By Martin Wolf

"You really don’t like bankers, do you?” The question, asked by a former banker I met last week, set me back. “Not at all,” I replied. “Some of my best friends are bankers.” While true, it was not the whole truth. I may like many bankers, but I rather dislike banks. I recognise their necessity, but fear their irresponsibility. Worse, they are irresponsible partly because they know they are necessary.

My attitude to the banking industry is not a prejudice. It is a “postjudice”. My first experience with out-of-control banking was when I watched the irresponsible lending that led to the devastating developing-country debt crises of the 1980s.

The world has witnessed well over 100 significant banking crises over the past three decades. The authorities have even had to rescue important parts of the US financial system – on most counts, the world’s most sophisticated – four times during the same period: from the developing country debt and “savings and loan” crises of the 1980s to the commercial property crisis of the early 1990s and now the subprime and securitised-credit crisis of 2007-08.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Debate from our panel of economists appears below.

January 16, 2008 6:21am in Economists | Comment