Was the financial crisis wasted? | Howard Davies

While regulation has been strengthened since the crisis, its implementation remains patchy

As the 10th anniversary of the start of the global financial crisis approaches, a wave of retrospective reviews is bearing down on us. Many of them will try to answer the big question: has the financial system been fundamentally reformed, so that we can be confident of preventing a repeat of the dismal and destructive events of 2008-09, or has the crisis been allowed to go to waste?

There will be no consensus answer to that question. Some will argue that the post-crisis reforms, especially those concerning banks' capital requirements, have gone too far, and that the costs in terms of output have been too high. Others will argue that far more must be done, that banks need far higher capital, and possibly, as the proponents of a recent Swiss referendum argued, that banks should lose their ability to create money.

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