As well as being the 10th anniversary of the failure of Lehman Brothers, today is the 4th anniversary of the official launch of my book Banking in Crisis: The Rise and Fall of British Banking Stability, 1800 to the Present. Prior to 2008, I had almost given up writing about the history of banking stability - people weren't interested. Banking crises were merely of historical curiosity and therefore perceived to be irrelevant. 2008 changed that. All of a sudden, people wanted to know about past crises and historical banking stability. I was asked to speak to bankers and academics and out of these talks Banking in Crisis was conceived.
If you are unfamiliar with Banking in Crisis, here is the blurb from the back of the book:
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.
