Another Black Friday has come and gone (and hey, welcome to Cyber Monday and a big financial week ahead), but the truth is that it’s not quite what it used to be—both for brick-and-mortar retailers and for those using it to gauge the health of the US economy – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
The Fed’s pushing back its controversial new capital reserve requirement calculation [on supplementary leverage ratio] for another year—a delay proposed in July and officially given the nod last week – Law360
Before the break, we broached the subject of the diverging paths of the ECB and the Fed. Here’s more detail on what that will probably look like—including the pretty incredible negative deposit rates seen across the Europe meant to help spur inflation – WSJ
Big-time interest-rate swap trading lawsuit dropped right before the holiday, with 12 of the biggest US and UK investment banks accused of colluding to prevent buy-side investors from trading interest swaps on exchanges – Bloomberg and Law360
More on Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, including a look at the Government Development Bank—a 40’s-era institution founded to “foster development, primarily by financing electricity” that’s become an unprecedented mix of the Treasury, the NY Fed, and a development bank for the US Territory—at the heart of both incurring and managing the island’s massive debt – NYTimes
Forget IPOs—the Journal says many US companies are hoping to ride the M&A wave and just get acquired – WSJ
Citi’s facing a new RMBS suit over accusations by PIMCO and others that it ignored “widespread problems with toxic residential mortgage-backed securities” while acting as trustee—allegedly more concerned with “jeopardizing relationships with loan servicers” like WaMu, Lehman, and Wells Fargo than it was with protecting trusts and certificate holders – Law360
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has slapped Barclay’s with a $109 million fine for “cutting corners in vetting wealthy customers” in order to help push forward a $1.9 billion pound transaction in 2011-12 – NYTimes
Checking in with Nokia—founded as a rubber bootmaker 150 years ago, which was news to me—as it nears the 2016 completion of its $16.6 billion takeover of Alcatel-Lucent, all part of a re-makeover effort focused on mobile networking hardware – NYTimes
4 weeks or so left in 2015. So when all’s said and done, is it going to be 2011 redux? Or 1937? – WSJ
Republican opponents of the CFPB are citing a recent study of the agency’s 2013 settlement over discriminatory auto lending practices as cause to scuttle the entire bureau – NYTimes
When internal cross-selling threatens to cross the line, the OCC and San Francisco Fed takes note (if you’re Wells Fargo, that is) – WSJ
Forget Coke vs. Pepsi. These Utah-based soda wars are an entirely new ballgame. And a dirty one at that – NYTimes
