The editors of Bloomberg News have written an editorial with the headline “Don’t Drag Banks Into the Culture Wars”. In it there is a fair amount of wisdom, but unfortunately there is also what could charitably be called a misunderstanding that risks undoing that wisdom. If we don’t want banks to be a front in the culture war we need to face up to banks and bank regulations as they actually are, not as we wish they were, and there is where it gets messy.