Andy Morriss, my friend and co-blogger over at Market Correction, sent this letter recently to the Financial Times:
Sir,
I was delighted to see Lord Turner’s call to “curb” the U.K.’s financial industry as I had always thought that the “Silly Party” was an invention of Monty Python. Instead I find that it seems to have placed a leader in a top position in the UK government! Once the British government finishes with Lord Turner’s call to “reduce the size” of the financial sector by “apply[ing] special taxes to it,” I am sure that many people in New York, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, and elsewhere will be quick to suggest additional measures to ensure that London’s financial industry is no longer “swollen. ” And once Lord Turner is done shrinking the financial industry down to “a socially reasonable size,” we Americans would appreciate it if he could next whittle down your aerospace and defense industries (which inconveniently compete with ours), your insurance industry (Lloyd’s is just too big for a country Britain’s size), and your energy industries (BP is much, much too large for Britain) to a more modest and appropriate size. Perhaps the original Silly Party M.P. for Luton, Tarquin Fin-tim-lim-bim-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F’tang-F’tang-Olè-Biscuitbarrel, can be lured from retirement to help Lord Turner with this vital mission.
Andrew P. Morriss
H. Ross & Helen Workman Professor of Law and Business
Professor, Institute for Government and Public Affairs
University of Illinois
