Liquidity risk: Ebb tide

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s new guidelines for how banks should safeguard access to funding look smart, if belated. The group of international regulators wants to head off a repeat of the disaster that brought down Northern Rock and Bear Stearns, and threatened others. But banks may be reluctant to heed its warnings. The belief that nothing could impinge on their access to funds drove a lot of their boom-time profits. The proposals contain the usual regulatory exhortations for ...