Really Tough Regulations For The Really Big Boys

Who would have thought that BofA, Citi and Chase would have to hold in capital as much as 9.5% of their "risk-based assets"? There is even a possibility that the rate held in capital could increase to 10.5%. Horrors! Yet that's what the Basel Committee has decreed. Of course, the banks don't have to have the 9.5% today, they can hold off until 2019. by which time most of the increased capital would be generated by profits. Unless of course we have a repeat of the Great Recession; in eight years that it quite likely.