In 1997 it seemed that things in the City could only get better. The incoming Labour government gave the Bank of England independence, it introduced a state of the art system of light-touch regulation; & it signalled that it was happy to see finance let rip.
For ten years everything went according to plan. Buoyed by a strong pound & cheered on by an excitable media, the bankers became the heroes of the age. The City embarked on a giddy programme of innovation, asset prices boomed & Britain seemed at last to have shaken off its post-war malaise. Politicians took to lecturing their European counterparts on the need to deregulate, to focus on shareholder value & to dispense with an outdated & discredited social market model.
And then in the summer of 2007 everything began to collapse. One household name after another