For the late John Kenneth Galbraith, an acute observer of market folly, finance and innovation were fundamentally incompatible. Every new financial instrument, he said, "is, without exception, a small variation on an established design, one that owes its distinctive character to the . . . brevity of financial memory". The world of finance "hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version".

After the devastating collapse of a credit bubble that had seen explosive growth in new financial instruments, many politicians might feel Galbraith, if anything, understates the damage wrought by financial innovation.