Early reports of the committee’s deliberations sent the class-action bar into conniptions and likewise provoked a series of articles in The New York Times decrying the whole project as a plot against investors and the public interest. What’s more, the new Democrat Congress is likely to find business bashing more appealing than restricting litigation.

On the other hand, Chuck Schumer, the New York Senator who became a hero to Democrats after masterminding their national campaign to regain control of the Senate, endorsed the general case for reform in a much-buzzed-about opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal co-authored with Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York City.

The latter, a nominal Republican, knows much about financial mobility himself as pioneer of the "Bloomberg screen", which lets traders work efficiently from Malibu to Hong Kong. For these two officials, the menace of capitalist flight is deeply local: the securities trade contributes more than 20 per cent of wages in New York City and nearly the same share of taxes paid to New York State.

New York's other highly visible elected official, Hillary Clinton, has conspicuously kept her distance from the cause of reform. Could one of her constituents perhaps approach her, before the tumbleweeds arrive?

Walter Olson edits Overlawyered.com and PointOfLaw.com and is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute