I was delighted to see David Cameron and George Osborne speaking out in defence of the financial services industry and global markets generally and against knee-jerk new regulations on banks.
This is not to suggest that no action is the best policy. Believe me, my years in the 1980s and 1990s on trading floors in the City and on Wall Street showed me many examples of unsavoury practices. Indeed, I spoke about some of my experiences recently in Parliament, ironically speaking against the Labour Government's proposal to itself act as an issuer of structured sharia-compliant bonds.
But regulations made now in haste will be regretted later on, as US authorities have over the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. I am deeply sceptical of the new regulation to temporarily suspend short-selling of financial shares, however popular and populist this sort of measure might be politically. Whilst bank shares may be up today, this sort of regulation is easy to circumvent, not least through entirely legitimate routes like selling futures, writing call options or buying put options, and this is just the simple end of the market.
So I think that, politically, we have made the right choice. We would be wise to come with our own set of proposals in the medium term, but we should avoid the populist demagoguery of the likes of Alex Salmond and especially the LibDems's Vince Cable, notably in this article in today's FT, "Cable attack in tune with wider mood".
Cable is a charming man, and a capable politician in a narrow sense of the word, but would be almost the last MP I would listen to on financial regulation. Cable spent two years in Parliament believing that City wheeler-dealer Guy Hands and I were the same person, as he revealed here in the debate on the 2007 Finance Bill. before correcting himself some days later. This is a quite remarkable case of mistaken identity for anyone to make, let alone a Party's main financial spokesman. Cable must have thought it entirely normal for the City's most famous buyer and seller of companies, on an eight-figure take-home package, to find the time to pop into the House of Commons on a frequent basis, put questions to the PM and other ministers, as well as take part in debates on topics as diverse as human rights in North Korea to dangerous dogs in Hammersmith & Fulham.
There is a difference between acting quickly and regulating quickly. The Federal Reserve and other central banks acted quickly this week to put liquidity into the banking system. Permanent regulatory measures should only be considered after deep reflection and proper study. Let's hope the clear blue water remains, but we need our own set of considered proposals at the proper time.