Basel gives banks the whip hand

They started by trying to update the crude minimum capital requirements for international banking established in 1988. But the Basel Committee have been seduced by a new idea: let banks regulate themselves and get the market to police the banking system. Can we rely on the models banks use to calculate their capital? And do the regulators really understand what the banks are up to?

It has been a long and exhausting labour of love. Between 200 and 300 bank regulators from the wealthy G10 countries have flown many thousands of miles and held countless hours of meetings. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which meets under the auspices of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), has spent the best part of two years rewriting the rules on bank capital.

The committee, chaired by New York Federal Reserve president Bill McDonough, steered the discussions.

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