ABSTRACT
The global financial crisis in 2008 and the ensuing economic recession in most parts of the world have called into question many conventional understandings about financial markets. Policy-makers are no longer easily swayed by the assumptions that ‘reputable firms do not place risky products on the markets, that innovation is stifled by regulation and that regulators are not as well placed as the market to judge the value of products’.2 Pre-crisis laissez-faire approaches and ‘light-handed’ or ‘principles-based’ regulation are being reassessed, although neoliberalist views are proving remarkably resilient.3 Financial markets re-regulation so far has been most evident at the ‘wholesale’ end of the market, namely in how financial institutions raise funds – by on-selling consumer loans through securitization, for example. But attention has also turned to the interrelated ‘retail’ end – how firms lend to consumers in the first place.4
