Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Ten years after Lehman’s fall, how close is the next crash?

issue 15 September 2018

Our cinema is showing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and I’m reminded of a remark attributed to Mark Twain, that ‘history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes’. On 3 October 2008, three weeks after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, treasury secretary Hank Paulson’s $700 billion bailout for the US banking system was passed into law at the very hour when I was watching the original Mamma Mia! movie and observing the impact of a mass inoculation of feelgood on a crowd battered by frightening financial news.

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