the January 1, 2013 deadline, despite industry concerns that the January 1 deadline may be unrealistic.
SHANGHAI: China will not postpone implementation of tougher global bank capital rules despite a delay in compliance by U.S. banks, the official Shanghai Securities News reported on Tuesday, citing unidentified sources.
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Go away for who? The loan-taker?Fun fact:
One of the reason U.S. banks are dragging their heels on this one is because of the reserve requirement on highly levered loans. Once Basel III comes into effect, most loans with less than 20% down will go away.
Go away for who? The loan-taker?
Once Basel III comes into effect, most loans with less than 20% down will go away.
I see it too Bushi, and as far as I am concerned it is the thing we need in banking to control these fuckers. Loaning huge sums of money to folks with little or no skin in the game is insane.
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If Basel III is coming orur way, why haven't we seen the major impacts already happening?
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Jim Sinclair said:The entire reason for the agreed delay of the Basel Three liquidity requirements is the Western financial system’s balance sheets. They are cartoons because of FASB blessing of debatable values for paper assets such as OTC derivatives with absolutely no market relationship.
Put succinctly, the Western world financial system simply does not have the ability in terms of real liquidity to meet Basel Three requirements. That is the entire story. The tomes written on this should be but one line – bankrupts cannot meet liquidity requirement now or in two years from now.
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... the Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act, emerged last Wednesday; its co-sponsors are Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, and David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican. ...
For starters, the bill would create an entirely new, transparent and ungameable set of capital rules for the nation’s banks — in other words, a meaningful rainy-day fund. Enormous institutions, like JPMorgan Chase and Citibank, would have to hold common stockholder equity of at least 15 percent of their consolidated assets to protect against large losses. That’s almost double the 8 percent of risk-weighted assets required under the capital rules established by Basel III, the latest version of the byzantine international system created by regulators and central bankers.
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The bill prevents another type of fudging by requiring off-balance-sheet assets and liabilities and derivatives positions to be included in a bank’s consolidated assets. In addition, the capital cushion that a bank would hold under the bill is liquid and can absorb losses easily. This capital measure would be more transparent than the current system and could not be manipulated.
In a truly courageous move, Brown-Vitter would require United States financial regulators to abandon Basel III. An earlier version of Basel did nothing to prevent the financial crisis and encouraged banks to binge on leverage.
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Brown-Vitter has other attributes as well. It would bar bank regulators from giving nondepository institutions access to Federal Reserve lending programs. And it would make it harder for bank holding companies to move assets or liabilities from nonbanking affiliates, like derivatives bets held at a brokerage unit, to the protective umbrella of the parent company that might be rescued by taxpayers in a financial disaster.
Thomas M. Hoenig, the vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, supports the bill. ...
New rules from the Federal Reserve will significantly alter how banks account for taxes on some assets, especially at large institutions.
New standards change the math behind whether taxes can be deferred on some items when banks compute how much capital they have. If deferrals are removed, the result can be a significant reduction in the size of a bank’s balance sheet -- possibly making it look less stable, Bloomberg BNA reported.
The rules, which will force companies to perform a far more complex calculation of deferred tax assets and liabilities, are part of the heightened capital standards for U.S. banks known as Basel III -- rules drawn up by global regulators intended to make the financial system safer after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. They are meant to help community lenders, while taking a stricter line with large banks.
“The new focus of tax planning will be to effectively manage a bank’s deferred tax position to enhance regulatory capital,” said Liz L’Hommedieu, KPMG LLP’s tax managing director for its Washington National Tax practice.
The new regime goes into effect Jan. 1 for the largest banks -- those with assets greater than $250 billion or with more than $10 billion in foreign exposures, such as Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan (JPM) Chase & Co. or Wells Fargo (WFC) & Co. Smaller banks have until 2015.
The idea behind the rules, issued last month, is to provide more uniformity in the 27 countries of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision -- so banks in France, Hong Kong or the U.S. can run comparable analyses of capital profiles, said John Taylor, partner with the Financial Services Tax Practice at EY.
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... the possibility that the Bank of International Settlements would modify the Basel III accord to include gold as a Tier 1 asset. ...
The change as proposed would have gone into effect January of this year. There had been much written about it in the last year so I was surprised not to read anything this year about the change. When I dug around the BIS website I could find no press releases announcing this monumental change in banking. Turns out for good reason. It didn't happen.
From the FAQ's document at the BIS website, page 22 of the PDF:4.2 Basel II paragraph 145 sets forth a list of eligible financial collateral that includes gold, with a supervisory haircut set to 15% in paragraph 151. To the extent that gold is not included in the revised paragraph 151 under Basel III, industry seeks clarifications in this regard.
Paragraph 145 has not been modified by Basel III and so, gold remains as eligible collateral.
It was an oversight not to include gold in the headings of paragraph 151. Gold is still eligible collateral and it retains the haircut it previously had of 15%.
I have to admit I'm somewhat confused given my understanding was that gold was valued at 50% prior to Basel III rather than 85% (100%-15% haircut). Regardless, the key words are, "retains the haircut it previously had", meaning the BIS has not officially changed its view on gold. Its interesting that the change did not happen as expected and that it apparently has happened very quietly. ...
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Lenders including UBS AG and HSBC Holdings Plc have warned that plans by global regulators in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to set minimum collateral requirements for non-centrally cleared swaps trades will prompt a global liquidity squeeze as banks struggle to locate enough securities to satisfy the standards.
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The rules treat physically traded gold the same as other commodities, meaning banks trading the metal would have to carry more cash and cash equivalents as a proportion of their gold exposures to act as a buffer if there is an adverse move in the gold price.
In Basel III's language, gold's liquidity "haircut" is increasing to 85 percent from 50 percent. This percentage is used to help calculate a so-called liquidity buffer known as the net stable funding ratio (NSFR) that all banks must hold from 2018. The higher the figure, the more funding is needed to meet the overall NSFR requirement.
This, the LBMA and other industry bodies argue, makes funding gold transactions for commercial banks difficult and increases the cost of doing business.
"Basel III is a big issue for us at the moment, because we are looking at an increase in costs of up to 300 percent and ... that is a kind of cost that makes you decide to get out of the business," LBMA Chief Executive Ruth Crowell told reporters at a conference in Vienna in Monday.
"And whilst there is not a lot of sympathy for banks, it's the clients of these banks that are going to suffer from that, producers, manufacturers, refiners."
The rules come into full force in 2019, but regulatory and market pressure has prompted lenders to comply sooner.
The LBMA has asked the European Banking Authority (EBA) to reconsider gold as a "high quality, liquid asset."
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