In a speech to the Fifth Meeting of the Asian Program of the Institute of International Finance given on 17 November, Jaime Caruana, Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, said three words have guided our work on the New Accord, namely balance, consistency and cooperation. We seek a balanced approach, he said, so that the new capital guidelines can be applied around the world. We have worked hard to strike a right balance between many other competing objectives, such as finding