Some of you may remember Paul Volcker  from before he was hired by the current administration for his expertise, and then not consulted for anything because…well, for some reason. Larry Summers is Wormtail, or something. Anyway, his job now is basically like a second unit crew in movies, he goes to all the crappy places that the real stars don’t want to go, such as the Future of Finance Initiative conference in England, where he acted all curmudgeonly.

As bankers demanded that new regulation should not stifle innovation, a clearly irritated Mr Volcker said that the biggest innovation in the industry over the past 20 years had been the cash machine. He went on to attack the rise of complex products such as credit default swaps (CDS).

Ha ha, the ATM actually is the best thing banks have ever done. You tell ‘em, Frankenstein.

“I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth — one shred of evidence,” said Mr Volcker, who ran the Fed from 1979 to 1987 and is now chairman of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

I wish I had a pony and an XBox360. I mean, as long as we’re making Christmas lists of stuff we will never get.

George Soros (how did he get invited to a WSJ-sponsored event?) offered his usual subtle and nuanced thoughts on the matter:

Meanwhile, George Soros argued that CDS should be banned. The billionaire investor likened the widely traded securities to buying life assurance and then giving someone a licence to shoot the insured person.

That sounds exactly like the plot to every episode of Matlock ever filmed.