Vogel illustrated an interesting paradox - "freer markets, more rules" - looking at the British financial revolution of 1980s. The Financial Services Act (FSA) passed on November 7 after the Big Bang gave birth to a myriad of regulatories agencies. He also noted a change in “regulatory culture”:
The FSA may have revolutionized life in the City even more than the Big Bang, for in matters of regulation it replaced the informal with the formal, the flexible with the rigid, and the personal with the legalistic” (Vogel, 1996:93).
This shows that financial regulation, also, is embedded in broader social and cultural structures that evolve over time.
