The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Office of Thrift Supervision released their long-awaited final word on new rules for securitized assets, specifically for bank balance sheets:
The federal banking and thrift regulatory agencies today announced the final risk-based capital rule related to the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s adoption of Statements of Financial Accounting Standards Nos. 166 and 167. These new accounting standards make substantive changes to how banking organizations account for many items, including securitized assets, that had been previously excluded from these organizations’ balance sheets.
What does this mean for banks? In simple terms, they’re no longer going to be allowed to hide massive amounts of SPEs and derivative exposure off their balance sheets. Hit the deck!
Banking organizations affected by the new accounting standards generally will be subject to higher risk-based regulatory capital requirements. The rule better aligns risk-based capital requirements with the actual risks of certain exposures. It also provides an optional phase-in for four quarters of the impact on risk-weighted assets and tier 2 capital resulting from a banking organization’s implementation of the new accounting standards.
In case your ass has been under a rock for the last year, FASB came after banks’ asses over the summer. Miraculously, the Fed encouraged this switch, leading me to believe they’re just trying to cover their tracks.
Quadruple Whammy: Regulatory Agencies’ Final Rule on FAS 166/167 [JDA]
See also:
FASB Changes, Toxic Asset Shuffle
