One metric for that would be the number of human resources devoted to financial regulation. In the UK up until the late-1970s, bank supervision was performed by the Bank of England on an informal basis, with a team of around 30 employees. Even when the Bank was given statutory responsibility in 1979, fewer than 80 people were engaged in the supervision of financial firms. In the period since, the number of UK financial supervisors has increased dramatically, rising almost forty-fold (Chart 1). In response to the current crisis, regulatory numbers are set to rise further. Over the same period, the number of people employed in the UK financial services sector has risen fractionally. In 1980, there was one UK regulator for roughly every 11,000 people employed in the UK financial sector. By 2011, there was one regulator for every 300 people employed in finance. The pattern in the US, looked at over a longer historical sweep, is broadly similar. The FDIC and SEC were set up as part of the regulatory response to the Great Depression. In 1935, together with the OCC and supervisors housed in the Federal Reserve banks, they had combined regulatory resources of around 4,500 people. There was one regulator for every three banks in the US (Chart 2). Today, the combined regulatory resources of the FDIC, OCC, Federal Reserve banks and SEC is closer to 18,500 people. That is three regulators for every US bank. As numbers of regulators have risen, so too have regulatory reporting requirements.
(*)  Significant at the 10% level  (**)  Significant at the 5% level  (***)  Significant at the 1% level  BIS central bankers’ speeches  25  Table 4: Horse-race between different indicators of bank solvency for major global banks(a) Model 1  Model 2  Model 3  Model 4  Model 5  –0.23 (0.20)  T1 Risk-based  –0.55 *** (0.18)  T1 Leverage  –0.44 * (0.25)  CT1 Risk-based  –0.70 *** (0.23)  CT1 Leverage  –0.08 (0.05)  Market risk-based Market leverage McFadden R2  Model 6  0.023  0.177  0.070  0.203  0.071  –0.20 *** (0.06) 0.216  Model 7 0.97 (1.47) –0.48 (2.04) –1.52 (1.36) 1.22 (1.99) 0.13 (0.11) –0.35 * (0.20) 0.317  (a) Regression based on a smaller sample (45 global banks). This is because of missing information on market capitalisation (where banks were not publicly listed) or on consistent pre-crisis estimates of Core Tier 1 capital. Notes:  For all models, the dependent variable is “failure”. Standard errors are shown in brackets. (*)  Significant at the 10% level  (**)  Significant at the 5% level  (***)  Significant at the 1% level  Table 5: Risk-based capital versus leverage, FDIC-insured banks(a) Variable  Model 1  Leverage ratio  –0.01 (0.01)  Risk-based capital ratio  Model 2  Model 3  –0.06*** (0.01)  0.27*** (0.03) –0.22*** (0.03)  (a) Sample excludes outlier banks with very large risk-based capital and leverage ratios.