Minimum capital requirements

The ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee said growing uncertainty and risks in the financial system mean the central bank should increase the countercyclical capital buffer for the nation's largest lenders.

It's time to dispense with the fiction that there is no cost to treating underwater "held-to-maturity" securities as regulatory capital. Thoughtful reconsideration of leverage ratio requirements offers an answer.

Regulators hope changes to the supplementary leverage ratio will improve Treasury market function, but whether that happens depends in large part on how banks react and adapt.

The largest U.S. banks took less of a capital hit under the Federal Reserve's hypothetical stress scenario than they did last year, but averaging the two sets of results could impact next year's regulatory requirements.

As the Federal Reserve considers changes to the supplemental leverage ratio, Fed Board Chair Jerome Powell said that effort is one piece of a broader deregulation package that will also address the Basel III capital rules.

Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter to banking regulators urging them to preserve the enhanced Supplemental Leverage Ratio, warning that a rollback would only enrich bank shareholders.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testified in the House Tuesday on the heels of yet another pointed social media post from President Donald Trump. But House Republicans largely avoided landing political blows against the central bank chair.

The Federal Reserve's vice chair for supervision said changes to the supplemental leverage ratio are needed to bolster the Treasury market and ensure banks are not incentivized to take on excessive risks.

The past two Federal Reserve vice chairs for supervision failed to implement the final installment of the Basel III capital framework. Newly installed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman is taking a new approach to the thorny question of bank capital.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has sent a draft proposal to revise the supplemental leverage ratio to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs as a first step toward revising the leverage rule.