This paper reviews the nature of Australian bank prudential regulation before and after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). It begins by providing a detailed conceptual framework for understanding the functions of banks and deposit-takers, the theory of what can go wrong with the operation of these institutions, and the logic of prudential regulation. It then...

Financial regulators perform inter alia a quality control function, as they search for recession-generating flaws in the financial system. Some groupings of regulations operate more or less independently to other groupings, as is the case when different agents – not necessarily different institutions – examining the same regulatory issues or monitor the same behaviours independently...