The appointments

The letter of appointment names a bank, a jurisdiction and a year. The jurisdiction brings its regulators, its deposit insurance, its countercyclical buffer and its rivals; the year brings the policy rate, the curve, growth, unemployment and house prices as they happened, from 1988 to 2025. After 2025 the engine's own cycle takes over.

Six jurisdictions

Jurisdiction	Currency	Supervisor, latterly	What is particular to it
United States	USD	The Federal Reserve and the OCC	CAMELS every year from the start; prompt corrective action; a 4% leverage ratio; 50% weights on mortgages; the discount window and the home-loan banks; deposit insurance to 250,000 from the autumn of 2008.
United Kingdom	GBP	The Prudential Regulation Authority	The FSA years, then the PRA; the 2007 queues; a sterling curve that inverted early; covered bonds late.
Euro area	EUR	The European Central Bank	National supervisors until 2014, then SREP from Frankfurt; the sovereign years; negative rates from 2014; bail-in from 2016.
Switzerland	CHF	FINMA	The franc's own curve, negative for a decade; the too-big-to-fail rules; the AT1 lesson of March 2023.
Singapore	SGD	The Monetary Authority of Singapore	A managed currency, a property cycle of its own, the 1997 and 2008 shocks arriving through trade.
Norway	NOK	Finanstilsynet	The late-eighties boom and the Nordic banking crisis on schedule; oil in the cycle; covered bonds from 2007; the home market of the old game.

Five years

Year	You take over	Severity
1995	The long expansion. High rates, fat margins, a long runway, and Basel II and III arriving in their time.	Standard
1988	The late-eighties boom, and what followed. Standards at the peak decide the losses in the trough.	Hard
2008	The global financial crisis, in progress. Thin capital, a souring book, the interbank market shut, and rivals for sale at a discount.	Hard
2015	Zero and negative rates. The deposit franchise earns nothing; costs kill faster than credit.	Expert
2020	The pandemic, the digital challengers, and then the hiking cycle that found every long held-to-maturity book.	Hard

The severity is a separate choice on the letter: a patient board and a mild cycle, the standard terms, or the unforgiving ones.

Short appointments

The quick modes from the old game remain on the letter: a fixed term of five to ten years with a medal at the final bell, scored on assets or on cumulative profit, each with its own board. The weekly challenge puts every player in the same world from the same seed under the same rule twist. A duel is any code word agreed with a friend: the identical economy, the same rivals, the same crises on the same dates.

Take office