Brown damned by his Faustian pact
In recent years Labour has taken what might be described as a light-touch on regulation of City firms and financial institutions. In the article below the economics editor of the Guardian, Larry Elliott, argues that this ‘pact with the devil’ might have come back to haunt Gordon Brown as the impact of the global credit crunch continues to dominate economic news.
Brown damned by his Faustian pact Guardian (12/5/08)
Questions
| 1. | What form has regulation of the financial sector taken under the Labour government? |
| 2. | Assess the extent to which this regulatory approach could be considered a ‘Faustian bargain’. |
| 3. | Discuss the extent to which tighter regulation of financial markets might have helped the UK economy avoid the impact of the global credit crunch. |