Finance: Past, Present and Future

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...

Economics played a major role in the victory of Donald Trump. Rising income and wealth inequality has meant that median incomes in real terms in the U.S. have been stagnant for four decades and those in the middle income deciles of the income distribution have been squeezed. The causes of this inequality have been blamed on global trade agreements, immigration, and off-shoring.  There has also been a hollowing out effect due to technological change – routine jobs such as bank clerks have been computerised – which has had a negative effect on middle class wages. Trump’s constituency is largely comprised of this squeezed middle. The big question about Trump’s economic policy is whether he will stay true to his constituency. If he does, we can expect the rolling back of trade deals, the introduction of tariffs, trade wars with China, and limits on immigration. However, before the world loses sleep over this, we need to remember that Trump is a businessman and his outlandish sugge...