at the time the sense of self-confidence restored was real enough and it left an intellectual legacy. It was the moment when the first surveys of the crisis began to be written. The most optimistic insisted that The System Worked.47 Another declared that 2008 had turned out to be The Status Quo Crisis.48 The more pessimistic version argued that we lived in a Hall of Mirrors.49 Precisely because the crisis had been contained so early and effectively, it had produced a false sense of stability.
