Abstract
In June 2010, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) warned that the new Basel III capital and liquidity standards would be catastrophic for the global economy. After examining the impact of implementation over a five-year horizon, the IIF concluded that banks would need to increase capital levels dramatically and that this would drive lending rates up, loan volumes down and result in an annual 0.6-percentage-point hit to GDP growth in the United States, the euro area and Japan…