Will the global crisis result in a new deal?

Johann Hari's article in this morning's Independent is well worth a read.

He looks at the current global meltdown and thinks that it could provide an opportunity in the same way that the 1930's crash did.Then it led to the new deal and Keynsian politics.

For him the past 30 years have seen

conservative politicians have – often with good intentions – conducted an experiment. They believed markets work best when government monitors them least. So they steadily stripped away the restraints on corporations that were put in place after the Great Crash of 1929. Regulations? Rules forbidding dodgy mortgages? Trade unions? Progressive taxation? These simply got in the way of generating wealth, damaging us all. Once you removed all these "distortions", the market would create equilibrium and growth for all.

For him the new era will result in shutting

down the world's tax havens, so the super-rich who caused this crisis can no longer wriggle out of contributing to the societies in which they live. Some $23trn (£13trn) is stored away in them.