So the former masters of the universe are beginning to hurt a tiny bit. The FInancial Times reported yesterday that yet again, Wall Street is worried that too much regulation will drive its talent abroad. What response can the rest of us offer other than ‘Bring it on!’? These are the people whose ‘talent’ created a giant bubble of illusory wealth which they then sold to the rest of the world.

So just who is going to offer them a job now? I wouldn’t trust any of them to sweep a road properly. There was a similar case of a new graduate looking for his first job and ‘threatening’ to go to Dubai if no one in London would recognize his amazing worth. There is a desperate need for a large and fierce injection of reality here, preferably with a blunt needle.

These people are little different from con-artists. They are really good at part of what they do, but it is going to take a generation before they are trusted again to the extent that we all let them get away with over the last twenty years. Still, we must remember that ‘within living memory’ these days is about five years, tops.