Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

by Andrew Ross Sorkin

But the most significant change to the financial system was a function of the Federal Reserve’s establishing minimal capital requirements for banks, which made it harder for them to increase leverage levels and therefore risk. These new provisions didn’t require legislation and often did not make headlines, but the reduction in leverage had a serious cascading impact on banks.