Financials, which have been pressured by the euro-zone sovereign debt crisis, were among the biggest gainers, with the S&P financial index .GSPF up 1.2 percent.
Shares of Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) rose 2.6 percent to $10.79, while JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) was up 1.1 percent at $39.94.
On Saturday, global banking regulators in Basel agreed that the biggest banks globally will need to boost their ratios of common equity to risk-weighted assets by up to 2.5 percentage points, less than the 3 percentage points some investors had feared.
Gee it must be nice to regulate yourself, free from the obtrusive meddling of elected officials. Now that international capital has issued its edict, all the banks in the system, which are just about all the banks in the world, now must comply whether they, their governments, or their customers, like it or not. They rule, and we obey. These folks we vote for and put in office, they are of no consequence. They are mere spectacle, the important decisions are made by the international gang-banker plutocracy from their lair in Europe. This decision means that banks must keep slightly more real assets in reserve in proportion to "risk-weighted" holdings (like the CDOs and CDSs which brought about the collapse of 2008). In other words, because of the Lords' ruling, banks will not be required to make the kind of changes that would prevent a recurrence of '08. To put it bluntly, they have just said that they are unwilling to curtail trade in these derivatives because they are lucrative for them, and they don't give a damn what consequences they might occasion for us. So structural adjustments and austerity measures for us, and none for them.
As I often do, I will once again yield the floor to the late, great comic, George Carlin:
They own you!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/27/us-markets-stocks-idUSTRE75512M20110627?feedType=nl&feedName=usbusinessearly
