4  BIS Review 114/2006  cost of capital for the GSEs that is nearly comparable to that of the federal government. It should be no surprise, then, that the GSE portfolios have grown dramatically since the early 1990s.
The Volcker rule and the Barnier proposal prohibit banking groups from engaging in certain types of business (such as proprietary trading), while the French, German and British laws only require that they be done by separate units within the group. 3  For the United States, see J. Peek and E.S.