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Intelligence Squared

Ten Years On: The Financial Crisis and the State of Modern Capitalism

Intelligence Squared

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.21.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2018

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s been ten years since we saw suddenly unemployed Lehman Brothers bankers carrying their possessions out of their offices in boxes; since whole neighbourhoods in suburban America turned into empty ghost towns; since the British and American governments pumped trillions into the banking system, saving some institutions and abandoning others. The crash of 2008 and 2009 shook the very foundations of modern capitalism. So where are we today? Although we may have been spared a second Great Depression, post-crisis productivity has flatlined and the last decade has seen Britain’s worst pay squeeze since the nineteenth century. And according to some, the seeds of today’s political upheavals, from Brexit to Trump to the Corbyn surge, were sown during the 2008 crash, which irreparably damaged public trust in the establishment and its institutions. To look back at this critical moment for the global economy and examine its repercussions today, Intelligence Squared brought together a panel of the country’s top economic experts: Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England during the crash and its aftermath; acclaimed UCL Economics Professor Mariana Mazzucato, who recently advised Jeremy Corbyn on industrial strategy; and Torsten Bell, Director of the Resolution Foundation, a think tank focusing on improving the living standards of those on low incomes. Chairing the discussion will be the BBC’s economics editor Kamal Ahmed. Has enough been done to regulate the banks and protect our economy from future shocks? Is it only a matter of time before we face a new, even worse crash? And did we let the crisis go to waste by failing to rethink the system and rebalance the economy away from financial services? Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:45.0

Welcome everybody. I'm Kammal Ahmed. I'm the economics editor of the BBC and let it never be said that economics is not the new rock stars

0:57.0

because we have three people here who have filled out this large auditorium to

1:02.3

discuss the small issue of the state of capitalism no less,

1:07.8

ten years on from the financial crisis. Now I became business editor of the Telegraph in 2009 and I remember meeting

1:18.3

Bob Diamond, the chief executive of Barclays Bank, a he asked me a year later when I thought all this would be over.

1:30.0

And I drew myself up to my full height and I thought, well Bob, I've been a couple more years of this rather miserable economic news and I'm sure we'll be back to proper strong growth.

1:41.0

And here we are ludicrous economic forecast as ever by me which was

1:46.6

totally wrong and we're still here 10 years later dealing frankly with the funk of the financial crisis.

1:54.6

Now of course there have been some big trends for 2018 which look a little bit more

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