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Basel III is an international regulatory framework that was written by the BIS in Basel, Switzerland, which originated from the 2008 financial crisis.The Basel III Final Rule was finalized in 2013 and banks began to fully report Basel III starting January 2015.The BIS is the bank for all central banks. In short, each central bank (FRB, JFSA, ECB, BOE, RBI, etc) takes the proposals from the BIS and modifies it for their respective country. Example, the Federal Reserve may set a 50% Risk Weighting for Residential loans, while the JFSA may set a 100% Risk Weighting for Residential loans.Depending on the bank, they will typically prepare both the Basel III Standardized or Basel III Advanced Approach. The Standardized Approach means *Standardized* risk weights for Assets (cash, MBS, Corporate Debt, Residential Loans, Commercial Loans, Unused Facilities, derivatives, etc.), or 0, 20, 50,100%, Standardized risk weights based on the asset.The Advanced Approach takes the risk weighting to another level by using variables such as PD, LGD, EAD, etc. In other words, the risk weights are based on the banks internal risk models and are *unstandardized* for each asset ex: 12, 27, 46%, etc.Banks must receive approval to use the Advanced Approach from their regulators (OCC, FRB, FDIC). In order to use the Advanced Approach they must have assets over 250B or ancillary exceptions from their regulators. Foreign rules may differ, not quite sure.The most important section of the Basel III regulations are the ratios and adhering to minimum capital standards.1.] Tier 1 Ratio = Tier 1 Capital/RWA2.] Total Capital Ratio = Total Capital/RWA3.] Tier 1 Leverage Ratio = Tier 1 Capital/Total Average Assets1.] 6% well capitalized2.] 10% well capitalized3.] 5% well capitalizedBanks at risk of falling below their capital ratios will begin to be heavily monitored by their regulators.This is just a summary. The Basel Final Rule is 800+ pages long.

Well, I guess that the answer to which US laws, if any, were broken in the creation of the 2008 financial crisis really depends on how you define the word "US law" and the phrase "creation of the 2008 financial crisis". Really.These are some of the state, federal and industry regulators, agencies, and groups most directly relevant to the 2008 Financial Crisis (as opposed to the 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 20... continuing financial crisis, which I will collloquially refer to as the US financial services industry):Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)Federal Reserve (FRB)Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS, now merged into OCC)Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)State departments of Finance, Financial Regulation, Business OversightDepartment of Labor (DoL, through EBSA, administers ERISA and provides oversight for pension and retirement savings)Federal Trade Commission (FTC)Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN (US Treasury's agency responsible for combatting and enforcing anti-money laundering regulation, like BSA and PATRIOT Act)National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA, formerly known as the NASD)Department of Justice (DoJ - relevant for enforcement activity)Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (or the FFIEC; interagency body charged with looking at uniform standards across agencies and regulators)Internal Revenue Service (IRS)FNMA, Freddie Mac, Federal Housing Authority (FHA)Market/Exchange governance groupsPCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board)State insurance regulators, and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC)Credit rating agenciesothers who have either authority, responsibility, or a stake in the global financial services industry, global economy, or consumer protection (now including the relatively new, post-2008 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, as well as all the international groups, especially those out of the major hubs, like London and Singapore)There are a whole lot of US laws promulgated and enforced through those organizations.Obviously, some laws, rules, regulations, contractual or ethical obligations must have fallen by the wayside or were overlooked, either due to the complexity of their interpretation or evisceration of their intent, through misapplication, ignorance, lack of compliance, failures of enforcement, or cover-up.Each of the agencies and organizations, many overlapping in their authority, have different agendas: for instance, the SEC's focus is on transparency and disclosure in the markets, under the presumption that markets work best when everyone knows just what it is that's being bought and sold; and the OCC is largely about "safety and soundness" of the banking institutions it is empowered to look after. It's complicated.A financial services company and its management, in delivering its products or services, can comply with either the spirit or the intent of a law, or both. Most at least try to comply with both; and certainly it's a far more serious violation when the intent and spirit of a law is violated because a company or its executives completely misrepresents an activity by making false statements (i.e. "guaranteed highest investment return" "everyone qualifies for a mortgage, zero money down!") than if, say, an advertisement is provided to the public in 10-point font rather than 12-point font. The bigger firms are REALLY BIG; and the complexity of managing regulatory responsibility while at the same time trying to maintain profitability, including managing tens of thousands of employees all trying to satisfy individual business targets as well as their client's demands and needs (who on occasion are looking for shortcuts or covering up their own internal ethical lapses), is a very sophisticated and expensive endeavor.The laws or regulations or rules which might have been broken - or not - is not at the root of the creation of the financial crisis in 2008. In my opinion, the root of the creation of the 2008 financial crisis was systemic, not that some one individual failed to comply with a law or ran a massive Ponzi scheme (there will always be "bad apples" in any human endeavor - c'mon, do you think that even though people know the Ten Commandments, they always comply with them, or don't try to carve out "legitimate exceptions"?). Maybe we had lots of not-so-good laws (and now we're just doubling down). The vast majority of bankers were and are not evil or greedy; they were just trying to do their job (see, Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil"). Perhaps the system itself - not only the regulatory and structural issues that relate to systemic risk, like capital requirements or financial services corporations that are "too big to fail" (topics that are within the purview of The Systemic Risk Council) - is sick, with its lack of accountability and transparency in the face of overwhelming complexity, and its' encouragement of the concentration of power and financial reward without responsibility. It's impossible and simplistic to point at any one individual or company or regulator or even Congress and say - yep, it's all their fault. The roots go much deeper than that.There's a dilemma of ethics and values in our trader-culture. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma - where short-term individual profit and gain is elevated and succeeds over community well-being and longer-term viability and relationships. Great financial rewards do not come without risk; many of us think that's only about whether or not a deal is financially viable or whether it's good for us and our interests for the next quarter, and forget that risk includes moral and ethical considerations for the community that can't always be reduced to dollars-and-cents, or effectively captured via pricing models. And if a buyer doesn't do their homework or due diligence on what they're buying, whether it's a home loan or a credit swap or a new TV, it's their own fault if they don't get what they think they bargained for. Caveat emptor. Maybe we'd be better off with no laws about the financial markets, at all, instead of so many specific complicated and tangled ones (driving up expenses in the industry!) and let the 99% eat cake.When you mention in the question's details "financial forms" that were possibly inaccurate, false, fraudulent or incomplete, you are probably referring to SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) attestations, or perhaps required filings for public companies like annual reports, or disclosures for investment advisors, broker-dealers, or public (and some private) companies promulgated under the various agencies that are charged with oversight of transparency and disclosures. Certainly, there were some people who signed off on things without being fully aware of what they were signing or who did so knowing that some things might not be entirely right; but in the vast majority of cases, executives and management signed off with full disclosure and disclaimers regarding the extent of their attestations. (!!) Audit and financial statement preparation is occasionally an art form; at the very least it often requires making assumptions, some leaps of faith, and exercises of good judgment.It's also an art to slug through voluminous collections of disclosures, requirements and paperwork to understand what people are not saying as well as what they are saying; as well as whether or not it matters and how it matters. It's a big part of my job. There are, and will always be, limits to the law. There are legal and fair differences in how different companies and industries might apply regulation; and there are differences between what a layman might think a law or regulation says. How laws and regulation are applied and enforced is often based on what kind of resources are dedicated to compliance and enforcement efforts, and what the hot topics of the day might be.From the business-side, it is reasonable and practicable to have a goal to want to minimize regulatory interventions, avoid fines and penalties and disruption to the business; and to minimize expenses to be as profitable as possible. As a citizen, it's important to have a system of laws and regulations that establish and reinforce trust in the system. The laws and regulations we end up with are somewhere in the middle; with increasing complexity of the system that's not a good enough place to be, and the 2008 financial crisis was a reflection of that.