On Thursday, Wheeler is expected to present to the commission a set of rules that would treat broadband providers like utilities, effectively denying them the right to charge companies a premium for faster access to consumers and holding them accountable for any attempt to secretly impede the flow of data. When the commission finally approves them — a vote is scheduled for late February — it will mark the most significant rewrite of the rules of the road for the Internet in more than a dozen years and affect the competitive playing field for generations to come.
.. “It was pretty clear that he kind of had his mind made up and wasn’t really on our side,” Paul Sieminski, general counsel at Automattic, which runs the popular WordPress.com platform, said of one of Wheeler’s meetings in California.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/tom-wheeler-net-neutrality-114785.html#ixzz3QbwyDRHa
Bankers target ‘anti-US’ parts of Basel III
According to one analysis, Bank of America, with $2,261bn in assets, has risk-weighted assets of $1,398bn, while Barclays of the UK has a similar level of total assets at $2,448bn but risk-weighted assets of $648bn.
This skews the capital ratio hugely. BofA ends up with a tier one common ratio of 8.23 per cent but, if it could adopt the same ratio of risk-weighted assets to total assets as Barclays, its ratio would be 11 per cent.
.. “We used to give the large banks explicitly lower capital ratios than the smaller banks,” he says. “I believe we should not have discriminatory capital policies – whether you’re big or little.”
Dimon in attack on Canada’s bank chief
Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase launched a tirade at Mark Carney, Bank of Canada governor, in a closed-door meeting in front of more than two dozen bankers and finance officials, underscoring mounting tensions between bankers and officials over financial regulation.
.. Regulators have more sympathy with banks’ concerns that activity will migrate to the unregulated “shadow” banking sector.
Mr Carney said shadow banking was “at least as large as the regulated sector…[but] often unregulated and/or overseen by authorities without a systemic focus. This should change.”
Winklevoss Twins Aim to Take Bitcoin Mainstream
Cooperation with regulators has divided the virtual currency world. Bitcoin was founded, in part, with the intention of creating a currency outside the control of governments. The twins have placed themselves firmly in the camp of those who believe that Bitcoin will survive only if it has regulatory oversight.
“Our philosophy is to ask for permission, not forgiveness,” Cameron Winklevoss said.