Table of contents — The Supervisory Compass

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Fourteen chapters across four parts. Each chapter is a narrative essay built around a single quantitative finding from the SPI panel. Chapter 1 is available as a free preview.

Part I — The Architecture

1. The Comptroller's Eye (1863)

What Hugh McCulloch invented when he had to invent it.
2. The Federal Reserve Era (1907–1933)

Two agencies, one banking system, the slow appearance of divergence.
3. The FDIC Bargain (1933)

Deposit insurance, moral hazard, and the political economy of the New Deal.

Part II — The Risk Domains

4. Credit Risk

The oldest domain. Loan files, vocabulary archaeology, and Mellon's 1931 mistake.
5. Capital Adequacy

From Basel I arbitrage to the SVB paradox.
6. Liquidity Risk

The lender of last resort, and what the bank run looks like in 2023.
7. Interest Rate Risk

S&L, BTFP, and the forty-year decay regression.
8. Operational Risk

Defalcation, EDP, rogue trading, cyber. The invisible enemy.
9. Compliance and Conduct

CRA, BSA/AML, debanking, Operation Choke Point. The credit allocation wars.

Part III — The Political Economy

10. The Partisan Supervisor

What partisan shifts move the SPI, and how much.
11. The Appointment Cycle

Confirmations, vacancies, and the institutional memory of agency leadership.
12. Cross-Agency Divergence

OCC, Fed, FDIC: writing about the same banks in quietly different ways.
12B. Supervision Without a Sovereign

Basel, FSB, IAIS — international coordination and its limits.
12C. The Patchwork at the Perimeter

SEC, CFTC, state insurance, FSOC, OFR, and the CFPB after 2025.
13. Four Mechanisms Synthesis

Information, coordination, dynamic standards, governance.

Epilogue

14. The Future of Supervision

Stablecoins, AI underwriting, climate as duration mismatch, cyber.