1. Banks that lost billions during the crisis had to rebuild their capital.
2. Then they had to hold even more capital to meet the higher capital requirements.
3. Then the government fined them billions, reducing their capital even more.
1. That's what TARP and the Federal Reserve Discount Window (for those firms who wanted a bailout but were too chickenshit to ask) were for.
2. The capital requirements were put back to what they were pre-2004, was there no lending pre-2004?
3. The billions they were fined amounted to a total of less than 7% of their quarterly profits for 8 years.
Right, that won't reduce lending. How many math classes did you fail before you failed Econ 101?
You're under the mistaken impression that banks intend to lend money. They don't. After being bailed out for making risky wagers in the securities markets, and because nothing was done about banks playing in those markets, they just continue doing what they were doing before. Banks make more money gambling than they do lending. Secondly, since revenue for the banks is at pre-Bush Collapse levels, it's hard to believe they don't have capital with which to lend. They sure seem to have enough capital to continue buying risky gambles in securities markets. Why not take some of that capital and lend it out instead? What's preventing the banks from doing that? Nothing.
Correct. Capital requirements were (supposedly) reduced, not eliminated.
NO! They were
eliminated and replaced with self-regulation. Which is the same thing as eliminating the requirement. You are under the mistaken impression that the net capital rule was somehow reduced but it wasn't. If it was,
then what was the rule reduced to? You obviously can't say because
it didn't set any capitalization ratio. At all.
Self-regulate........yet another claim that is not in the article you linked.
**** ****'s sake, it's right here, dumbass. Reading comprehension problems?!
In loosening the capital rules, which are supposed to provide a buffer in turbulent times, the agency also decided to rely on the firms’ own computer models for determining the riskiness of investments, essentially outsourcing the job of monitoring risk to the banks themselves.
...
The commission’s decision effectively to outsource its oversight to the firms themselves fit squarely in the broader Washington culture of the last eight years under President Bush.
...
“It’s a fair criticism of the Bush administration that regulators have relied on many voluntary regulatory programs,” said Roderick M. Hills, a Republican who was chairman of the S.E.C. under President Gerald R. Ford. “The problem with such voluntary programs is that, as we’ve seen throughout history, they often don’t work.”
I know that your silly claim is silly.
It's not that they over-leveraged themselves that was the issue, it was what they over-leveraged themselves
for that was the issue. So you're missing the point completely by cutting-and-pasting something which has nothing to do with what we're talking about. You screech about how the over-leveraging itself wasn't a problem. And you'd be right if you didn't finish that thought...over-leveraging itself wasn't a problem
except for these banks doing that in order to purchase risky securities of and with which they gamble. If the banks were over-leveraging themselves to hand out more loans, that's one thing...but that's not why they did what they did. Lending had nothing to do with it. It was all about gambling on risky bets in the secondary and tertiary markets.
So congrats for missing the point
completely.