European Central Bank: We have to succeed. At stake is not only the stability of one of the world’s largest financial systems, but also the support from the over 490 million citizens in the European Union who are watching our efforts very closely. We have counted very heavily on their support for the financial system, and they would not forgive us if we had to do so a second time.
Higher capital levels are expected to form the best long-term protection, just as more liquidity will be the best buffer for short-term stresses. To insure that financial defenses are uniformly adopted, global supervisors recommend the inclusion of all business models and market domains.
The Swiss National Bank believes that resolution measures are needed to liquidate international banks without terminal damage to the real economy. “Too big to fail” and “too big to rescue” are the biggest challenges facing regulators today:
Many free-market economists and politicians are concerned about the potential for loss of sovereignty when agreeing to international cooperation at a level never before considered. It may well be that the first test for many countries will be during the legislative process, when decisions must be made about enacting the recommendations of the international regulatory bodies. The United States will not move precipitously, if past experience with the Basel capital reforms can serve as a precedent.
The Bank of England has called the Credit Crisis an “extraordinary period” which will have “deep and long-lasting consequences” for the global capital markets. The United States Federal Reserve has said the “the sources of the crisis were extraordinarily complex and numerous,” but at the root was the Fed’s belief that banks’ “risk management systems were inadequate and their capital and equity buffers insufficient.”
IOSCO members wish to collect data and create risk profiles of hedge fund managers, in order to help assess systemic risk and “inform the relevant legislative debates.”
Liquidity, said the Central Bank of Luxembourg, must be monitored more closely and procyclical behavior must be mitigated more effectively. The Central Bank of Norway has suggested that requirements should be established stipulating the proportion of liquid assets that a bank must hold, as well as minimum requirements for funding stability.