Senators call for higher bank capital in letter to regulators

Publication: Reuters

Author: Emily Stephenson

4/09/2013 —A bipartisan group of senators on Tuesday urged bank regulators to finish new capital rules, forcing banks to meet higher capital ratios and rely less on complicated calculations of the riskiness of their assets.

Debate in Washington has heated up over whether the 2010 Dodd-Frank law and other measures did enough to crack down on banks such as JP Morgan Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc and Bank of America Corp.

Two members of the group, Republican David Vitter of Louisiana and Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio, are working on legislation that would halt implementation of an international accord known as Basel III and instead impose a much higher 15 percent capital ratio on the biggest banks, according to a draft of their bill.

The pair, plus Republicans Bob Corker of Tennessee and Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, called for similar proposals in a letter to Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo, Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry, and Martin Gruenberg, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Read the full article, Senators call for higher bank capital in letter to regulators, on the Reuters website.

Read the full letter here.