Banks Fight Fed on NFL’s Airwaves as Basel III Lobbying Heats Up

Like nearly 20 million other Americans last Sunday, Aaron Klein was watching the Buffalo Bills go down against the Cincinnati Bengals. He was only half listening during a commercial break, checking his fantasy football scores, when an ominous voice broke from the usual pitches for beer or pickup trucks: “But now the Federal Reserve wants to impose unnecessary capital rules.”

“I’ve been watching football all my life and have been working on banking issues all of my career,” said Klein, a former US Treasury official who follows financial regulations at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. ...