Don’t let regulators kill off the best idea in finance in decades

P2P lending is one of the best innovations in finance for ages, says Matthew Lynn. The last thing we need is to regulate it to death.

Anyone with money to save hasn't seen much in the way of good news in the last ten years. The stock market has gone nowhere. Fund managers' fees have stayed obstinately high. Half the banks have gone bust and if they aren't going belly-up, they are usually mis-selling something or other to their exasperated customers.

Interest rates are at 300-year lows, and the governor of the Bank of England is promising to keep them there for as long as possible. It is a wonder that anyone bothers to save at all.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.