The Cayman Islands, the worst culprit, has a government accountable to Britain that enforces banking secrecy, levies zero company tax and is consequently home to the biggest money-laundering and tax-evading operation this side of Dubai.
He also wants a separate protocol to protect the City of London from excessive EU regulation, including an agreement to let Britain enforce bank capital requirements that are higher than the proposed European maximum.
But nobody with any sense would believe the published figures, which show that those bad loans amounted to only 1% of the total (only one-third of the figure for Hong Kong's much fitter banks).Where accounting rules are weak, or weakly enforced, banks may massage numbers so that they appear to meet required standards.
All loans already approved, for example, are excluded.Market discipline is likely to be a far better way of enforcing sensible banking than any number of central-bank guidelines.
There are, they point out, two sides to collateral: enforcing the bank's right to repossess an asset is as important as recognising the owner's right to possess it.
By enforcing existing bank regulatory laws and FASB principles, end the dangerous Structured Investment Vehicles.
In a meeting with two senior American officials who traveled to Beijing two weeks ago to try to persuade China to enforce new banking restrictions on North Korea, Chinese banking leaders showed little sign of compliance, said Marcus Noland, an expert on North Korea at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
In addition to demands from larger customers, government regulations, like those meant to enforce stricter banking laws and health care privacy laws, are adding to the push for enhanced security.
Since the financial crisis of 2008 there have been growing calls for financial reform, including calls to limit bankers' bonus culture, enforce tougher banking regulations and decrease risk-taking in the financial sector.
But the American Bankers Association has already told officials there that different banking regulators have continued to enforce on banks "a diversity of expectations" about overdraft practices, said Richard Riese, senior vice president for regulatory compliance at the bankers association.
