After a modest interval with no big financial shocks, policy attention is turning to the task of preventing future crises and managing those that occur. While the deliberations will take quite a while to play out, there is some time pressure - because of the moral hazards created by the Federal Reserve's extension of credit to investment banks and authorities' desire to act before the sense of alarm created by recent events abates and complacency returns.

Proposals for changes in regulation and crisis response have come from many quarters, including the US Treasury and private sector groups. They offer important ideas on rearranging regulatory responsibilities - such as the Treasury's suggestion of an enhanced role for the Federal Reserve with respect to investment banks and its call for a consumer financial regulator - and raise critical issues, such as that of procyclicality induced by regulation. They also contain a certain amount of essentially content-free calls for worthiness. So far missing from the debate has been a set of principles describing the properties of any desirable regulatory regime, against which proposals can be evaluated. Different observers will assign priority to different issues - here would be my list of six principles.