Banks fear new $5,000bn balance burden

Accounting changes could force US banks to take thousands of billions of dollars back on to their balance sheets in the coming months, in a move that is likely to further curb their lending and could trigger new capital raisings. A planned tightening of the rules regarding off-balance sheet vehicles would force banks to reconsider arrangements and could result in up to $5,000bn of assets coming back on to the books, said Birgit Specht, head of securitisation analysis at Citigroup. Financial institutions have used the vehicles to keep some assets off their balance sheets, thereby avoiding the need to hold regulatory capital against them.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/06/04/13540/banks-fear-new-5000bn-balance-burden/

 

Just need some extra printers for the fed. No problems at all.

 

Already been dalayed by a year once to prevent problems for banks, no doubt it will be delayed again.

 

Very important post

How come no one actually reads the informative threads on ET? ^_^