But rules cannot substitute for character.

Indeed, better risk management may be the only truly necessary element of success in banking.

But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?

Regulators have not been able to achieve the level of future clarity required to act pre-emptively. The problem is not lack of regulation but unrealistic expectations. What we confront in reality is uncertainty, some of it frighteningly so...

The need for values is inbred. Their content is not.

The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.

It is decidedly not true that "nice guys finish last," as that highly original American baseball philosopher, Leo Durocher, was alleged to have said.