Everyone knows that grievous mismanagement of many banks and others in the financial sector has wrought great damage to the global economy; and it is obvious that things have got to change. But it is ironic that lectures pour out from regulators, governments and central bankers on how incompetent bankers were, when mistakes by those same authorities were every bit as much to blame.

The US government sponsored the housing boom and regulators failed to stop the bubble. Interest rates were too low for too long, leading to grossly excessive borrowing everywhere. Practitioners took it on from there and the subprime fiasco resulted.

It is surprising when Lord Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, pronounces that the UK financial sector has grown “beyond a socially reasonable size” and that some innovation is a “socially useless activity”. It is unlikely that the German government would ever say such a thing about its auto industry or the French about its wine growers. Both are major foreign currency earners, with some harmful side-effects. A regulator should normally foster the health of the sector, irrespective of its size.