On July 27, 2017, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin delivered the Department of the Treasury’s annual report on the state of the international financial system. Mnuchin’s testimony covered many topics ranging from the Volcker Rule to tax reform and China equity caps. The hearing was sometimes contentious, with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) sparring with Secretary Mnuchin over his apparent failure to respond to letters of inquiry from Waters. Despite the fireworks, Mnuchin laid out some of his thoughts on the state of domestic and global financial markets as well as the Treasury’s plans for recalibration of Dodd-Frank regulatory reforms.

In a June 21, 2017 address before the 26th Annual Securities Finance and Collateral Management Conference in Berlin, Deutsche Bundesbank Board Member Professor Joachim Wuermeling warned that the securities finance sector faces some unique liquidity and collateral challenges. In particular, he noted that the extraordinary measures taken by central banks to shore up liquidity in the years since the financial crisis may be distorting liquidity and affecting collateral quality in securities lending and repo markets.  Measures like the Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) and central bank securities lending and bi-lateral repo facilities intended to backstop liquidity in securities financing markets may, in the long run, have unexpected effects on liquidity and could have a negative effects on transaction costs and order book depth, creating “fickle” conditions for market participants. 

On June 30, 2017, the Bank For International Settlements (BIS) published the results of a study examining trends in bank deglobalization since the financial crisis. Prompted by data indicating a decline in cross-border activity by banks, the BIS launched a study to determine whether the data support the hypothesis that the largest global banks have truly scaled back their cross-border activity since 2007, or whether it might be an indicator of some other trend.