John Kay

Tailgaters think the view that their behaviour is dumb is based on a purely theoretical analysis, which is refuted by the tailgater’s practical experience. And so the culture of self-confident, self-congratulatory tailgaters perpetuates itself.

Watch John testify at the Treasury Committee on Financial Institutions here >
More from the committee can be accessed here >

In the name of free markets, we created a monster that threatens to destroy the very free markets we extol.

All our experience of the development of information technology starts from what the customer might want rather than what the technology might do.

A stance which is pro-business must be distinguished from a stance which is pro-market. In the two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, that distinction has not been appreciated well enough.

Markets are not a well-oiled machine: they are a constantly changing, adaptive biological system.

When the next crisis hits, and it will, the frustrated public is likely to turn, not just on politicians who have been negligently lavish with public funds, or on bankers, but on the market system. What is at stake now may not just be the future of finance, but the future of capitalism.

Markets are not a well oiled physical machine: they are a constantly changing, adaptive biological system.

Economics is not so much the queen of the social sciences but the servant, and needs to base itself on anthropology, psychology – and the sociology of ideologies.

In the unlikely event that the G20 leaders can spare a few moments between photo opportunities and ritual denunciation of greedy bankers, they might give urgent attention to the question of how to extricate themselves from the underwriting of failed banks.