The key question

Clive Crook’s column in the FT is, unsurprisingly, well worth reading. He is relatively relaxed about the political state of play after this crisis, arguing that the overall argument about the role of the state and government intervention in the market will be “rhetorically adjusted” but “about where it was before the crisis”.

Crook’s thinking is that while the intellectual climate will become more favourable to the left, the realities will still keep politicians on a relatively fiscally conservative path. Crooks ends on this note:

“The financial crisis was indeed a failure of regulation. The system was overwhelmed by innovation. Regulators are going to have to catch up and, you could say, try to hold innovation back. But finance is not a normal industry. The question to ponder is this: in which other industries will curbing innovation – also known as market forces – strike governments or voters, in the US or anywhere else, as a good idea?”