On July 31, the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services
wrote to the Chair of the Fed, Jerome Powell, urging him to withdraw and re-propose the Basel III Endgame proposal. In its letter, the Committee argues that the Fed’s July 27, 2023, proposal lacks the “necessary evidence and analysis to completely overturn the current methods used for calculating risk-based capital requirements.” In addition, the Committee expressed concerns that the proposal (i) fails to account for the interrelationship between the risk-based capital requirements and stress capital requirements, and (ii) “would severely limit or eliminate the use of internal models, without any evidence demonstrating that internal models misestimate risk.” The Committee further notes that the “vast majority” of comment letters regarding the current proposal support either a withdrawal or re-proposal, or otherwise express significant concerns. The Committee made clear that, in its view, a partial re-proposal of the current Basel III Endgame proposal would be insufficient due to the current version’s “widespread structural and fatal flaws,” and that the only acceptable path forward is issuing a new notice of proposed rulemaking.
