Afternoon Must-Read: Barry Eichengreen: Why Our Success in Managing the 2008 Banking Crisis Was the Mother of Failure

…that our very success in avoiding a repeat of the worst crisis in 80 years means that we are likely to experience another such crisis in considerably less than 80 years. Because we avoided complete collapse of the banking and financial system like that which occurred in the 1930s, the prevailing system was not discredited to the same extent. The opponents of financial reform were able to regroup and mount resistance to more far-reaching regulatory action of a sort that I’m convinced is still necessary to limit risks to financial stability. This is not to argue that we would have been better off letting the banking and financial system collapse in 2008-9. But the irony is that success was also the mother of failure.