Financial Rules: Why They Differ, Where We Got Them Wrong and How to Fix Them

Financial Rules: Why They Differ, Where We Got Them Wrong and How to Fix Them

Phoebus Athanassiou

This article examines how financial rules differ from rules drawn from other branches of the law and proposes ways in which to feed an understanding of their specificities into the regulatory process so as to improve them and help overcome the weaknesses brought to light by the financial crisis. Questioning the widespread trust in fallible, man-made rules, in an area where the benefits of trial and error are restricted to the experiments of the last 20 years, simplifying our financial law rulebook and better aligning its contents with some of the fundamental moral choices made in other areas of the law are necessary steps in order to lay the foundations for a safer financial regulatory environment.

Law and Financial Markets Review, Vol. 4, No. 3, May 2010: 279-285.

Online

Originally Published: 
01/01/2011