Speculative pain

Financial speculators should brace themselves for tougher regulation. Buried in one of the papers published as part of this month’s G20 summit is a suggestion that their access to credit should be more tightly controlled. That could hit hedge funds, traders working inside banks and the next generation of oligarchs during the next upswing. Hedge funds might have thought they had a narrow escape. Despite a lot of grandstanding by France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, the G20 communiqué’s focus is on regulatin...