The FT has an article (Banks win battle to tone down Basel III) describing how the proposed new rules for banking capital requirements might have some of the new requirements around liquidity removed or weakened.

Key amongst these new considerations is the limitation of mismatches between the term of assets and liabilities, which would limit the danger of a removal of deposits and wholesale funding in a crisis scenario. The problem is that this has been fundamental to the business model of banks for decades. Short-term assets (call, overnight, 30 day deposits) have been used to finance long-term liabilities (vehicle loans, home loans, business loans).

Retail deposits, even those technically call deposits, are generally quite sticky. This is in spite of the easily recallable image of queues of depositors wanting to get their money back. Typically, this is still a small fraction of total depositors (certainly in countries with retail deposit protection). Further, other banks have usually pulled or tried to pull their short-term funding (or simply not renewed overnight lending) well before the public even gets wind that there might be risks. As banks rely increasingly on wholesale finance, the risks of a liquidity and credit crisis are amplified as this money is teflon-coated and greased in terms of stickiness.

The banks argue there are other ways of managing the risk. It’s understandable that regulators around the world have had their confidence in banks’ risk management ability dented.

The real danger of overregulation of banks is not “too safe banks”, but rather an increase in the cost of providing banking and credit services to the economy (individual countries as well as the global economy) which could make limit economic growth and the replacement of jobs lost during the recession.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this develops.