Tantamount to financial terrorism

You sport a huge beard and a towel on your head and in the name of Allah you try to bring down the computer infrastructure on which the world depends. You are, in contemporary argot, a ‘cyber-terrorist’. You wear a button-down shirt and chinos, and in the name of turning a profit you deliberately set out to wreck a pillar of the financial system, or a country’s economy. In this case you are, it appears, a ‘market manipulator’. Can you spot the difference? Aside from motive, little separates the two: one wants to create a global caliphate, the other to make billions, but neither employs violence and both are indifferent to the chaos they cause. Is it time for hedge-fund managers to be subjected to extreme rendition from their Mayfair offices? Alas probably not, but the case for some equally firm application of justice is compelling.

Take the Icelandic crisis earlier this month.