ON MAY 11th, after almost five years of hard work and
negotiation, the Basel Committee of bank supervisors reached
agreement on new international rules for bank capital. Called
Basel 2, the rules aim to link capital more closely to the
riskiness of banks' assets than existing regulations do. Like
the old system, Basel 2 requires capital to be at least 8% of
“risk-weighted” assets. However, whereas the old system of
weighting was pretty crude, the new one will be fiendishly
complicated. In addition, national supervisors will have
discretion to adjust capital requirements, and banks will be
expected to disclose more information to investors.   Even now,
it is uncertain that American banks will meet the delayed
timetable. John Hawke, head of the Office of the Comptroller of
the Currency, one of America's many bank regulators, says that
an “extensive process” remains before Basel 2 can be adopted,
including input from Congress and a fourth “quantitative impact
study” (Europeans made do with three).   But the bigg