The rules governing banks' loan loss provisioning and reserves require a trade-off between the goals of bank regulators, who emphasize safety and soundness, and the goals of accounting standard setters, who emphasize the transparency of financial statements. A strengthening of accounting...

In recent years, large positive and negative balances have arisen in TARGET2, the interbank settlement and payments system of the Eurozone. These balances show that the Deutsche Bundesbank, the central bank of Germany, has become a large net creditor to the European Central Bank (ECB)....