There were manifest conflicts of interest, originators and brokers had limited interest in ensuring continued monitoring of products and credit ratings were inflated, conveying a false sense of security. A euphoric bubble thus developed, based, in Alan Greenspan’s words, on “the complexity of the interactions of asset markets and the economy”, and which concealed a massive global under-pricing of risk. Market participants seem to have been aware of the growing risks but were unwilling to retrench. You might recall Citibank’s Chuck Prince’s memorable words during the onset of the crisis that “as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing”. Market players failed to appreciate the speed at which demand could evaporate and risk aversion could increase. This soon resulted in record-high risk premia, seized-up interbank markets, acute liquidity and credit shortages, bank failures and a widespread loss of confidence. Meanwhile the high degree of financial market integration had created the premise for a simultaneous build-up of systemic risk. Financial institutions did not internalise the costs arising from the too-big-to-fail and too-interconnected syndrome. Central banks had been monitoring these trends, but it turned out that the regulatory tools were not designed to address systemic risk. Neither was the strength of the feedback loop between the financial  BIS Review 67/2010  1  system and the economy fully anticipated. Unfortunately, these all proved to be critical weaknesses.

In response to the unfolding crisis, Governments and central banks adopted aggressive measures, including fiscal stimulus packages, bank recapitalisations and the provision of government guarantees, and injections of huge amounts of liquidity. It was also important to critically review the legislative and regulatory framework in order to pre-empt the recurrence of, or at least better manage, similar situations. The de Larosière Report, mandated by the European Commission (EC) and published in February 2009, set the scenario for reforms at a European level. Similar work was undertaken at the global level by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). This work has clearly showed that the Basel II capital requirements did not ensure an adequate buffer to sustain an institution on a going concern basis. Confidence in regulatory capital waned and the market started to assess bank robustness using other tools. Liquidity measurement, for example, had been largely excluded from Basel II. Some internal risk models were based on short-term statistical horizons that failed to capture periods of stress. The potential of the regime to exert a strong pro-cyclical bias also became manifest. In its efforts to address identified weaknesses, the BCBS issued two consultation documents in December 2009, one on “Strengthening the resilience of the banking sector” and another on an “International framework for liquidity risk measurement, standards and monitoring”. Concurrently, the EC is proposing amendments to the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD) in order to align it with the recommendations of the BCBS.