The financial reform bills that were passed in both the House and the Senate would expand and strengthen consolidated supervision of firms whose failure would pose risks to the financial system. The report recommends that a single systemic regulator be assigned responsibility for overseeing the health of the overall financial system and, in particular, that this duty be assigned to the central bank.
Mixed success at attempted coordination through the 1970s and 1980s, and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system itself – the most ambitious effort at international policy coordination – all appeared to point in the same direction. So what changed?