If the equipment is bust, by all means fix it – if that reduces the likelihood of it breaking again. Britain’s financial regulatory system fell between the three stools of the Financial Services Authority, the Bank of England and the Treasury. And it needs repair: for all the regulations already devised by the FSA, the City of London watchdog, neither it nor the Bank of England reacted to the overleverage of banks in the UK in time. Yet the government‘s White Paper on reforming financial markets, released on Wednesday, suggests it wants to keep much of the existing regulatory tackle, just give it more oomph.

The paper’s new proposals boil down to a handful of measures. It wants more banking competition. It does not seek a Glass-Steagall style separation of investment and commercial banking activities, noting sensibly that even the failure of small lenders, such as Northern Rock, can have systemic consequences. It believes banks should behave counter-cyclically – building up capital buffers in the good times to cushion them during the bad. And it wants to create a Council for Financial Stability, a co-ordinating body that will push the regulatory stools closer together and then, presumably, sit on them.