Professor William Black:

No. The Basel process, with Basel II, was opened up to industry but not to public interests or consumers. This is where bankers and banks are at their absolute greatest comparative advantage. It is ultra sophisticated, supposedly, econometric analysis modelling and normal human beings cannot fight against this. We have seen what Basel II produced, which was not ultra-sophisticated results but preposterous results. Under US law, you would have been considered critically under-capitalised under the Basel II standard and be shut down immediately. Under Basel II you would have had three times your requirement. That is how ridiculous the Basel II process became. As I said, the only thing that saved us in the United States, even partially, was resistance by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to the economists at the Federal Reserve who were the principal proponents of this insanely low marginal capital requirement.