Afterword: remembering and speaking

In closing, rather than digging into the detail of the contributions to this edited volume, we want to view regulation through two different lenses, both of which concern the conditions under which regulation could sustain itself in a robust manner. The first of these lenses is historical and concerns memory. The collective memory of public regulators has been fallible before – as a little history from the US Federal Exchange demonstrates – and so the question arises of the conditions for such professional amnesia in the coming years. The second concern is a theme in both public and private regulation: the question of publicity. Public visibility of regulatory actions is necessary (if not sufficient) for regulation to have constitutive effects, that is to say, to steer the whole financial market as distinct from reacting to its parts. As regulation emerges from fire-fighting mode and seeks find a new normal, the possibility arises that this may involve the (re-) construction of the public policy equivalent of dark pools.