From bailing out the banks to laying down the law, an apparently lasting impact of the financial crisis is a bigger role for the state. One beneficiary of this new orthodoxy is capital controls, sneered at in the free-wheeling past but increasingly seen as a pragmatic tool to manage economic imbalances and try to halt rising currency valuations.
The shift in mindset was highlighted in February when G-20 ministers meeting in Paris raised barely a murmur against moves last year by several Asian governments to impose barriers to inflows of foreign capital. Instead the emphasis was on developing frameworks and creating common understandings.
