Fifteen years ago this month, the global financial system was in turmoil. Banks were on the point of collapse and were only saved by a mixture of state ownership, injections of capital and frenetic efforts by central banks to pump cheap money into the system.
Gordon Brown was Britain’s prime minister at the time and won praise for the leadership he showed in preventing what was already destined to be a severe worldwide recession into something much worse. Even so, it was a close-run thing.
