I would add that from a Canadian perspective we have long had a leverage limit, a 20:1 asset-to-capital ratio. That is an important reason, among several others, that Canadian banks did better through the crisis. Because of this leverage cap, buying securitized subprime mortgages and making money on doing so by levering up was effectively not a good business model for them, because they couldn't lever up over their cap. As a result of that, along with good risk management, Canadian banks did not load up on those, and so when those products collapsed, they didn't create a big hole in our system. That thinking has been imported into the global rules.
On April 29th, 2014. See this statement in context.