Hilton’s article ends with this paragraph:
When Banco Santander’s Brazilian banking business [sic] [Banco Santander Brasil SA] floated this week, it achieved a market value greater than the entire operations of Deutsche Bank or Société Générale.

And he concludes with Frankly, I just don’t believe that [...]. An emerging markets bubble perhaps?

Why is so strange to Mr. Hilton? The decline of the US and the UK or the rise of one of the world’s fastest growing and developing economies?

Being from a country whose banking system is in chaos this statement in his article this week borders the ridicule:

When you look across the world at how different countries with different regulatory structures have coped with the current financial crisis, there is no model that seems consistently to have performed better than any other.

How about looking at one country that is not dilapidating public money into its banks? I would suggest looking at Spain. The only reason why the banks Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley are not rescued with tax payers money like all the other big and medium-sized banks in the UK is that they were bought by a Spanish bank, Santander. And the Santander could spare the cash because it is subject to a regulatory system that remains unrivalled to this date.

Even the Financial Times, never a suspect of acknowledging any economical success south of the Pyrenees and the Alps, praised the efficiency and discipline of the Spanish regulatory system back in October 2008.