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Never before in any previous crisis has monetary policy responded with such aggressive expansion. Not only have short‐term policy rates been cut to zero, but the monetary base, and even more so commercial bank reserves, have been increased hugely. Yet bank lending to the private sector and the broad money supply have stagnated, and the recovery has been weak. While the prior level of bank equity was patently too low, the way in which the regulatory requirements for higher equity ratios have been introduced encouraged deleveraging, especially via reductions in cross‐border lending. Much more thought should have been given both to the incentives that bank CEOs faced and to the appropriate mechanisms for raising additional bank equity.

Banking and finance are inherently pro-cyclical, a condition exacerbated by a combination of Basel II and mark-to-market accounting. But these latter measures have many advantages, so the need is to devise other counter-cyclical macro-prudential policies. This fragility was further enhanced by a decline in bank liquidity (reliance on wholesale funding) and a shift in govenance from partnerships to limited liability public companies. Some commentators have seen the solution to such pro-cyclicality in the guise of direct constraints on bank activity, such as the promotion of 'narrow banking' or limits on bank size. While there are arguments for toughening regulation as systemic risk increases, direct constraints are simplistic; more sensible ideas involve the adoption of better designed macro-prudential regulation, perhaps with some version of banking self-insurance. Quite what the future holds for bank regulation remains, however, to be decided.

The current financial crisis has raised queries about the adequacy of the present regulatory regime. Whilst the immediate priority may be to plug the obvious holes in the system, there are some long-term generic problems with almost any system of financial regulation. This paper explores one such concern, i.e. the boundary problem. This arises because effective regulation, one that actually bites, is likely to penalise those within the regulated sector, relative to those just outside, causing substitution flows towards the unregulated. This boundary problem impacts on many proposals, such as 'narrow banking' and my own, with Avinash Persaud, for state and time-varying capital adequacy requirements. The question of how and where to set the boundary is considered. Such boundaries will always be criticised as leading to disintermediation, competitive inequality (no level-playing-field), inefficiency and higher spreads and borrowing rates; and such criticisms will be valid up to a point. The paper ends by discussing how best to respond.