Watching while the economy burned
Imagine if firefighters hoped that fires would just burn themselves out instead of taking preventative action: that’s what our regulators did as the economic crisis caught hold
Could it happen again? This is the thought that went through my head, as I waited for the first question from the panel at the banking inquiry last Thursday morning. During the previous few weeks, I spent lots of late nights going through articles, books and documentary evidence written since 2000 on how an economic catastrophe builds. It’s funny how things seem so obvious in hindsight, but back then it was not clear ...
