'The biggest confidence tricl, of all time has nothing to do with social-security fraud, insider dealing or any of the exotic forms of computer-based racl,eteering beloved of magazine and television journalists short of a good story. Two little words sum up the swindle of the century - limited liability.

'This cunning wheeze, dreamed up more than a century ago, is a bigger rip-off than the enclosure movement, colonisation and industrialisation rolled into one. It allows all the benefits of so-called rislHal,ing to flow to the owners of capital whilst passing off on to the community at large all the costs.

'When a giant concern fails, a chain reaction can banluupt smaller and smaller units down the economic ladder right to the individual wort,er. Worse, the liquidation of capital value inevitably pushes up insurance and borrowing costs for everybody else. The innocent pay, the guilty - sorry, the

"entrepreneurs" - wall, free. No such protection is available to the hapless ex-employee of the aforementioned failed giant concern .' The author has taken an extreme view on the nature of limited liability, yet what he describes as a 'confidence trick', society appears to accept. To what extent do you think he is justified in his comments?