From the early 1980s, I either witnessed close-up or reported in detail on Each Major Financial and Economic Crisis as it unfolded, including the 1987 stock market crash, the 1990s recession, sterling's ignominious exit from the European exchange rate mechanism, the problems that engulfed the Lloyd's insurance market-the so-called LMX spiral-when nobody knew where the risks really lay, and the bail-out in the late 1990s of the massive Us hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, which happened because the Clinton Administration and, importantly, Wall Street, did not know where the liability merry-go-round would stop and how much damage could be done to the global financial system.