No Easy Answer to Market Reform News Analysis: Everyone Agrees on the Need to Change the World's `Financial Architecture' - but How?

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SCARCELY A DAY passes without reference by some high-powered policy- maker to reform of the "global financial architecture". Last weekend, the corridors and podiums of the World Economic Forum annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, were alive with the sound of this somewhat pretentious phrase.

What does it mean? Why does this architecture, whatever it is, need reforming? And what are the chances of any substantive changes being brought about, given the perceived global nature of the problem?

The answer to these questions necessitates a small history lesson. There was little understanding in the West either of the causes or consequences of the financial crisis …