But his discussion of the fine points of improving financial architecture in anticipation of the next fiscal crisis is persuasive: no matter how much was learned, "future financial crises are almost surely inevitable and could be even more severe".
Brown's time as Chancellor was marked by major reform of Britain's monetary and fiscal policy architecture, transferring interest rate setting powers to the Bank of England, by a wide extension of the powers of the Treasury to cover much domestic policy and by transferring responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority.
But the UK will not be writing any blank cheques, as Cameron showed when he vetoed a proposed amendment to the Lisbon treaty last December that would have embedded the new eurozone fiscal compact within the architecture of the EU.
This elite ignorance arises from a blind faith in a dangerously-flawed neo-liberal economic ideology and the E.U.'s misguided, core architecture: monetary union without fiscal union.
While the summit meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday marked a major step toward greater fiscal union among the core countries, the architecture will take months, even years, to construct.
Finally, the EU's jurisdictional architecture, particularly in monetary and fiscal affairs, is currently contested based on different views on efficiency, redistribution and identity.
Vocabulary: Feng Shui, prosperity, expansion, policy, export, imperialism, replica, equity, architecture, concession, investment, bankruptcy, concede, finance, fiscal, net, culinary, faux pas, placate, merchandise, diverse, topiary, overkill Extension Activities: 1.
Improving the euro's "institutional architecture" entails the 17 countries surrendering large chunks of sovereignty over budget and fiscal policy to a eurozone "fiscal union" seen as the logical successor to the "banking union" being proposed on Wednesday.
New York architecture lost touch with reality in the mid 70's, when the fiscal crisis cast the city's future in doubt.
In the short term, they must manage policies on banking recapitalisation and huge fiscal injections and in the longer term help to design a new regulatory architecture for the battered financial system.
