The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated that the structure of global banking had become commercially unviable and systemically fragile. Stabilising that structure was therefore exactly the right short-term response and exactly the wrong long-term response. Governments have found this paradox hard to cope with. Mostly they have not tried. Politicians in the US and across much of Europe have become corporatists, tending to equate the success of an industry with the interests of large companies in it. Their counterparts in the UK and Switzerland are the exceptions among the leading financial centres in not succumbing to this mistake.
2008年金融危機表明,全球銀行業的結構已失去商業可行性,並呈現出系統脆弱性。因此,就短期而言,穩定這種結構是正確的對策,就長期而言,卻恰恰是錯誤的對策。這個矛盾讓政府感到很難應對。它們大多沒有嘗試去解決這個矛盾。美國和歐洲很多地區的政界人士已成爲公司主義者,他們常常將一個行業的成功與該行業大公司的利益等同起來。英國和瑞士的政界人士沒有屈從於這種錯誤的做法,可謂是全球主要金融中心的例外。