Jason makes it sound like Kay’s book is worth reading.

One of the most interesting threads in the books is that many of the regulatory mantras are about the financial intermediaries, not the end users. The drives for transparency and liquidity in particular come in for criticism by Kay. First, the demand for transparency is a sign of the problem

The quoted passage that follows strikes me as very good. I also have argued that non-transparency is in some sense the point of financial intermediation. If I know everything about a bank’s portfolio, then I do not need the bank. I can just buy the portfolio myself.