I mean, I know ministers aren’t expected to be specialists themselves, but at least they get access to briefings from genuine expert civil servants – so Reid’s views on justice policy, although probably wrong, might at least be worth listening to.

But this piece is worse, and worse-grounded than something that Tim, or I, or even Will fucking Hutton, would write on the crisis…

I cannot understand how the solution is to encourage lenders to throw their money (or the money entrusted to them) at these IMXs, without caring about either the means and character of the individual borrowing institutions on the other side, or the collective sum of them, safe only in the assurance that the one small group of people who should be looking at all the risks, the oh-so-smart central banks, will never make mistakes, will never be subject to conflicts of interest, political pressure or corruption, and that even if they do, the taxpayers have unlimited funds to bale out the system.

To avoid having to deal with the reality of living near Stromboli, they want to create Tambora.