Can the lessons of the past help us to prevent another banking
collapse in the future? This is the first book to tell the story of the rise
and fall of British banking stability in the past two centuries, and it sheds
new light on why banking systems crash and the factors underpinning banking
stability. John Turner shows that there were only two major banking crises in
Britain during this time: the crisis of 1825–6 and the Great Crash of
2007–8. Although there were episodic bouts of instability in the interim, the
banking system was crisis-free. Why was the British banking system stable for
such a long time and why did the British banking system implode in 2008? In
answering these questions, the book explores the long-run evolution of bank
regulation, the role of the Bank of England, bank rescues and the need to hold
shareholders to account.
The Berkeley Earth Project , an independent study of global warming, has found that the earth has become a degree warmer over the past half century. However, the statistical uncertainty surrounding pre-1920 estimates makes it very hard to say much about long-term trends - click here for graph . This is one of my concerns with the global warming debate - we simply don't have trustworthy long-run data which looks at temperature changes over the last millennium (or two). My second concern with the global warming debate is that it is very hard to prove any sort of casual link between global warming and human activity. The scientists may be able to show correlation between global warming and our production of carbon dioxides etc., but correlation is not causation. My third concern with the debate is that those who are sceptical or agnostic are stereotyped as flat-earthers or intellectually-challenged crackpots. This only stifles debate and the progress of science itself.