As Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner headed off to London on Thursday for two days of meetings with central bankers and finance chiefs of the Group of 20 nations, he carried a letter outlining the Obama administration's plans to boost capital levels for banks around the world. Now, most people who haven’t been following this issue may scratch their heads and wonder, “Hasn’t this been done already?”

That’s an awfully good question. The financial system went into spasms last year, requiring a staggering bailout by the taxpayers, because major banks took reckless bets on derivatives and shaky mortgages—capital levels be damned. When the Titanic sank in 1912, it only took a few months for the U.S. and British governments to conduct inquiries and then to take action, boosting the number of lifeboats on sailing vessels. Heck, the U.S. Senate convened an inquiry within hours.

Yet here we are, a year later, and it’s hard to find much in the way of concrete steps to prevent a future apocalypse from taking place. A Pecora-style panel of inquiry has been created, but hasn’t done anything yet. And as for the root causes of the crisis, scant action has been taken. Geithner was quoted saying on Wednesday that boosting bank capital levels are “a critical part of making the financial system safer in the future.” So why the delay?

Bank capital is just part of the picture. It’s far from clear that raising bank capital levels by itself will affect the behavior of banks. Surely it won’t be of much value if banks seek out loopholes—such as by playing around with off-balance-sheet structures—or if they simply act irresponsibly. What’s needed is a concerted effort to change the culture of both the banks and the regulators we rely upon to keep the banks honest.

Keep in mind that bank CEOs are fully aware of how much of a capital cushion they have at any given time, just as Captain Smith knew perfectly well how many lifeboats he had hanging off the boat deck. It’s now a matter of historical record that Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz, and his predecessor James Cayne, failed to raise a sufficient amount of capital, despite pleas by insiders, long before the bank went belly-up. Likewise, Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld was so hyperfocused on short-sellers like David Einhorn that he failed to keep a proper inventory of his financial lifeboats.

While all this was happening—while two major banks were behaving like overgrown hedge funds—regulators were asleep at the switch. The Securities and Exchange Commission not only failed to push these two banks to increase their capital levels but also seemed oblivious to the whole thing. After Bear Stearns collapsed, SEC chairman Christopher Cox told the Senate Banking Committee that Bear Stearns had a “capital cushion well above what is required to meet Basel standards…up to and including the time of its agreement to be acquired by J.P. Morgan Chase.” Capital, he pointed out, is not synonymous with liquidity, and not a full measure of a bank’s financial health.