Andrew Haldane, executive director of financial stability at the Bank of England and member Financial Policy Committee, delivered a speech calling for the temporary lowering of capital requirements to boost lending.

Haldane looks at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s handling of the US economy in general and bank regulation during the Depression in particular and finds that the situation in the US in 1938 was “eerily reminiscent of today.”  He said banks were unwilling to lend and Roosevelt’s response was to loosen regulatory requirements, arguing that it’s a model for today.

Read it here