By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 6, 2024 ~ On June 11, 2015, the Office of Financial Research (OFR) released a sobering report on how banks were reducing their requirements to hold adequate capital against potential losses by engaging in non-transparent “capital relief trades” with potentially questionable counterparties. The OFR researchers summarized the problem as follows: “Capital relief transactions may have benefits to banks. But, even if real risk transfer is involved, these transactions can pose financial stability concerns by increasing interconnectedness, transforming credit risk into counterparty risk, and obscuring capital adequacy to investors and counterparties. And while bank supervisors have extensive data about banks, they may have less information about the nonbanks who are selling credit risk to those banks and ultimately bearing the risk of loss.” The Office of Financial Research was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to make sure that Wall Street mega banks … Continue reading Wall Street Mega Banks Have Created a Circular Firing Squad with Credit Derivatives and Capital Relief Trades – with the Fed’s Blessing