US banks hostile to NPR in Fed meetings

Minutes written by Federal Reserve officials and letters written by trade associations highlight the strong differences of opinion over the shape of Basel II implementation in the US - especially over home-host issues.

In summer meetings and letters to the Federal Reserve, bankers point out that there are key differences between the US implementation as outlined in the draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR), and the original mid-year text of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, as well as the EU’s Capital Requirements Directive (CRD), creating substantive home-host issues. One of the most fundamental of these differences is the variations in the definitions of default.

In recent months, governor Susan