Since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, a series of scandals have shaken public confidence in the world of banking and corporate finance, and raised doubts about its accountability and its morality, as well as its ability to provide an efficient and sustainable environment for the peaceful development of nations and citizens in the globalised economy. In seeking to understand the present, commentators have looked back to previous great crises, such as the infamous Tulipmania in Amsterdam (1637), the succession of European Bubbles (1720) or the Wall Street Crash (1929). While these crises and the memory of them had a considerable impact on state policies and public attitudes towards finance and financiers in the short and medium term, they can also be seen as the culmination of longer term changes that challenged the traditional order of things and called for a renegotiation of the relationship between the state, the economy and the public – a debate that, arguably, we need to start today.