Gold, frankincense – hold the myrrh. The Financial Services Authority’s decision to end the ban on shorting of financial stocks is no gift for the hedge fund community. Disclosure requirements remain in place. But given the pain some alternative asset managers have suffered recently, the short sellers among them should be grateful the regulator did not listen to the baying of politicians for continued constraints. So should the rest of us.

Such action would have placated the populists, but it would have been hard to justify. The consequences of the restrictions were not as grave as some hedge funds argued (there was no apparent impact on efficient pricing, for instance), but the effect of the measures was not as sweeping as the FSA hoped, either. You can judge whether they had a “calming effect” – to quote former chairman Sir Callum McCarthy in September – by the fact that a month later his successor was involved in rescuing the banks the ban was intended to help protect.