I visited my accountant recently, who has on his wall an old print of London, which depicts a blizzard of church spires. What do we – quite literally – look up to these days? Tower 42, Canada Tower, the Gherkin, the Shard…most of which are cathedrals to the financial institutions they house. Aspiring? Inspiring? I can’t help thinking that a society’s tallest buildings say something about what that community holds most dear. Read More
So what went wrong? Liquidity. Why? Exposure to sub-prime assets through complex financial instruments designed to reduce risk made banks chary of lending to each other. The knock-on effect of this was a collapse in confidence, as signalled through stock market indices. Self-righteous hindsight bemoans capital adequacy – which might have increased liquidity – and the hubris that led to over confidence in secularisation. But schadenfreude won’t restore confidence. Read More
