THERE was a very important meeting held at the Jakarta headquarters of Bank Indonesia (BI) on Monday, two weeks ago. At exactly 9am, 100 bankers were gathered, representing Indonesia's 50 largest banks. The meeting's agenda was unique: learning how to calculate banks' capital adequacy ratio (CAR) using a new formula. "A morning lecture" was how Muliaman Hadad, BI's Director of Banking Research and Organization, referred to the meeting.

The Ban