Incidentally, at the outset it was the players themselves who policed the game. Referees, as we know them today, didn’t appear until the end of the 19th century – the players’ selfregulation didn’t work out particularly well. Banking is perhaps not the world’s nicest trivial pursuit, but in some respects it is not unlike football.
Banks also compete with each other and have to stick to certain rules. And these rules, too, are now largely harmonised. The Basel framework takes care of that at global level and the single rulebook at European level.