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Name and blame.

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorGent, Jeremy
PositionLetter to the editor

Congratulations on an excellent April issue. I agree with the points that D A Townsend made in his letter: the risks associated with the US sub-prime mortgage market could have been predicted. There can be no excuse, because the UK economy has been led by the financial services industry for 30 years and a huge level of expertise has built up in that time. It is very irritating when a company spokesman, civil servant or politician says that the crisis could never have been forecast. The warnings were loud and clear, but not heeded --as your "Scupper club" article explained when it invited us to sift through the wreckage and apportion responsibility.

Although it was problems with the sub-prime market that finally brought matters to a head, the situation was symptomatic of a malaise affecting the whole industry. The regulators could not come to terms with what was going on in a complex market, with its securitised loans, credit default swaps, collateralised debt obligations and derivatives, which could all end up in hedge funds containing largely unregulated capital. It is equally clear that the traders didn't know what was inside the wrappers of these products.

The biggest myth of all is that we have a financial...

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