WALTER OLSON: “Tumbleweeds are not yet blowing through Manhattan’s vacant streets, but if New York is to hold onto its precarious pre-eminence in global finance, the US will need to get serious about reforming its costly and punitive legal environment for capital issuance. That was the message from yesterday’s much-awaited report by an expert panel on the competitiveness of the country’s financial markets convened by Henry Paulson, the Treasury Secretary.”

I think there’s an excessive degree of complacency on this topic.