I have said relatively little about the financial turmoil of the last week or so. It proves what I have always known; that markets are irrational and any argument to the contrary is wrong as it defies all the evidence

So I agree with the Guardian leader this morning which says:

[M]erely leaving financial markets be is unsustainable: sooner or later they get into trouble; the wider economy is put in jeopardy; and officials are forced to dole out cash. As the past month has again demonstrated, what the financiers do affects the rest of us. It is time the rest of us made them more accountable.

Some of have, of course, been working on this issue for some time.

And some of us believe that markets are useful, but subservient to society and not the other way round for precisely the reason that the agent that can provide the space in which markets can supply their imperfect benefit is a powerful State able to intervene when needed. Of course it can only do that if it can in turn command resources.

And then we're back to taxation and why companies should pay it.