Bank enforcement is falling across every US regulator. The natural reading is that supervision has gone soft.

A new Brookings dataset (2015–2025) shows enforcement actions down sharply at the Fed, moderately at the FDIC, roughly flat at the OCC — regardless of which party held the White House. But a single falling number can't tell you why.

Run a simple exercise: fifty enforcement cases, five banks, ten types of misconduct, every case worth pursuing, resources for fifteen. Which fifteen?