The current Great Recession is an example of an economic event that has its origins decades earlier. After a long post-war regime of close bank regulation, reflecting the bank failures of the Great Depression, the UK financial sector was ‘liberated’ by Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s by what was called the ‘Big Bang’. The Big Bang helped to release banks from their role as strict disciplinarians imposing prudence on themselves and their clients, and increasingly turned them into hard-sell purveyors of credit.
