Banks
Canada's mortgage market imperfectly competitive
Canada's residential mortgage market is imperfectly competitive, a paper published by the country's central bank posits.
Banks right to lend cautiously: BoE's Barker
The British government's strategy of encouraging British banks to lend received a setback on Wednesday after Kate Barker, a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), said that she could understand their reluctance to lend.
India wants to attract overseas bankers
Highly-skilled people from abroad are now available at a reasonable cost in view of employment cuts abroad and may propel India towards high-speed growth in all the sectors, said Shyamala Gopinath, the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
G20 working group: development banks must lend now
Multilateral development banks and other international financial institutions should step up their counter-cyclical efforts to offset capital flight from emerging markets, says a report from a working group prepared for the G20 London summit.
Bernanke: emergency aid will be repaid
The Federal Reserve's support facilities for specific institutions carry more risk than traditional central bank liquidity support, but we nevertheless expect to be fully repaid, said Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the central bank.
G20 group: more supervisory colleges needed
Regulators should collaborate to establish supervisory colleges for all major cross-border financial institutions, says a report from a working group prepared for the G20 London summit.
Spain's Ordoez: politics is costly
Involving savings banks in the political debate makes it immensely difficult to find flexible and effective solutions, said Miguel Ordoez, the governor of the Bank of Spain.
Soros urges G20 to agree on SDR reallocation
George Soros, one of the world's most renowned hedge-fund managers, has called on G20 leaders to endorse the reallocation of rich country's SDR quotas with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
We won't let banks fail - Nigeria's Soludo
Chukwuma Soludo, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, said on Monday that the central bank will not allow any of the domestic banks to fail.
European banks to drop interchange fees by 2012
The European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) have told European banks to get rid of interchange fees on direct debit transactions by 31 October 2012 under EU antitrust rules.
Shirakawa terms measures "extremely extraordinary"
The Bank of Japan's decision earlier this month to directly provide quasi-capital funds to banks through subordinated loans was an "extremely extraordinary" measure, Masaaki Shirakawa, the governor of the central bank, has emphasised.
Malawi's Nkosi encourages rural credit access
Commercial banks should come up with strategies and plans for a greater access to credit by rural communities and other banking services for Malawian entrepreneurs, said Mary Nkosi, the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi, has said.
RBA's Edey: regulation determined risk taking
Financial regulation unintentionally shaped the excessive risk-taking that occurred in the run up to the credit crisis, said Malcolm Edey, the assistant governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Monetary policy can affect fiscal spillover
Interventions by central banks can impact the magnitude and nature of a spillover from regional fiscal policy, a new paper from Banque de France posits.
BoE unanimous on March decision
The minutes from the March meeting of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee show members voted unanimously to cut bank rate by 50 basis points to a fresh all-time low of 0.5% and to buy £75 billion-worth ($104.8 billion) of assets using central…
Basel II procyclical: Norges Bank
Basel II introduces an additional source of procyclicality into the banking sector, a new paper from Norges Bank finds.
Buba on savings banks and liquid assets
Savings banks hold a higher amount of liquid assets for each unit of sight deposits than regulation requires, posits a new paper from the Bundesbank.
Fed's Hoenig criticises Tarp
Thomas Hoenig, the president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve, has criticised the Troubled Assets Relief Programme (Tarp) for its lack of a clear set of principles and said that its implementation appears ad hoc and opaque in dealing with banks judged…
Report offers praise for derivatives players
A report from a group of central banks and financial regulators finds that financial-services firms, dealers, buy-side companies and service providers managed their credit derivatives in an orderly manner with no major operational disruptions or…
Bundesbank makes biggest profit since 2001
The Bundesbank posted €6.3 billion ($8 billion) profit last year, it emerged on Tuesday.
De Grauwe fears beggar-thy-neighbour policies
A lack of coordination between the world's leading central banks in the current crisis raises concerns over a return to beggar-thy-neighbour policies, a leading European economist has argued.
Russia bans SWFs from holding US agency debt
Moscow has banned its sovereign wealth funds from holding US agency debt, declaring the paper too illiquid.
Inter-sectoral dependence key for stress tests
Bank stress tests should take into account inter-sectoral dependencies, finds a new paper from the Bundesbank.
ICE's CDS clearing plan gets Fed's approval
The Fed has accepted a bid by ICE Trust - an amalgam of an exchange operator, a provider of clearing services and eight banks - to run a central counterparty and clearing house for the global credit-default-swap (CDS) market.