When things go wrong, have you ever noticed how quick we are to blame everyone else? It's never our fault. Never has this been more true than at the moment.

Recently the Conservative Party announced that if they come to power they will abolish the FSA (that's the Financial Services Authority, not the Food Standards Agency!). The Conservatives believe that a great deal of the present financial crisis was caused by poor regulation from the FSA, which is now responsible for regulating all of the financial sector. The FSA was set up by the Labour Party when they came to power. The FSA took over from the PIA (Personal Investment Authority) which was set up by the Conservatives when they came to power. The PIA took over from LAUTRO (Life Assurance and Unit Trust Regulatory Authority) when ... well, you can guess when.

As each new regulator has come into place, it has taken on more responsibility for regulation, predominantly from the Bank of England which was originally the first regulator. For some reason, each time there has been a change of government there seems to be the desire to change the regulatory system. As the regulations increased in scope and complexity, the regulators grew in size. As the regulator grew, so did its costs and budgets. The FSA now employs over 2,500 staff in CanaryWharf. Many of them came from the Bank of England in 1997.

There is no doubt that the FSA has made a large number of mistakes when it comes to regulation. However, it is driven by the Treasury which in turn is driven by the Government. While we are not always fans of the FSA, it does seem a little strange to close the organisation and move its responsibilities to the Bank of England. This will no doubt result in a massive cost to the taxpayer in redundancies, moving fees and many of the costs to make the change. No doubt a future government will then make the change back again.

Perhaps it might be a stupid suggestion, but rather than closing the FSA down, would it not be more sensible simply to have them do the job right, and perhaps place the Bank of England between the Government and the FSA so that they have the final call, rather than the Chancellor as it is at the moment?

There is a story about Buck Rogers. This is not the Buck Rogers of TV science fiction fame, but the former CEO of IBM in its heyday. The story goes that one of the senior directors of IBM made a massive mistake when dealing with a client. The result of this was a $10m loss to the organisation. Rogers called the man into his office and sat him down, looking at him in silence. After a minute or two the man said, "I suppose you want my resignation." Rogers replied, "Resignation? Why on earth would I do that when I've just spent $10m training you?"

Perhaps all we really need in this world is a shot of common sense. If the FSA has messed up, why not find out who did it, put it right, train them more and make sure it doesn't happen again - surely that makes more sense than closing the whole place down.