I have this theory that today's is a ghost newspaper, one that few will see or read, because the entire population is gorged on tryptophan, alcohol and goodwill. This means I can write something obscure without damaging my reputation as a wit, or a half-wit, depending on your view.

So now seems like a good time to talk about the failure of financial regulation. Everyone agrees that we have lately experienced almost nothing but failure in this regard. Banks sold mortgages that sensible regulation would not have allowed. Mr. Madoff allegedly committed acts that a sharper regulatory system, or indeed any regulatory system, might have caught. And so on and so forth.

Similarly, the consensus is that what is needed now is more regulation. Mr. Obama looks set to oversee a wave of regulation that will make the 10 Commandments look like a laissez-faire, do-whatever-you-like policy.

No one (except me) seems willing to start from the premise that regulation is inherently inefficient. And in all the hot air, hand-wringing and general finger-pointing, not a single regulator or regulatory agency has been named as inefficient. Why is that? Let's start with a sort of Regulation 101. The laws of the land are the first base of regulation.

They spell out what businesses and people can and cannot do. They carry with them the force of law, the old troop of bluebottles with truncheons kicking your door down at 3 a.m. and habeussing all over your corpus. But this only seems to apply to ordinary people, not business people. Other than Mr. Madoff, who may allegedly cop for serious jail time, can you name another business person whose recent malfeasance is going to lead him or her to jail? No, you can't.

So the law can be regarded as nothing much more than vague ground rules. European companies have lately been fined hundreds of millions of dollars for price fixing - the practice of groups of companies agreeing to set prices for their goods, rather than competing. Not a single leader of any of these industries has gone to jail either. So that's a little like speeding. Tut tut. Bad boy. Fork it over. Move on (usually at high speed).

Then there are agencies whose job is, nominally, to ensure that businesses stick to the rules. Leading this charge are the auditors, professionals whose job used to be to look at the books and report on a company's financial affairs. This is a group close to my heart; I used to be an auditor, both an external and, later, an internal.

I'll tell you this. Within a day or two of arriving at a business concern, small, medium or gigantic, I could tell you almost the exact extent to which it was cheating. I still can. You develop the nose and then you smell the wrong, and that skill stays with you for life. And that's without looking at the books, where it's all spelled out.

Mr. Madoff, to flog an allegedly dead horse, must have had auditors. And they apparently couldn't spot a missing $50 billion if it stared them in the balance sheet. (In fact, whatever loss may or may not have occurred will prove to be much smaller than $50 billion. You can't lose profits that you didn't make in the first place. I'll expand on that at another time if anyone wants me to.)

It is often said, at least in the insurance industry, that the credit rating agencies are the new regulators. Yet AIG had the best rating available to mankind just five minutes before it found itself $152 billion in the hole. How the rating agencies have the gall to stay in business after that escapes me, so we'll have to leave that there.

Then there's the Securities & Exchange Commission, which regulates publicly-held companies. I could spend pages on that body's regulatory efficiency, but instead let's just sum it up in one word: completely useless. (Extra word free, because it's Christmas week.) The insurance industry, and in particular the Bermuda insurance industry, has fared rather better than most financial communities. It could be because, far from the days when Bermuda regulation was considered "firm but fair", it is now one of the most highly regulated industrial sectors on the planet.

Don't take my word for it. This is Jim Bryce, the leader of IPC Holdings, speaking in an interview for a magazine called Bermuda Re, reprinted here with permission: "There is so much regulation on our business now. In Bermuda, we have the Bermuda Monetary Authority. We have a subsidiary in Dublin, which is overseen by the Irish regulatory authorities. In terms of dealing with brokers, producers and clients in London, we're not subject to direct regulation, but we have an oversight from the Financial Services Authority.

"In terms of the US, we are not regulated by the Insurance Departments, because we do not transact business in the US - but as an "alien" reinsurer, i.e. one outside the jurisdiction of the US regulators, we are deemed to be unregulated. In order to be recognised as valid security, we have to post collateral for loss amounts which we're liable to pay, in order for our clients to take credit in their balance sheets for recoveries from us. Also in the US, where we have clients operating in multiple jurisdictions, we have to comply with each State Insurance Department's requirement for collateral.

"Canada requires 115 percent collateral of any liability, prudently in their view, but redundantly from our perspective. They do that because there may be a movement in the reserve. It may go up or down; they only look at the worst case. We also currently have a requirement in France and Belgium to put up collateral for 100 percent of our liabilities.

"We're a publicly-traded company, so we have the oversight of the Securities & Exchange Commission. We have the constant scrutiny of our securities' analysts. We have two rating agencies: AM Best, primarily for the US, and Standard & Poor's (S&P), primarily for non-US business. If you want to look at raising debt as a surrogate for capital, which we really haven't done yet, you need two debt ratings: an S&P rating and one from Moody's. If we wanted to look at debt or synthetic capital, we'd need a third rating agency.

"We have external auditors. The US authorities, in view of all the financial problems they have had in the US, have imposed the Sarbanes-Oxley requirement, which has substantially increased our costs in terms of financial reporting and the cost of our audit. We have a second set of auditors carrying out Sarbanes-Oxley testing.

"The rating agency regime has now imposed, and I think quite rightly, a more stringent requirement for enterprise risk management, which calls into play a third accounting firm to further advise us in terms of non-conflicts with our existing accounting firm.

"We've also put in place, again quite correctly, a risk officer position, which is a full-time position. We also have a compliance man. We're looking at implementing, even as a very uncomplicated operation, a further position of possibly a full- or part-time internal audit function.

"We are looked at by so many people. We've got layer after layer of regulation, oversight and expense. I would think that we're responding to various jurisdictions, without credit from other jurisdictions. Solvency II, which I think is a fine European initiative, seems to completely overlook the fact that we're already responding to all of these other requirements.

"I'm not disputing the fact that oversight is good, and I'm not criticising any one of those degrees of oversight, but there does come a time when enough is enough. The expense of complying for us affects how we perform a service for our clients, and also the degree to which we obtain a return for our shareholders, because every layer of expense reduces the return on equity we give our shareholders."

IPC is not unusual in this regard. Other companies are subject to all the same regulation and more, if they operate in more countries.

Mr. Madoff was almost as closely watched as Mr. Bryce, but it made no difference, because unlike Mr. Bryce, who's a good egg, Mr. Madoff was allegedly a bad hat. And there's the rub: regulation won't work if bad men and women are determined to hoodwink it.

Why? It has something to do with the calibre of the people who work in various disciplines. Here, I must generalise. Risk-takers work in business, which, despite the endless amount of regulation, requires one to think on one's feet. There often is no rule book for decisions that must be made minute-to-minute. The risk-averse more often work in averting risk, i.e. regulation or government.

Doing is the sharp end; regulating is coming in after the battle and bayonetting the wounded. No rule yet invented will stop someone intent on breaking it. The best regulation can do is to explain how a stable door should be closed, and then close it after the horse has bolted.

Too much regulation of any business practice will kill initiative, while failing to deter the determined. So there's never an adequate amount of regulation. Thus it always has been, and thus it always will be. Regulation is inherently inefficient. QED. End of sermon.

My very best wishes for a happy New Year, but only to those who have read this, my longest column ever, and all of it, at that. You are the wind beneath my keyboard.