Without his puckish verve for disruption, it'd become a show about technical adequacy and endless piano ballads.
There is likely to be widespread support for the "serious concerns" raised by the committee about the adequacy of current laws.
Related: Adoptive parents need to be supported to help their child grieve There are real threats in all of this: cuts to local authority budgets; the challenge of recent court judgments in adoption; the adequacy of the current policy and legislation for special guardianship.
The passage of the laws – which require telecommunications companies to store certain types of phone and web data for two years – has been marked by concerns about the adequacy of privacy safeguards by companies and government agencies that will handle the data.
For firms operating in the securities business, there are no internationally agreed minimum capital standards, although most national regulators impose rules of their own (as does the EU, through its capital-adequacy directive).
That throws differences in regulatory structure into much sharper relief.The regulators have responded in several different ways, most directly by drawing up the Basle rules on minimum standards of capital adequacy.
More generally, it is possible that having two sets of capital-adequacy rules will distort competition between Basel 1 and Basel 2 banks.
Although the initiative for this came from rich countries, it was designed as a standard for banks everywhere and has been adopted in many emerging countries (see chart 6 .Regulators in emerging markets are becoming increasingly aware that capital-adequacy rules are the most effective item in their toolbox.
Barclays, one of the last big banks to do so, was, as The Economist went to press, still busily trying to sell shares to cash-rich sovereign wealth funds and hoping to raise about £4 billion, giving existing shareholders the choice of also buying stock.While concerns about capital adequacy were hanging over banks, shareholders were reluctant to rock the boat.
There would then be two years for banks to prepare their models and reporting systems, and for the EU to pass and implement a capital-adequacy directive for banks and investment firms, modelled on Basel 2.This is a tight schedule even with the extra year, and the Basel committee is deliberately shutting out debate on "new" issues.
They are also shedding assets at an alarming rate in order to meet EU capital-adequacy targets by next June.
