Juggling Dynamite

Here is a direct link.

The second segment continues here if you can bear to watch it.

“Over the weekend, global regulators agreed to substantially ease the new Basel III regulations and delay their full implementation by four years. The global liquidity standards were designed to ensure banks had sufficient capital on hand to survive another Lehman-like crisis, as well as require that capital be high-quality and liquid. There was a lot of fanfare from regulators when the regulations were first announced in 2010 — and a lot of gnashing of teeth from investors about how they would “cripple” the industry and potentially hurt economic growth.

After coming under pressure from the banking industry, global regulators agreed to loosen the definition of “high-quality liquid assets” to include highly rated residential mortgage-backed securities. “Ultimately, the negotiators agreed to let banks use less-traditional assets to satisfy up to 15% of their capital.”

Here is a direct link.

I watched the movie Arbitrage on a plane last week and highly recommend it. The script was refreshingly honest about the emotional and moral complexity of the money business, money-worship, and those who feed off it in all of the various different ways. Gere’s character also epitomizes the sociopathic thinking fairly typical of finance wizards in my experience.

Here is a direct link.