Even the rise to record levels of delinquencies and defaults on credit card debt may reflect factors other than the ability of supervisors to ensure that management has all the important bases covered. The real test, of course, BIS Review 104/1997  would come with a major economic downturn.
Even then, though, it will be hard to know what might have occurred had our oversight procedures not changed. Nevertheless, there are indications that both banking and supervisory practices are materially better now than they were in the 1980s and early 1990s.