In London, this is the Economist. You'll listen to tasting menu and invigorating shot of

our favourite stories to set you up for the week. I'm Ann McElvoy, Head of Economist

Radio, and coming up, why the label made in space is no longer science fiction. We're

not to build your capital city, and a taste of our new series, The Secret History of the

Future. But first, I'll cover this week, Mark Ten years since Lehman Brothers filed for

bankruptcy. It's collapsed, boiled over into the global financial crisis, the seismic

effects of which are still being felt today. Trade fell in every country on which the

World Trade Organization reports. Credit supply to the real economy fell by perhaps

two trillion dollars in America alone. To limit their indebtedness, governments resorted

to austerity. It turbocharged today's popular surge, raising questions about income inequality,

job insecurity and globalization. But it also changed the financial system.

The question is, did it change it enough? First, the good. Banks must now fund themselves

with more equity and less debt. They depend less on trading to make money and on short-term

wholesale borrowing to finance their activities. On both sides of the Atlantic, banks are subject

to regular stress tests and must submit plans for their own orderly demise. Revamped pay

policies should prevent a repeat of the injustice of bankers taking public money while pocketing

huge pay packets. But we argued that there are other lessons from

2008 that the world has so far failed to learn.

The precise shape of the next financial crisis is unclear, otherwise it would surely be

avoided. But in one way or another, it is likely to involve property. Rich world governments

have never properly reconciled a desire to boost home ownership with the need to avoid

dangerous booms in household credit as in the mid-2000s. In America, the reluctance to

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