Gordon Brown: King Canute who ordered the tide to go back out again

All over the world, politicians and regulators are busy shutting doors on horses that haven’t so much bolted as climbed on board a rocket and left for a different planet, says Matthew Lynn.

Gordon Brown has proposed that 100% mortgages be banned. Slam. Barack Obama wants limits on bankers' pay. Slam. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, promises tougher regulation for hedge funds and rating agencies after a European Union summit in Berlin last weekend. Slam.

Right around the world, politicians and regulators are busy shutting doors on horses that haven't so much bolted as climbed on board a rocket and left for a different planet. They are wasting their time. There is no point in trying to fight a banking-led financial and credit bubble now. It's too late. No doubt the world economy will recover eventually, and in time, a fresh bubble will get going. But when it happens we'll find a whole new way to mess things up and it won't be anything to do with the plethora of controls on the financial system now being proposed. It would be better to devote time and energy to fighting the next crisis rather than the last one.

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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.