It is amusing to read your main leader and your essay on financial slumps, as well as how to prevent them (“Leviathan of Last Resort” and “The Slumps that Shaped Modern Finance,” April 12, 2014). Now that the slump of 2008 seems to be over, you are gathering courage to argue against excessive regulation of the financial sector. Given your liberal proclivities, this is quite predictable. As you argue, the slumps of 1792, 1825, 1857, 1907, and 1929 all led to greater regulation, which is exemplified by the appearance of the Federal Reserve after the 1907 slump. But you fail to stress that demands for less regulation regularly followed each slump, as well. And the argument has always been just like yours today: regulation endangers the world of finance, which can only lead to new slumps. Without taking any sides, one can already predict that many regulatory measures introduced after the 2008 slump, which you mysteriously leave out of your essay’s progression, will also be eroded over time. Until the next slump, that is. The only question is whether one of the upcoming slumps could be the last one, for it would lead to the collapse of the capitalist system as a whole, as Marx predicted after the slump of 1857. The rest is perfectly predictable.