The fraud case launched by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Goldman Sachs has potential ramifications too numerous and too profound to judge. One of the most immediate is that it appears to have helped create a climate in which the passage into US law of a devastatingly anti-derivatives Bill is possible.

At the beginning of last week, Republicans, with the aid of a rogue Democrat senator, twice blocked by the slenderest of margins a Bill that would have radically altered the banking business in the US.