Ten years after Lehmans, it’sas if we’ve learned nothing from the crash | Aditya Chakrabortty

Claims that the finance sector brings jobs and revenue were exposed as a sham - and the rest of us inherited a legacy of debt

August 2005, and the people who steer the world economy gather in the mountains of Wyoming. Flying in are finance ministers and central bank chiefs. In front of this global elite, the International Monetary Fund's chief economist will sound the gravest warning of his life. Raghuram Rajan must try to avert a catastrophe, yet as he leaves home he tells his wife, "Either this talk will make me or I'll look a fool for evermore."

The summit is supposed to be one big leaving bash for Alan Greenspan, stepping down after nearly two decades running the US Federal Reserve. "We were all competing to say how great a central banker he had been," Rajan told me in an interview for a Radio 4 programme to be aired this month. He'd even begun researching a presentation about "all the wonderful things that had happened" in finance under Greenspan's reign. Except the closer he looked, the more frightened he became.

Voters moaned about politicians looking and sounding the same, but for Wall Street, it was a huge plus

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