“The misguided faith that rules and regulators can prevent the next financial crisis is hard to shake, but this week brought a glimmer of hope. The chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision signalled that regulators might be starting to understand how their rules contributed to the 2008 financial crisis—and the damage these rules could do in the future.

“The Basel rules are the global standards that encouraged banks to hold mortgage-backed securities before the crisis and have since been re-written to favor investment in sovereign debt (such as Italian or U.S. bonds). Perhaps realizing how terrifying that sounds to taxpayers, Chairman Stefan Ingves said on Tuesday that the committee, whose members include U.S. financial regulators, has created a “high-level task force” to study the issues raised by Basel critics.

“Reformers like Andrew Haldane at the Bank of England and Thomas Hoenig at the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have pointed out that the complex Basel rules have been enormously costly yet were of little use before the crisis in determining which banks would run into trouble. Messrs. Haldane and Hoenig have also noted that in the latest regulatory draft, known as Basel III, the rules have only grown more complex.”

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