What does the implosion of markets teach us about ethics? Britain's Business In The Community business development director Mallen Baker has some interesting insights in his piece Financial ethics: Learning from chaos after a collapse of trust.

"It has been created by companies that began to believe in a form of business where trust and integrity were naive, fringe concepts that played no part in the process of wealth creation. And yet, the whole edifice came crashing down when trust disappeared overnight, when the banks didn't believe each other and refused to do business together. There are two parts to this - the way that companies are owned, and the way that the financial markets created products that had no connection to real value creation.".

Baker says this leads to two conclusions: creating a different ownership structure for business, and improving accountability so that businesses reveal exactly how they make their money.

If followed through, it raises a number of questions. Where does that leave investors? Should long-term investors have greater power than speculators? And who should appoint directors? Should it be just shareholders? Or should regulators appoint some?

I am not giving any answers here. All I am saying is that Baker's arguments raise some important questions that need to be debated.