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The Obama administration has been pressing for new rules to police those nebulous financial instruments known as derivatives, which were blamed for magnifying last year's financial crisis. The famous investor Warren Buffett has called them 'financial weapons of mass destruction'. Last week, the lower House of the US Congress passed a bill to tighten their regulation. Critics, though, say the proposals have been watered down, thanks to ferocious industry lobbying, and fading momentum for change, as the markets recover. Plans for European regulation are due to be unveiled soon.

The opposition has come not just from the financial industry but from other companies which use over-the-counter derivatives to insure themselves from changes in the price of currencies and commodities. One such company is the National Grid, one of the world's largest energy utility groups with operations in the UK and the US. Malcolm Cooper its Global Tax and Treasury Director says that the new regulation of derivatives is 'a sledgehammer to crack a nut' and would cause uncertainty and perhaps extra cost for his company.

But Doug Elliott of the Brookings Institution says derivatives contributed a large part of the financial crisis and the new regulation may require some sacrifice of efficiency for their users.