Sarkozy put pressure on us,” reports a nonplussed banker to a colleague in a recent French-newspaper cartoon, referring to the French president’s campaign against financial-industry bonuses. “And then what?” his colleague asks. “And then nothing,” is the reply.

After a year’s worth of summits, lectures from the French and the Germans, vigorous intellectual debate from the British, and thousands of pages of commission reports, the French cartoon may sum it up best. The way national governments regulate their financial sectors hasn’t changed significantly anywhere, nor is it likely to. The reason: while everybody sees the problem with an unsustainable government-subsitdized financial industry, coddled by a policy that protects firms that...