FT Guide to Banking

1

What is banking?

We were all angry at the behaviour of the bankers in the period leading up to the 2008 crisis. What were their leaders thinking? Didn’t they have a brain between them? Millions of people thrown out of work, the misery of a very long recession. And all for what? Because some bankers could not see beyond their next bonus round.

Since then there has been much talk (and some action) to modify the rules for bankers, to make the system safer for the rest of us. In this way the users of banks can be reassured and governments are less likely to have to provide the money to rescue those considered too important to fail.

And yet despite the shock and the anger and the all-too apparent dangers that badly run banks can present to ...