Can Financial Markets Be Controlled?

The Global Financial Crisis overturned decades of received wisdom on how financial markets work, and how best to keep them in check. Since then a wave of reform and re-regulation has crashed over banks and markets. Financial firms are regulated as never before.
 
But have these measures been successful, and do they go far enough?  In this smart new polemic, former central banker and financial regulator, Howard Davies, responds with a resounding ‘no’. The problems at the heart of the financial crisis remain. There is still no effective co-ordination of international monetary policy.  The financial sector is still too big and, far from protecting the economy and the tax payer, recent government legislation is exposing both to even greater risk.
 
To address these key challenges, Davies offers a radical alternative manifesto of reforms to restore market discipline and create a safer economic future for us all.

Sir Howard Davies currently teaches courses on the regulation of financial markets at Sciences Po. He is the former director of the London School of Economics, and the ex-chairman of the UK’s Financial Services Authority. He is the author of a numebr of books and writes regularly for the Financial Times.

Prologue viii

Acknowledgements xv

1 Heading for a Fall 1

2 The Global Financial Crisis 22

3 Regulation and Reform 51

4 What More Should be Done? 75

Further Reading 110

Notes 116