Festschrift for Charles Goodhart 15-16 november 2001 Session on Financial Regulation : Is there a Goodhart ’ s Law of Financial Regulation ?

Introduction I started to work with Charles on financial regulation at the LSE Financial Markets Group in the Summer of 1991, just after the collapse of BCCI. Charles has always been very mindful of the fact that failures can (and should) happen and that supervisors will be criticised for it, rightly or wrongly. Both Andrew Sheng and Michael Foot seem to acknowledge this point from practical experience.