Fair Game: Bailout Risk, Far Beyond the Banks

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High & Low Finance: Little Sympathy for Big Banks

It is not just the increased regulation. It’s the lack of trust.

“At what point does this stop?” asked Gary Lynch, the former director of enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission who has gone on to jobs with many leading Wall Street firms and is now global general counsel at Bank of America. He was referring to the escalation in penalties being levied on banks, culminating in the $13 billion JPMorgan Chase was forced to pay for a series of transgressions.

Speaking at a banking industry conference last month in New York, Mr. Lynch recalled that he had been working at Morgan Stanley in London before he returned to this country in 2011 to join Bank of America. He had thought, he said, that by then — three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off the financial crisis — anger at banks would have declined.

He was wrong: “It was worse.”

Bankers don’t feel very popular in Europe, either. In Germany, Jürgen Fitschen, the co-chief executive of Deutsche Bank, the largest bank in the country, is furious with Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, for saying that “banks still show great creativity in evading regulation.” That meant, he said, that it was necessary to keep pushing on new bank regulations.

“It’s irresponsible to comment in such a populist manner,” Mr. Fitschen complained.

Deutsche Bank’s latest brush with regulators sounds positively puny by JPMorgan standards. It was forced by the European Union to pay 725 million euros — nearly $1 billion — for its role in fixing and manipulating the Libor rate.

Mr. Fitschen evidently views those sins as irrelevant now, explaining that it is wrong to think “things haven’t changed since 2008 or 2009.” Actually, the Libor violations at some banks continued until at least 2011, although we don’t know whether that was true at Deutsche as well.

It was only 11 years ago that the S.E.C., outraged by accounting fraud at Xerox, levied a $10 million fine. That was a record, recalled Steve Cutler, who was the commission’s director of enforcement at the time, speaking on the same panel as Mr. Lynch at the banking conference sponsored by The Clearing House, an organization of large banks.

“We should all be concerned that there doesn’t seem to be a natural end point to how high fines could go,” said Mr. Cutler, who is now the general counsel of JPMorgan and was involved in negotiating the $13 billion settlement. “One hundred million dollars is still meaningful,” he added, in what might be labeled wishful thinking.

It may not be easy to be sympathetic to the big banks, but it is easy to understand their surprise and frustration. They have gone from being viewed as national champions — proof of a country’s standing in the world — to being seen as a potential source of national disaster. Iceland and Ireland went broke because they had to, or chose to, bail out their irresponsible banks.

That no top bankers went to jail may be proper — it is not a crime to make stupid mistakes, and much of what happened in the years before the financial crisis was more foolish than venal — but it grated to see few of them fired while those who stayed went back to collecting multimillion-dollar bonuses.

Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general, did not help when he said last spring that the Justice Department had to keep in mind that filing criminal charges against a large bank could “have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.” He quickly backtracked, but the perception was reinforced.

It seems likely that the reaction to his first statement played a role in causing the government to demand JPMorgan pay so much money.

This week five United States regulators — the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the S.E.C. — jointly issued new rules on the Volcker Rule passed as part of the Dodd-Frank law in 2010.

The regulators had some choice in details, because the rule, as passed by Congress, is a contradiction in terms. It bans “proprietary trading” by banks, or trading for their own gain, but carves out exceptions for “hedging” and “market making.” Define them broadly enough, and almost nothing would remain of the rule. Define them narrowly enough and the exceptions could be meaningless.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Your Money Adviser: Mobile Banks Gaining Popularity With Young Consumers

Then she heard about GoBank, one of a new breed of mobile banking services aiming at fee-averse customers, especially 20-somethings or “millennials,” accustomed to doing everything on their smartphones. She now uses it as her sole bank.

Ms. Goetze is a fan of a GoBank feature that lets her check her balance quickly on her phone, without having to log in to her account. “I love, love, love it!” she said. She doesn’t pay any monthly fee; GoBank lets users choose their fee (from zero to $9 a month), and right now she opts to pay nothing. But she said she may start paying $1 a month, now that she has been using GoBank for a while and likes it. She estimates she would have had to pay about $12 a month with a traditional account.

Old-fashioned banks, of course, also offer mobile banking apps, and branchless banks aren’t new either. But the upstarts, which include Simple and Moven, especially appeal to younger customers and others on a tight budget because they shun most fees, including dreaded overdraft fees, and have no minimum balance requirements. Each differs slightly in their offerings, but all aim to simplify payments and help users closely track their spending. They’re meant to be used when customers are on the fly, rather than sitting down at a computer.

The new alternatives work with traditional banks to hold deposits, so the money in your account is F.D.I.C.-insured. GoBank is the mobile banking arm of the Green Dot Corporation, which markets reloadable prepaid debit cards and owns Green Dot Bank, which holds the funds deposited via GoBank. Simple and Moven are in effect banking services, rather than banks, but they work with traditional banks to handle the actual banking functions behind their mobile apps. Simple’s deposits are held at Bancorp Bank, based in Delaware (a spokeswoman said Simple may also partner with other banks in the future as it grows), while Moven’s are held at CBW Bank, which is based in Kansas. But customers access the service through their mobile apps or websites.

The new mobile banks are gaining in popularity. Simple became available to the public in July 2012 and now has about 80,000 customers, said a spokeswoman, Krista Berlincourt. Simple currently requires users to email a request for an invitation to join, before allowing them to register. The approach acts as a fraud deterrent and also lets the company ramp up its systems to meet demand, she said.

Moven is still in its testing phase, and also asks customers to submit an invitation, said Alex Sion, Moven’s president; he says the service has “a couple of thousand” customers. One of its distinctions is that it offers users the option to make payments directly from their phone, by tapping the phone on a payment terminal, he said.

The new mobile models are evolving, but show promise by focusing on what the customer wants to do, rather than relying on banking terms that most millennials don’t care about, said Jennifer Tescher, chief executive of the Center for Financial Services Innovation. Simple’s users, for instance, can see their “safe to spend” balance, which takes into account pending bills. Young people like to have quick access to check their balances, she said, because they have been hard hit by the slow economy and are on tight budgets. “They care about having a terrific user experience that’s easy to use and understand, and works in real time,” she said.

Jim Bruene, founder of the Netbanker blog, said the new mobile banks had a “hip” aura that appeals to young people. GoBank, for instance, offers a budgeting tool called Fortune Teller. Users can ask whether a purchase for a certain amount is a good idea, and the system will respond based on your spending — usually with a mildly sarcastic remark (“Think. When did you last see your mind?”).

Email: yourmoneyadviser@nytimes.com

DealBook: U.S. Investigates Currency Trades by Major Banks

Off the Charts: Five Years After Chaos, Shares of Many Big Banks Are Still Struggling

Two weeks later, Lehman Brothers failed and a panic began. The crisis demonstrated how interconnected the world financial system had become and how vulnerable even apparently healthy banks were when their competitors began to crumble. In the weeks that followed, most large banks around the world had to be bailed out. Their share prices plummeted.

Since then, however, some big banks have performed much better than others — a difference based to a significant extent on just how well, or badly, each bank had been run in the months and years leading up to the crisis.

The accompanying charts show the performance of 25 large banks around the world. As the crisis began, each of them ranked in the top 20 in the world in at least one of three measurements — market capitalization, book value or total assets.

In the weeks and months that followed, all but one of them lost at least half of their market value, as measured in the local currency of the bank’s primary market. The exception was a Chinese bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, whose shares lost less than a third of their value.

The charts also show the performance of the Bloomberg World Bank Index, which comprises more than 140 banks and has done better than most of the large bank stocks. This was a crisis where bigger was not necessarily better, and where some of the largest banks proved to be far from adequately capitalized, notwithstanding what their books had indicated before Lehman collapsed.

This spring, the world bank index got back to within 3 percent of its level at the end of August 2008, although it has since slipped back and is now 11 percent lower. Few of the large banks shown have done as well.

But a handful of banks turned out to be profitable long-term investments that August. Shares of both JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo in the United States are now more than 40 percent higher than they were. Shares of two of the three Chinese banks shown — Bank of China and China Construction Bank — are higher now than they were five years ago, while the third is approximately unchanged. In Britain, HSBC is up about 13 percent, a much better performance than was shown by other large European banks. It did not hurt that HSBC had a significant presence in many developing countries, most of which rode out the recession reasonably well even though some have stumbled this year.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

DealBook: Banks Fall Short of Planning for the Worst, Fed Finds

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DealBook: Banks Find S.&P. More Favorable in Bond Ratings

The House Edge: A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold

The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers’ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again.

This industrial dance has been choreographed by Goldman to exploit pricing regulations set up by an overseas commodities exchange, an investigation by The New York Times has found. The back–and-forth lengthens the storage time. And that adds many millions a year to the coffers of Goldman, which owns the warehouses and charges rent to store the metal. It also increases prices paid by manufacturers and consumers across the country.

Tyler Clay, a forklift driver who worked at the Goldman warehouses until early this year, called the process “a merry-go-round of metal.”

Only a tenth of a cent or so of an aluminum can’s purchase price can be traced back to the strategy. But multiply that amount by the 90 billion aluminum cans consumed in the United States each year — and add the tons of aluminum used in things like cars, electronics and house siding — and the efforts by Goldman and other financial players has cost American consumers more than $5 billion over the last three years, say former industry executives, analysts and consultants.

The inflated aluminum pricing is just one way that Wall Street is flexing its financial muscle and capitalizing on loosened federal regulations to sway a variety of commodities markets, according to financial records, regulatory documents and interviews with people involved in the activities.

The maneuvering in markets for oil, wheat, cotton, coffee and more have brought billions in profits to investment banks like Goldman, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, while forcing consumers to pay more every time they fill up a gas tank, flick on a light switch, open a beer or buy a cellphone. In the last year, federal authorities have accused three banks, including JPMorgan, of rigging electricity prices, and last week JPMorgan was trying to reach a settlement that could cost it $500 million.

Using special exemptions granted by the Federal Reserve Bank and relaxed regulations approved by Congress, the banks have bought huge swaths of infrastructure used to store commodities and deliver them to consumers — from pipelines and refineries in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas; to fleets of more than 100 double-hulled oil tankers at sea around the globe; to compa-nies that control operations at major ports like Oakland, Calif., and Seattle.

In the case of aluminum, Goldman bought Metro International Trade Services, one of the country’s biggest storers of the metal. More than a quarter of the supply of aluminum available on the market is kept in the company’s Detroit-area warehouses.

Before Goldman bought Metro International three years ago, warehouse customers used to wait an average of six weeks for their purchases to be located, retrieved by forklift and delivered to factories. But now that Goldman owns the company, the wait has grown more than 20-fold — to more than 16 months, according to industry records.

Longer waits might be written off as an aggravation, but they also make aluminum more expensive nearly everywhere in the country because of the arcane formula used to determine the cost of the metal on the spot market. The delays are so acute that Coca-Cola and many other manufacturers avoid buying aluminum stored here. Nonetheless, they still pay the higher price.

Goldman Sachs says it complies with all industry standards, which are set by the London Metal Exchange, and there is no suggestion that these activities violate any laws or regulations. Metro International, which declined to comment for this article, in the past has attributed the delays to logistical problems, including a shortage of trucks and forklift drivers, and the administrative complications of tracking so much metal. But interviews with several current and former Metro employees, as well as someone with direct knowledge of the company’s business plan, suggest the longer waiting times are part of the company’s strategy and help Goldman increase its profits from the warehouses.

Gretchen Morgenson contributed reporting from New York. Alain Delaquérière contributed research from New York.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 20, 2013

A previous version of this article misstated one of the financial institutions that received approval to buy up to 80 percent of the copper available on the market. It is BlackRock, not the Blackstone Group.

The House Edge: A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold

The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers’ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again.

This industrial dance has been choreographed by Goldman to exploit pricing regulations set up by an overseas commodities exchange, an investigation by The New York Times has found. The back–and-forth lengthens the storage time. And that adds many millions a year to the coffers of Goldman, which owns the warehouses and charges rent to store the metal. It also increases prices paid by manufacturers and consumers across the country.

Tyler Clay, a forklift driver who worked at the Goldman warehouses until early this year, called the process “a merry-go-round of metal.”

Only a tenth of a cent or so of an aluminum can’s purchase price can be traced back to the strategy. But multiply that amount by the 90 billion aluminum cans consumed in the United States each year — and add the tons of aluminum used in things like cars, electronics and house siding — and the efforts by Goldman and other financial players has cost American consumers more than $5 billion over the last three years, say former industry executives, analysts and consultants.

The inflated aluminum pricing is just one way that Wall Street is flexing its financial muscle and capitalizing on loosened federal regulations to sway a variety of commodities markets, according to financial records, regulatory documents and interviews with people involved in the activities.

The maneuvering in markets for oil, wheat, cotton, coffee and more have brought billions in profits to investment banks like Goldman, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, while forcing consumers to pay more every time they fill up a gas tank, flick on a light switch, open a beer or buy a cellphone. In the last year, federal authorities have accused three banks, including JPMorgan, of rigging electricity prices, and last week JPMorgan was trying to reach a settlement that could cost it $500 million.

Using special exemptions granted by the Federal Reserve Bank and relaxed regulations approved by Congress, the banks have bought huge swaths of infrastructure used to store commodities and deliver them to consumers — from pipelines and refineries in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas; to fleets of more than 100 double-hulled oil tankers at sea around the globe; to compa-nies that control operations at major ports like Oakland, Calif., and Seattle.

In the case of aluminum, Goldman bought Metro International Trade Services, one of the country’s biggest storers of the metal. More than a quarter of the supply of aluminum available on the market is kept in the company’s Detroit-area warehouses.

Before Goldman bought Metro International three years ago, warehouse customers used to wait an average of six weeks for their purchases to be located, retrieved by forklift and delivered to factories. But now that Goldman owns the company, the wait has grown more than 20-fold — to more than 16 months, according to industry records.

Longer waits might be written off as an aggravation, but they also make aluminum more expensive nearly everywhere in the country because of the arcane formula used to determine the cost of the metal on the spot market. The delays are so acute that Coca-Cola and many other manufacturers avoid buying aluminum stored here. Nonetheless, they still pay the higher price.

Goldman Sachs says it complies with all industry standards, which are set by the London Metal Exchange, and there is no suggestion that these activities violate any laws or regulations. Metro International, which declined to comment for this article, in the past has attributed the delays to logistical problems, including a shortage of trucks and forklift drivers, and the administrative complications of tracking so much metal. But interviews with several current and former Metro employees, as well as someone with direct knowledge of the company’s business plan, suggest the longer waiting times are part of the company’s strategy and help Goldman increase its profits from the warehouses.

Gretchen Morgenson contributed reporting from New York. Alain Delaquérière contributed research from New York.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 20, 2013

A previous version of this article misstated one of the financial institutions that received approval to buy up to 80 percent of the copper available on the market. It is BlackRock, not the Blackstone Group.

DealBook: Big Banks, Flooded in Profits, Fear Flurry of New Safeguards

Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTreasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew

The nation’s six largest banks reported $23 billion in profits in the second quarter, but they could end up victims of their own success.

In recent weeks, the Treasury Department, senior regulators and members of Congress have stepped up efforts intended to make the largest banks safer. The banks have warned that more regulation could undermine their ability to compete and curtail the amount of money they have to lend, but the strong earnings that came out over the last week could undercut their argument.

The most pressing concern for banks is a relatively tough new rule that regulators proposed last week that could force banks to build up more capital, the financial buffer they maintain to absorb losses. But the banks did not demonstrate any difficulty in meeting the proposed rules, and the banks now appear to have fewer allies in Washington than at any time since the financial crisis.

This was highlighted on Wednesday when the Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, effectively issued an ultimatum to Wall Street, calling for the swift adoption of rules introduced through the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, which Congress passed in 2010. Mr. Lew also said that he might be open to stricter measures if enough had not been done to remove the threat that big banks can pose to the wider economy.

“If we get to the end of this year, and cannot, with an honest, straight face, say that we’ve ended ‘too big to fail,’ we’re going to have to look at other options because the policy of Dodd-Frank and the policy of the administration is to end ‘too big to fail,’ ” Mr. Lew said.

“This is maybe the strongest admission I’ve heard from the administration that we must act further to end ‘too big to fail,’ ” Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, said in a statement. Along with Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, Senator Vitter introduced a bill earlier this year that would sharply increase capital levels at the biggest banks. In Congress on Thursday, Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, echoed Mr. Lew’s remarks. He said that if the measures already planned did not remove the risks posed by large banks, “additional steps would be appropriate.”

Still, some analysts remain skeptical that the Fed and the Treasury would really lend their weight to the sort of aggressive measures some lawmakers are contemplating. The recent comments may be an attempt to gain some political benefit from looking tough on the banks. And the remarks may be aimed at reducing any momentum that the more draconian pieces of bank legislation are gaining in the Senate.

“I wonder how much of this is a serious policy change and how much is positioning by the administration to take on a more populist mode going into 2014,” Nolan McCarty, a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, said. “It’s a little bit surprising that, three years after Dodd-Frank and five years after the financial crisis, people are concerned not enough has been done.”

Still, the stronger words from government officials could shift the balance of power away from the banking industry.

“I sense a sea change in this,” Sheila C. Bair, a former chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a primary bank regulator, said. “It’s not moving with the banks, it’s moving against them.”

The resurgence in bank profits appears to have been an important factor in persuading regulators to do more. The earnings revival did not take place just at the banks that emerged from the crisis in a position of relative strength, like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. This week, both Bank of America and Citigroup, which faltered badly after the financial crisis, reported healthy profits. The stocks of both banks have nearly doubled over the last 12 months, highlighting that investors’ faith in the behemoths is also returning.

“The regulators are doing this because they can,” Michael Mayo, a banking analyst at CLSA, said. “And they can at this time of relative stability.”

The six largest banks now dominate the industry, accounting for more than half the sector’s assets. Since the crisis, this has helped them make profit from mortgages and credit card loans, as well as Wall Street activities, like trading securities and underwriting deals. Their second-quarter profits were up 40 percent compared with those in the period a year earlier. Over the last 12 months, their combined profits were more than $70 billion. Over that period, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan’s investment bank, all big presences on Wall Street, paid compensation of $41 billion.

Regulations planned or put in place in the crisis may also have helped banks by making them more resilient to shocks. The banks have assets on their balance sheets that helped them through the recent rout in the bond market without big losses.

“You had major dislocations in currencies, commodities and interest rates and so far the industry has passed with flying colors,” Mr. Mayo said.

Still, Mr. Mayo and others question how healthy the banks are. While profits are up, and trading profits are buoyant, the pace of lending is not picking up. “Loans are down year to date. That’s the issue at the moment,” he said. “This is not the stuff robust recoveries are made of.”

Yuri Gripas/ReutersThomas Hoenig, vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, at a House panel in June.

The industry contends that, with economic growth still relatively weak, more regulation of banks would be wrong.

“You have to be cautious about what layering on additional things can do to our prospects for economic growth, job creation and credit availability, in light of this economic fragility,” said Robert S. Nichols, president of the Financial Services Forum, an industry group that represents large banks. “We have to have more robust growth to get Americans back to work.”

While banks have made big profits under stiffer rules since the crisis, some analysts warn that adding more to the overhaul could really start to hurt.

“We’ve reached a point now where we have a balance,” John R. Dearie, who oversees policy at the Financial Services Forum, said. “We have a fortress balance sheet banking system. Our concern is that we don’t overdo it.”

Still, some banking experts think the banks are bluffing when they say more regulation could hamper lending. “They can’t see that it is in their long-term interests to have a credible regulatory process,” Ms. Bair said.

European Union Proposes Plan for Failing Banks

BRUSSELS — European Union officials announced an ambitious proposal on Wednesday for a uniform way to deal with failing banks in the region that would include central decision-making and an emergency fund raised from Europe’s banks.

The plan is meant to reduce the chances that struggling governments end up taking their states deeper into debt to save their banking systems, only to face high sovereign borrowing costs that would threaten the stability of the euro currency union.

“We cannot eliminate the risk of future bank failures,” José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said in a statement. But the proposal, he said, helps ensure that “it should be banks themselves — and not European taxpayers — who should shoulder the burden of losses in the future.”

The commission, the European Union’s executive body, would assume significant new power under the system, something that makes some countries, including Germany, skeptical. The plan would require approval by a majority of European Union governments and by the European Parliament before it could go into effect.

To be sure, there would be limits to the power of the new centralized system. It could not, for example, order the closure of a bank without permission of the host government if doing so would result in that country’s taxpayers footing some of the bill. And the system would not have access to full amount of the emergency fund for more than a decade.

Even so, analysts have described the plan as one of the most significant transfers of national sovereignty to Brussels yet proposed in the name of securing the euro. The concern of Germany and other countries about giving such authority to the European Commission could bog the proposal down in months of difficult negotiations.

The proposed bank-failure program, known as the Single Resolution Mechanism, was conceived as part of a broader European banking union whose other provisions would include a single banking supervisor and an agreement to impose any losses mainly on a bank’s creditors and shareholders, rather than taxpayers.

The Single Resolution Mechanism would rely on the European Central Bank to signal when a financial institution in the euro area was facing severe difficulties.

A resolution board, supported by a staff of around 300 and made up of representatives from the central bank, the European Commission and member states of the union, would then make a recommendation on how to shut down or shrink a bank. The commission would reserve the right to make a final decision.

The board also could draw on the shared fund to help shut down or radically restructure failing lenders after creditors and shareholders have borne some losses. European Union officials want the size of the fund to be about 70 billion euros by the time it is fully financed by 2025, with money coming from levies on banks.

But the slow buildup of the fund could mean that if bank crises arise in the interim, the new system would be reliant on national funds, and possibly even public money from other euro zone countries. Tapping taxpayer money to bail out other countries’ banks is something that Germany has consented to, but only as a last resort.

On Tuesday, Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, insisted, as he has before, that changes to European Union treaties would be necessary before the Single Resolution Mechanism could go fully into force. Because treaty changes would be laborious and far from certain, Mr. Schäuble is essentially arguing for a potentially long delay to the banking effort.

But France has called for swift adoption of the plan.

During a news conference on Wednesday to present the plan, Michel Barnier, the European commissioner overseeing financial services, sought to underline the need for rules ensuring the stability of European banks, saying that the sector drove investment in a far larger proportion of the region’s economy than is the case in the United States.

“We’re not going to get diverted by lobbying,” Mr. Barnier said.

2 Central Banks Promise to Keep Rates Low

The bid to reassure investors brought the two central banks into closer alignment with the Federal Reserve, which, under Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, has become more open about its intentions.

At the same time, they appeared eager to signal that they would not follow the Fed in preparing for a gradual withdrawal of economic stimulus.

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, based in Frankurt, said at a news conference that crucial interest rates would “remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time.” Until Thursday, the bank had steadfastly refused to pin itself down on future policy.

“It’s not six months,” Mr. Draghi said. “It’s not 12 months. It’s an extended period of time.”

Mr. Draghi also said that the central bank was signaling a “downward bias” in interest rate policy, meaning further cuts were possible or even likely.

Only hours earlier, Mark J. Carney, who became governor of the Bank of England on Monday, made a similar break with tradition. The British central bank said in a statement that any expectations that interest rates would rise soon from their current record low level were misguided.

With their promises of easy money stretching toward the horizon, the central bankers offered more certainty to investors at a time when tensions in Europe are rising again. So-called forward guidance is considered one of the tools available to central banks, but it was one the European Central Bank and the Bank of England had not used before.

European markets reacted positively to the announcements, with the FTSE 100 in London closing 3.1 percent higher and the Euro Stoxx 50, a benchmark of euro zone blue chips, climbing 3 percent. (Markets in the United States were closed for the Fourth of July holiday.) The euro fell sharply, a development that was probably not unwelcome at the European Central Bank, since a cheaper euro makes European products less expensive in foreign markets, feeding exports. The British pound also fell.

Mr. Draghi said it was a coincidence that his central bank and Bank of England introduced forward guidance on the same day. Both left their main interest rates at 0.5 percent and did not announce any other policy moves. It was a day for talk rather than action.

“Mr. Draghi did what he does best today: intervene verbally to great effect,” Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London, said in a note.

Mr. Draghi’s statement on Thursday came almost a year after he defused the euro zone debt crisis with a promise to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the currency union.

But after months of relative calm, Europe has been rattled in recent days by a political crisis in Portugal, which has raised questions about whether the region’s governments will be able to withstand popular discontent with their policies of cutting budgets to bring public debt under control. Investors have responded by pushing up the risk premium they demand on bonds issued by Italy, Spain and other troubled euro zone countries. Market rates on Italian and Spanish bonds retreated on Thursday after Mr. Draghi’s comments.

The commitment to keep rates low helps amplify the effect of rates that are already nearly rock bottom, by reassuring investors that they can count on easy money for the foreseeable future.

But some analysts saw Mr. Draghi’s statement as a bluff — a tacit admission that the central bank has run out of other ways to stimulate the euro zone economy.

“A change of a few words in the way he phrases the E.C.B.’s policy stance is an insufficient policy response to alter the — very troubled — course of the euroland economy,” Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y., said in an e-mail.

Jack Ewing reported from Frankfurt, and Julia Werdigier from London.

DealBook: Europe Accuses 13 Banks of Blocking Entrants to Default Swaps Market

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DealBook: British Government Takes Step in Selling Stakes of Bailed-Out Banks

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DealBook: Singapore Censures 20 Banks Over Rates

Roslan Rahman/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHotel guests look over Singapore’s financial district.

LONDON – Twenty of the world’s largest banks were censured by Singapore authorities on Friday over the attempted manipulation of local benchmark interest rates that is part of a larger rate-rigging scandal being investigated by global regulators.

The financial institutions, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, were found to have insufficient risk management and internal controls, which allowed some of their traders to try to alter rates including the Singapore interbank offered rate, or Sibor.

The latest revelations follow a series of multimillion-dollar fines against UBS, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland for the manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, which underpins trillions of dollars of mortgages, business loans and other global financial products.

As part of its investigation, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said 133 traders at firms like Credit Suisse, Citigroup and ING tried to influence the local benchmark rate for their own financial gain over a five-year period starting in 2007.

Around three-quarters of the implicated traders have left the banks involved, while the other bankers face internal disciplinary procedures, according to a statement from the Singaporean financial regulator.

None of the 20 global banks were fined, but the financial institutions must hold a combined $9.7 billion in extra reserves with Monetary Authority of Singapore at zero percent interest for one year while they carry out internal changes.

UBS, ING and R.B.S. must each hold up to an additional $960 million with local authorities, while Bank of America will be forced to keep an extra $640 million with the regulator in Singapore. The amount of capital was dependent on the severity of the attempted manipulation.

Like other global regulators, the Singapore authorities also said they planned to make it a criminal offense to manipulate benchmark rates. Under current local legislation, the attempted manipulation does not constitute a criminal offense.

As the rate-rigging investigations enter their fifth year, regulators continue to look into allegations that traders at some of the world’s largest banks altered benchmark rates for financial gain.

While the Libor inquiries have centered initially on European banks, a number of American financial institutions also remain in the sights of regulators at the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission and at the Financial Conduct Authority of Britain.

Bucks Blog: Banks Rake In Overdraft Fees, Report Finds

Overdraft penalties represent well over half of banks’ fees from consumer checking accounts, a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finds.

The report, based in part on confidential data provided by some of the nation’s larger banks, estimated that 61 percent of bank fees from consumer accounts were for overdrafts and insufficient funds, penalties charged when customers spent more than their accounts had available. Based on that finding, the bureau said it estimated conservatively that the banking industry earned $12.6 billion in such fees from consumers in 2011.

The report represents preliminary findings of a bureau inquiry into bank overdraft practices announced early last year. The bureau is not making any policy recommendations yet, but says it will conduct further reviews of account-level data.

The report found that overdraft protection can be very expensive for consumers and varies widely from bank to bank. Overdraft protection is a service in which the bank pays the amount in question, even though the account lacks the necessary funds, but then charges the customer a fee for doing so. The average customer overdrawing an account paid $225 in charges per year, the study found. And more than a quarter (27 percent) of checking accounts paid at least one overdraft charge in 2011.

The bureau did not identify the banks included in the report or even specify how many were included in the analysis, which also incorporated comments submitted by the public, consumer advocates and industry groups. The bureau said, however, that the banks in the study represented more than half of all deposit accounts. The bureau has supervisory authority over banks with more than $10 billion in assets, or more than 100 institutions.

Since the middle of 2010, the Federal Reserve has barred banks from charging overdraft fees for A.T.M. withdrawals or most debit card transactions unless a customer actively  chooses the service. The report found that customers who accept the coverage were more likely to end up paying higher fees and were more likely to end up having their account involuntarily closed than those who did not.

“What is marketed as overdraft protection can, in some instances, put consumers at greater risk of harm,” said Richard Cordray, the bureau’s director, in prepared remarks.

Opt-in rates vary widely among banks, suggesting that bank marketing of the service plays a role. At some banks in 2011, more than 40 percent of new customers opted in, while fewer than 10 percent did so at other banks.

Mr. Cordray said the findings did not indicate that banks should not charge overdraft fees. “Nonetheless,” he said, “our findings raise concerns about the number of consumers who are incurring heavy overdraft fees or account closures, and the wide variations across institutions indicate that certain practices and procedures merit further analysis.”

Have you paid overdraft fees? Do you think new rules are necessary to regulate banks’ use of them?

Central Banks Act With a New Boldness

Central bankers, anywhere in the world, are a cautious lot. They prefer slow and steady over the dramatic gesture. And they rarely go public with criticisms of other central banks.

But the economic stagnation of the major developed nations has driven central banks in the United States, Japan, Britain and the European Union to take increasingly aggressive action. Because governments are not taking steps to revive economies, like increasing spending or cutting taxes, the traditional concern of central bankers that economic growth will cause too much inflation has been supplanted by the fear that growth is not fast enough to prevent deflation, or falling prices.

The Fed has announced plans to keep borrowing costs at historic lows until unemployment declines. The staid Bank of England has bought more than a half-trillion dollars’ worth of bonds to ignite British business activity.

Last month, Haruhiko Kuroda, the new chairman of the Bank of Japan, steered the central bank toward an audacious new policy of reinflating the Japanese economy by doubling the money supply. It is considered the boldest step so far by a central bank.

So far, the results of these activist central banks have fallen short of expectations. “I’m not sure why we’re not getting more response,” said Donald L. Kohn, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman who is now at the Brookings Institution. “Maybe we’ve made some progress in identifying some of the causes, but it’s not fully satisfying why we have negative real interest rates everywhere in the industrial world and so little growth.”

Certainly investors around the world watch for any sign that the central bankers are backing away from their bold steps. , Stock markets wobbled in Japan and elsewhere last week on fears that the Federal Reserve might start pulling back on its stimulus sooner than expected and that Japan’s effort might fall short of its goal of reviving the economy. A few central bankers’ reassurances seemed to calm the markets.

The lackluster results have provided cover for the European Central Bank, which has remained the most cautious of the major central banks. It is sticking to the more traditional formula of cutting interest rates — a string Japan ineffectually pushed for more than a decade — in the hopes that it will encourage banks to lend more money to businesses.

The Federal Reserve in the United States has been significantly more aggressive since December 2008, when the Fed reduced its benchmark short-term interest rate nearly to zero. Ever since, it has pursued a pair of experiments aimed at dragging other interest rates closer to zero, too.

The Fed has tried to bolster confidence that rates will stay low by talking more about the future. In December, it said it intended to keep short-term rates near zero at least as long as the unemployment rate remained above 6.5 percent, the first time it had tied policy to a specific target. That, and buying almost $3 trillion in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities, has helped to cut borrowing costs for businesses and consumers.

While the share of Americans with jobs has barely budged and other economic indicators remain weak at best, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has doubled since the Fed announced its first round of bond purchases in November 2008. Interest rates on mortgages and car loans are near the lowest levels on record. Average yields on junk bonds fell below 5 percent for the first time. Corporations with strong credit ratings, like Apple, also are borrowing vast sums at little cost.

Still, for all the daring, some critics argue that the Fed is not trying hard enough. “It’s as if we went to the biggest fire we’ve ever seen and we poured more water on it than we’ve ever poured, and the fire isn’t completely out,” said Joseph E. Gagnon, a former Fed economist now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Well, we should try more water.”

Officials in Britain, too, are debating its central bank’s ability to do more. Last month, the departing governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, gave a speech at the International Monetary Fund in which he said — a bit acidly — that there was a limit to what monetary policy could do to spur recovery in a country like Britain, where a small number of stingy banks dominate the economy and the government is tightening its spending.

Like other central banks around the world, the Bank of England, by far the oldest of them all, has done its part to ward off a depression. It has bought, to date, the equivalent of $569 billion worth of government bonds — a bold use of the printing press for an institution known for its hidebound ways.

This shock treatment, the professorial Mr. King pointed out, equaled 20 percent of the British economy, outpacing the central bank interventions of the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve.

And what does Mr. King have to show for his monetary exertions — beyond record stock market highs and bottom-scraping yields for British corporate bonds? An anemic recovery. Growth this year is expected to be 0.5 percent, according to the I.M.F., while Japan’s gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 3.5 percent in the first quarter and the United States’ is expected to grow a little more than 2 percent.

European and Japanese Central Banks Pledge Support, Boosting Shares and the Dollar

ECB Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen said on Monday the policy would stay as long as necessary. On Tuesday, BOJ board member Ryuzo Miyao said it was vital to keep long- and short-term interest rates stable.

Yields on U.S. Treasuries surged to their highest levels in over a year as prices skidded. A strong consumer confidence report underscored the notion that the Federal Reserve could soon trim its bond-buying program.

"The vicious selling once again materialized after the much-stronger-than-expected consumer confidence report," said Cantor, Fitzgerald Treasury strategist Justin Lederer.

Yields have jumped since Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday that the U.S. central bank may decide to decrease its bond purchases gradually in the next few policy meetings if data shows the economy is gaining steam.

"The path of least resistance is higher yields," said Sean Simko, portfolio manager at SEI Investments.

Benchmark 10-year notes fell more than a point to 96-7/32 while their yields, which move inversely to price, soared to 2.17 percent from 2.01 percent on Friday. Ten-year yields have surged from 1.61 percent at the beginning of May as optimism about the economy has grown.

Thirty-year bonds fell more than two points in price while their yields rose to 3.33 percent, the highest level since March, and up from 3.18 percent on Friday.

Both the 10-year notes and 30-year bonds are on track for their worst monthly loss since December 2009.

U.S. STOCKS, DOLLAR RECOVER

U.S. stocks recovered from recent weakness, propelling the Dow to finish at yet another record closing high.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 106.29 points, or 0.69 percent, to end at a record 15,409.39. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 10.46 points, or 0.63 percent, to 1,660.06. The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 29.74 points, or 0.86 percent, to close at 3,488.89.

The dollar rebounded against the euro and yen after data on U.S. consumer confidence and home prices suggested the world's largest economy was on a steady road to recovery.

The Fed's stimulus program is viewed as negative for the greenback because it floods the market with dollars.

A measure of U.S. consumer confidence rose in May to its highest level in more than five years. That private-sector report followed data showing single-family home prices rose in March, with their best annual gain in nearly seven years.

Higher Treasury yields have also boosted the appeal of dollar-denominated investments.

DOLLAR RISES AGAINST YEN AND EURO

The U.S. dollar rallied against the euro and yen as the stronger-than-expected U.S. economic data underscored views the Fed could reduce its bond purchases in coming months.

Against the yen, which tumbled broadly, the dollar rose 1.2 percent to 102.09 yen, rebounding from a two-week low of 100.68 set on Friday. The dollar rose to a 4-1/2-year high of 103.73 yen last week.

The euro rose 0.6 percent to 131.24 yen, pulling away from Thursday's trough of 129.94 yen.

The safe-haven Swiss franc fell, down 1.1 percent against the dollar at 0.9740 franc and down 0.6 percent against the euro at 1.2533 francs.

Currencies such as the yen and the Swiss franc, which rose sharply last week after a recent sell-off in stock markets, typically gain in times of financial uncertainty.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback versus a basket of currencies, rose 0.6 percent to 84.172.

Gold fell 1 percent as the stock market rally diminished bullion's safe-haven appeal. Strong buying of physical bullion, however, briefly reversed gold's fall.

Spot gold was down 1 percent to $1,380.81 an ounce by 3:25 p.m. EDT (8:25 p.m. British time), after trading as low as $1,373.14.

U.S. Comex gold futures for June delivery settled down $7.70 at $1,378.90 an ounce.

Among other precious metals, silver was down 1.7 percent to $22.25 an ounce. Platinum rose 0.6 percent to $1,455.74 an ounce, while palladium gained 2.1 percent to $751.22 an ounce.

Brent crude oil rose on increased Middle East risk and as stocks rallied. Brent crude oil for July rose $1.61 to $104.23 per barrel while U.S. crude rose $0.95 to $95.10 per barrel.

The promise of monetary support from the European and Japanese central banks was reinforced as French, German and Italian governments urged action to tackle youth unemployment. [ID:nL5N0E911M] Youth unemployment in countries like Greece and Spain has risen to 60 percent. [ID:nL3N0DY1IW]

In Europe, the broad FTSE Eurofirst 300 index closed up 1.3 percent at 1,246.44, while MSCI's world equity index rose 0.5 percent, reversing four days of losses.

Japan's Nikkei stock index, which last week reached a 5-1/2-year high before dropping 7.3 percent on Thursday, steadied on Tuesday, ending 1.2 percent higher.

(Additional reporting by Karen Brettell, Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss, Ryan Vlastelica and Frank Tang; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Dan Grebler)

British Study Raises Warning on Scottish Banks

LONDON — An independent Scotland could find its banks too big to rescue in the event of another crisis, according to a British government report that compares the Scottish financial sector to those of debt-laden Iceland and Cyprus.

The document, to be published Monday, is the latest of three studies by the British government meant to sway opinion in Scotland ahead of next year’s planned referendum there on independence.

Last month the British government suggested that an independent Scotland would not be able to keep the pound sterling and would have to either adopt its own currency or embrace the euro.

The new study, a summary of which was made available ahead of publication, highlights the size of Scotland’s banking sector — much of which had to be rescued by British taxpayers after the financial crash — relative to the rest of the Scottish economy. The sector stands at 1,254 percent of Scotland’s gross domestic product, compared with banking assets in Britain worth 492 percent of G.D.P., the Treasury document says.

“By way of comparison, before the crisis that hit Cyprus in March 2013, its banks had amassed assets equivalent to around 700 percent of its G.D.P. — a major contributor to the cause and impact of the financial crisis in Cyprus and the ability of the Cypriot authorities to prevent the systemic effects when it hit,” the study says.

The document adds that by the end of 2007 Icelandic banks had amassed consolidated assets equivalent to 880 percent of Icelandic G.D.P.

It cites the verdict of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which said that “the banks grew to be too big for the Iceland government to rescue.

“Banking in these circumstances became very dangerous when the global financial crisis deepened,” it said.

The study says that “a serious banking crisis in an independent Scotland could pose a significant risk to Scottish taxpayers,” with the potential economic fallout amounting to about 65,000 pounds ($98,600) per capita.

The paper concludes that Scottish banks could either have to accept higher risks and costs associated with volatility or restructure and diversify their assets.

John Swinney, finance secretary of the Scottish government, which supports independence, dismissed that document as “a discredited, feeble attempt to undermine confidence in Scotland’s ability to be a successful independent country” adding that “it will not work.”

Mr. Swinney said that he had viewed a leaked draft of the paper and that much of it “seems to be based on a flawed, outdated view of the world which takes no account of the substantial banking reforms which have been ongoing across Europe since 2008.”

The Treasury’s study counted Scottish banks as all those registered in Scotland, including the Royal Bank of Scotland — but excluding NatWest, which is part of the group but is registered in London, and excluding assets of RBS’s foreign subsidiaries.

Bank of Scotland, which is part of the Lloyds Banking Group, is included as a Scottish institution as it is registered in Scotland.

Untangling Scotland’s banks from the broader British financial sector would be a highly complex task were Scots to vote for independence, because both RBS and Lloyds Banking Group were bailed out by British taxpayers after the financial crash.

The British government owns 80 percent of RBS and 40 percent of Lloyds, which are both run from London. That would almost inevitably require some changes in ownership in the event of independence.

Nevertheless the Treasury’s study argues that the total support provided to RBS in 2008 would have been the equivalent of 211 percent of Scotland’s G.D.P. By contrast the total British interventions across the whole banking sector were 76 percent of the country’s G.D.P.

The document also adds that any attempt at shared regulatory arrangements between an independent Scotland and the continuing United Kingdom would be “significantly more complex than those that currently exist” and would be likely to increase the costs for firms of complying with this regulation.

In House, Maxine Waters Takes New Tack on Banks

OVER her 22 years in Congress, Maxine Waters has likened bank executives to “gangsters,” snarkily addressed them as “captains of the universe” and threatened to tax their companies “out of business.”

The Democrat from Los Angeles, in other words, is not known for showing love to the financial industry.

So in March, when she visited a group of community bankers in a conservative corner of her district, she seemed ready for a chilly reception. “Let’s see what these guys have to say for themselves,” Ms. Waters said with a smirk as she emerged from her S.U.V.

Escorted to a private conference room at Malaga Bank, Ms. Waters grabbed a seat at the head of the table. A dozen or so bankers shuffled in, each armed with a tale of woe about the Dodd-Frank banking overhaul passed by Congress in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

The law is too tough, they groaned. Its capital requirements are too steep. One banker’s voice quivered as she described a regulatory examination of her bank. Another griped about regulators overstepping their bounds: “They can tell you how many pens and pencils we have in our drawers!”

In the past, such grumbling might have set off Ms. Waters’s famous hair-trigger temper. But with each complaint, she leaned in for more, nodding appreciatively. “We’ve heard they chase down silly stuff,” Ms. Waters said, referring to regulators and shaking her head in disapproval. “I’m willing to take a hit” to help lower the capital requirements, she said. She even suggested the bankers hire new lobbyists to better represent them. “Influence us,” Ms. Waters said softly, reminding them of her new role as the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. “Help us understand the intricacies of your business.”

This was not “kerosene Maxine,” the nickname Ms. Waters has earned for her tendency to hurl flammable remarks. (Exhibit A: She once screamed onstage in Los Angeles that “The Tea Party can go straight to hell, and I intend to help them get there.”) Rather, she was all empathy, vowing to use her new sway in Washington to protect the bankers’ interests. “You have a lot of good will right now,” she said. As for Dodd-Frank, Ms. Waters said she stood ready to defend the law, but also instructed the bankers to compile a “laundry list” of their concerns. “I don’t want you to look at this as being impossible to tweak,” she said.

After an hour of swiveling nervously in their chairs, the bankers broke into grins. One executive slapped Ms. Waters a high-five. Another embraced her.

“You’ve softened,” Paul C. Hudson, the chairman of Broadway Federal Bank, teased Ms. Waters. “I love the new Maxine.”

The New Maxine was born in part from Ms. Waters’s ascension, in January, on the House Financial Services Committee. Exonerated in September at the end of a three-year ethics investigation, she replaced Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, for whom the banking overhaul bill was named.

The influential Financial Services Committee oversees community banks and Wall Street alike. And Ms. Waters has softened somewhat, not just toward local bankers in her district who might expect her ear, but also toward the Wall Street C.E.O.’s she formerly reviled.

In recent months, she dined with John Stumpf, the C.E.O. of Wells Fargo, and met Wall Street chief executives like Michael L. Corbat of Citigroup and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase. It’s what she called “an open-door policy.” Most notably, given her penchant for railing against Wall Street abuses, she recently pushed regulators to delay certain rule changes on high-stakes derivatives trading. The regulators ultimately agreed.

The move may seem at odds with her track record as a rabble-rouser and consumer activist. In her long committee tenure, Ms. Waters positioned herself to the left of fellow Democrats, making her name on issues like affordable housing and foreclosure prevention. Ms. Waters acknowledged that “some of my friends will not agree” with all of her recent decisions. But after two decades in Congress, she says she has learned to pick her battles.

One battle emerged in recent days. In the face of intense lobbying pressure, Ms. Waters voted on Tuesday to oppose several House bills that would water down Dodd-Frank, a move that one consumer advocate called “gutsy.”