Was the chairman of the UK's financial watchdog just trying to impress concervatives when he expressed support for a tax on foreign exchange deals?

Development charities are delighted. And why wouldn't they be? The global economic crisis rooted in excessive risk-taking (rooted in remuneration policies that rewarded it) is estimated to have caused some 100 million down to the level of extreme hunger.

Personally I wonder whether a Truth and Reconciliation Commission could help bring some measure of justice by bringing together victims of the crisis perpetrators.

But a Tobin tax on currency transactions could help remedy the material impacts of the crisis rather than simply the emotional and cultural. It is argued that the tax brought in could be used to finance economic development for those who have suffered at the hands of the finance industry.

Lord Turner went on to comment that the UK's financial sector has "grown beyond a socially reasonable size". Hardly seems like posturing towards a future Conservative government to me; more like a note of sense from someone who is not only close to the action as a regulator now, but has himself been a business leader.

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