Can Banks Be Made Safe?

Abstract

During the years leading up to FinCR, traditional structures that had held the power of finance in check and channelled it to socially useful purposes lost their grip. Equally, conventional ways of assuring reasonable financial stability — whether by good risk-management, adequate capital, conservative provisioning, or regulatory oversight — had proved to be weak defences against the forces unleashed by globalization, innovation and the over-confidence bred by the long economic boom and ample liquidity.

In the last two chapters we critically assessed the policies of the western governments towards the twin issues of global imbalances and reserve currencies. They also faced a third, even more pressing, challenge — the collapse of much of their banking and financial system. How had this disaster happened and what could be done about it?