Thursday 23 December 2010
by: Simon Johnson | The Baseline Scenario | Report
The people who run big banks in the US have had a good year.
They pushed back hard on financial reform legislation during the spring and were able to defeat the most serious efforts to constrain their power.
They and their non-US colleagues scored an even bigger win at Basel this fall, where
the international committee that sets financial safety standards decided to keep the required levels of equity in banks at dangerously low levels.
And the counter narrative for the 2008 financial crisis, “Fannie Mae made me do it,” gained some high profile Republican adherents closely aligned with the men who will control the House Financial Services Committee in 2011-12.
But there is also a potential lump of coal in Santa’s sack for the biggest banks, in the form of restrictions of pay – both its structure and perhaps even the amounts (although officially the latter is not currently on the table).