I think the weekly caps are to solve a problem that Blizzard currently feels exists within the game. Right now a lot of people feel that they absolutely MUST run a daily heroic on every toon they play to remain competitive. Then they MUST run VoA 10 and 25, ICC 10 and 25 to get every frost emblem they can. By putting a weekly cap on these things it means that you can work out how many points you'll get from doing what you do anyway and then only do the more "chore-like" tasks (such as doing daily heroic grinding) enough to get you up to cap.

Say, my guild runs 25 man ICC and we're consistently 10/12 - possibly 11/12 on a good day. Also, I never miss a VoA in the hope that I'll get my T10.2. Maybe that amount of activity, plus the weekly raid quest, is enough to get me valor capped for the week on that toon - so I don't have to run daily heroics. However, on my alt that I'm gearing up I'm not quite geared for 25man ICC but I might get into a 10man PuG that kills the first 6 bosses and makes less points on thsoe 6 because it's a 10man instead of a 25. I can usually blag my way into a VoA 10 and and get the weekly done if it's lower tier content. So on this toon I may have to run 4 or 5 heroics during the week to get capped. Finally on my third alt I'm just freshly 80 and people laugh at my GS if I try to PuG anything more than Naxx. I would have to run daily heroics every day and might not reach valor cap, but I'll be farming hero points to get the lower tier of gear anyway.

Currently, I'd feel like I was missing out unless I run 7 days of Daily heroics on all 3 of these characters (which is 21 dungeons). Now, with this new system I might only run 7 on my fresh 80, 5 on my gearing-up alt and none at all on my raiding main - so 12 dungeon runs during the week. Suddenly I now have time to do a bit of farming, some daily quests, a bit of PvP (all the other stuff that Blizzard really wants us to try out in the game) or, you know, Go Outside and Have a Life.

@Literal

Spot on Sir, Spot on.

I ask about the reasoning behind the OWNERSHIP caps, and I get a three-starred standing-O explanation of the logic behind the WEEKLY caps.

Gotta love the Internet sometimes.

Ownership caps are the to limit point hoarding before the new content release. It becomes possible to buy things for lower-tier points that you could buy for higher-tier points only before the new content release. So it may be profitable to save as many lower-tier points as you can until then. Ownership caps will limit the ability to do that.