Last Friday, September 14, 2012, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published a new set of “Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision.” This publication culminates the Committee’s review of the previous set of principles, issued in 2006, in the light of the financial crisis. The formal purpose of the Core Principles is to provide a set of standards by which the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank review the effectiveness of a country’s banking supervision regime as part of the agencies’ Financial Sector Assessment Program. Of course, the Core Principles provide benchmarks by which regulators may judge their own supervisory efforts.

U.S. banking organizations will not be surprised by the content of the Core Principles. The principles nevertheless help to illuminate the priorities of bank regulators on a global basis after the financial crisis. The Committee identified four themes that have emerged from the crisis and that animate many of the Core Principles. These principles and the chief U.S. actions that reflect these principles are as follows...

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