Accountants plead for protection

In possibly the least unexpected news item of the year, Accountancy Age reports that the Big 4 are seeking immunity from law suits arising from the credit crunch. Perhaps they should have thought a bit more about the risks their financial clients were running.

Financial Oligarchs

Writing in the FT, Martin Woolf asks whether 'America is the new Russia'. The power of the financial sector to influence government and attract subsidies from the public purse is corrosive. Graphs of relative wages and financial sector profits show how much hold the financial sector had generated over the economy as regulation was reduced.

Will increased regulation, which everyone now expects, reverse this? The volume of noise generated by interested parties seeking to reduce the impact of regulation makes one wonder whether new regulation will be toothless.