Banks have it tough?

A couple of interesting articles on banks that I've run across lately.  The first has to do with toughening regulations on the banks, forcing them to keep more capital.  I'm certainly all for that, but I wonder if the changes listed really accomplish anything.  The problem I see is that mark-to-market accounting was suspended after the banking crisis for some classes of assets.  And as long as those assets can be valued at whatever the companies want, the requirements seem pretty meaningless.

The only reason I give any credit at all to that article was that it was cited encouragingly by Paul Krugman, whom I admire, and who certainly knows more than I do.  I wonder if he's missing that (potential?) loophole, or if it really isn't there.

The other interesting one has to do with how banks are now (or, at least, seem to be) manipulating the commodities markets via some seemingly completely unrelated to banking maneuverings.

I don't really know anything, beyond what he's reported, but it's pretty scary.  Everyone should be watching what's happening, because that has the potential to be a tax on the entire rest of the economy.  But hey, that's economic efficiency, right?  Isn't that why we don't need any more regulations?

Metal Meddling

Just found this article in the New York Times about how the banks are artificially driving up the prices of metal (the article is focused on aluminum, but I wouldn't be surprised if it extends to other commodities as well) in the commodities market.

But heaven forbid we regulate them to stop this economic drag, right?

And I don't know, but I'd bet a great deal of money that most of the algorithmic trading going on all the time has similar results in the stock market. But we wouldn't want to stop that, would we?  After all, that liquidity is valuable to everyone, right?  Right?