Risk targeting and the Volcker Rule
via Matt Levine, who has insightful commentary as always
banking
Hackers using lingo of Wall St. breach health care companies’ email
LinkHackers using lingo of Wall St. breach health care companies’ email
A lot of cyberspace fears have been overblown. This is real.
For more than a year, a group of cybercriminals has been pilfering email correspondence from more than 100 organizations — most of them publicly traded health care or pharmaceutical companies — apparently in pursuit of information significant enough to affect global financial markets.
Bonded labour
LinkThe Economist with a short primer on performance bonds, a new incentive structure for investment bankers, and how EU regulation might affect it.
The idea, promoted by Bill Dudley, the head of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve, is roughly equivalent to demanding that senior bankers deposit their annual bonuses in the bank’s vaults for ten years. The delay is to make sure that the deals struck by the employees concerned do not eventually sour; if they do, the money would be used to help absorb the associated losses.
The next fiscal crisis: low bank capital
LinkThe next fiscal crisis: low bank capital
The summer debate that has dominated Washington seems straightforward. Under what conditions should the U.S. government be allowed to borrow more money? The numbers that have been bandied about focus on reducing the cumulative deficit projection over the next 10 years, as measured by the Congressional Budget Office.
But there is a serious drawback to this measure because it ignores what will probably prove to be the U.S.’s single largest fiscal problem over the next decade: The lack of adequate capital buffers at banks.