The 15:1 leverage rule on investment banks was written in a way so as to be unenforceable. The change to 40:1 was part of a (recent) compromise that also made it enforceable. Since the previous standard in practice did not exist, the rules became stricter, not looser.

ACTUAL banks, the kind that take deposits and are regulated by the FDIC, have always been under strict capital adequacy rules and regulations, and can be taken over by the FDIC if they let their capital ratios fall below a certain threshold (this is the regime that the big investment banks have been put under by becoming bank holding companies or being bought by them).

It irks me when people so self-righteously blame "deregulation" for the crisis when they so obviously don't have a shred of knowledge about what they are talking about.

> The 15:1 leverage rule on investment banks was written in a way so as to be unenforceable.

Citation please. And excuse me, but I do believe that even knowing about the 15:1 to 40:1 change, does qualify as a shred of knowledge.

It was in the last article that someone posted here about that issue. To my knowledge, Investment Banks were never regulated as to their capital ratios (I should know, I used to work at one and spend dozens of hours a week reading balance sheets). The claim that they were ever so regulated surprised me, and especially the claim that the SEC did such regulation which is normally outside of its scope. Sure enough the (sensationalist) article had the salient details buried somewhere down in it. I believe that the rules applied to the banking subsidiary and not at the consolidated entity level, making them easy to avoid with accounting tricks and essentially worthless.

It's not my responsibility to chase down the sources of other people's irrelevant points.