World Shares climbed in Europe and Asia, led by banks, after the U.S. Congress adopted a landmark financial regulation package on Friday, removing uncertainty, and the G20 dropped a 2012 deadline for more stringent risk-provisioning rules. “We welcome the fact that the G20 has stepped away from imposing an arbitrary timeline for the implementation of new measures and has instead agreed to phase-in requirements agreements as and when national economic conditions allow,” the International Banking Federation said in a statement.
Politics Obama wants to slap a 0.15 percent tax on the liabilities of the biggest U.S. financial institutions to recoup the costs to taxpayers of the financial bailout. “We need to impose a fee on the banks that were the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer assistance at the height of our financial crisis — so we can recover every dime of taxpayer money,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.
Politics In a marathon session of more than 21 hours, legislators agreed to a rewrite of Wall Street rules that may crimp the industry’s profits and subject it to tougher oversight and tighter restrictions. To secure agreement, lawmakers reached deals in the final hours on the most controversial sections which restrict derivatives dealing by banks and curb their proprietary trading to shield taxpayer-backed deposits from more risky activities. Banks will be allowed to keep most swaps dealing activity in-house, although the riskiest trading would be pushed out.
China Big Chinese state-owned banks kept the yuan in check, a day after its biggest rise since the currency was revalued in 2005, indicating Beijing will allow its currency to appreciate at a far slower pace than demanded by its critics in the West. The two-way movement in the yuan is not great by the standard of freely floated currencies but is unprecedented in China where until this week the central bank had squashed intraday volatility via intervention.
