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There's nothing like a crisis to concentrate the mind. On January 15th, a collection of influential academics and financiers - known as the G30 - released a set of eighteen recommendations for reforming the international financial system. You can browse the summary or read about them here and here.

There a couple of things that need to be said. First, unlike the other G-units you hear about in the news, the G30 is a private group that does not represent official policy. Yet. (There are a large number of members, including Geitner and Volcker, that will be directly involved in shaping policy over the next several years).

Second, the group is, with one exception, entirely male.

Third, this old boys club may very well forshadow what's to come when the other old boys clubs, the G7 and G20, meet over the next year or two. Since the early 1990s the financial architecture exercise has lurched from one crisis to the next, with each set of proposals attempting to address the causes of the previous financial meltdown. (One of the emeritus members of the G30, Peter Kenen, likened the participants to generals preparing to fight the last war). In any event, the last big set of changes occurred in the wake of the Asian financial crisis in 1997/8 and left us with the G20, the Financial Stability Forum and a collection of "best practices" standards for insurance, accounting and securities, among other things.

Since then, however, the whole movement has largely been on hold. This is difficult to avoid given that, once the last crisis fades from memory, our political leaders get distracted by other issues. Besides, the economy recovered nicely from the mild recession in 2001 and things were looking up! Well, no more. The report from the G30 signals to me that the financial architecture exercise has received a new jolt of life. I'll have more on the actual content of the recommendations a little later. For now, it's enough to note that the renewed debate over the health of the financial architecture is long overdue and, in my view at least, a very welcome prospect.