It is worth listening to Dr Mark Carney's second Reith Lecture if you want an introduction to the 2007/8 credit credibility crash. I would suggest reading Dr Cable's "The Storm" for a fuller account, though.
Unfortunately, Dr Carney tells the story of the 2008 crash from the centre of the transatantic financial system. He does not point out that those nations whose major banks (including those of his native Canada) had not invested in the inverted pyramid of dodgy assets which brought down so many institutions emerged relatively unscathed. The further away a banking system was from Wall Street, the sounder it was. Well might a finance minister from Singapore ask: "What global financial crisis?".
He was right to point to a widespread mistrust of experts as a result of the crash. However, there are experts and experts. Vince Cable was more than a theoretical economist; he had experience of managing the treasury of a multi-national oil company and of an African republic. Gillian Tett may not have known about the movement of money, but as an anthropologist she knew about the behaviour of tribes, including the tribe of Wall Street financiers. Both, together with a few economists from outside the classical pale, warned of what was to come.
In his proposed solution Dr Carney frequently uses the words "we" and "ours" without explaining who "we" are. Clearly, it would need a combination of the international regulatory bodies, national governments and federations like the EU to agree on a plan of action. One fears that the US-dominated interenational money transfer system would find it against its interests to adopt Dr Carney's solutions, good for the financial security of all of us though they may be.
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