No Big Fix for Global Finance

World leaders are talking bravely about fixing the global financial system. As the Group of Twenty heads toward an important summit in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24-25, they are vowing to bang out a regulatory structure that will keep rich, careless bankers from once again driving their firms to ruin and then getting bailed out by taxpayers. Finance ministers and central bankers who met in London earlier this month reported "substantial progress in delivering our ambitious plan."

But their plan is far less ambitious than what some voices were advocating as recently as last spring. Bank lobbyists have fought back hard, and recent improvements in the global economy and financial markets have robbed momentum from the reformers. What's more, truly ensuring change on a global scale would probably require a single international regulator with power to intervene in local affairs. Yet there is little appetite for that among the G-20, which includes the major industrialized countries as well as China, Brazil, and other developing powers.