MNI BRIEF: Powell Still Looking At Easing Leverage Ratio

The Federal Reserve continues to look at ways to ease the leverage ratio without weakening capital requirements overall, Chair Jay Powell said Tuesday.

"We will return to that. We want risk-based capital to be binding, not the leverage ratio," he said during Congressional testimony. SLR reform has stalled out since early last year, despite large banks warning that a binding leverage ratio hurts money market liquidity.

"We do want to make adjustments, we want them to be done in ways that don't reduce the overall binding-ness of the capital requirements on the largest firms, that's an important principle. But within that we do think there are some things we are able to do on the SLR that honor that first principle."