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Lookup NU author(s): Professor TT Thiruvallore Thattai, Professor Joanna Gray
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This chapter compares the legal response to mid-19th century banking failures in the UK with the regulatory responses to the systemic banking crisis that began in 2008. Our focus is on the ways in which concerns about the stability of the broader financial system were articulated in the accounts that emerged in the aftermath of each crisis, and the role played by regulators and courts in the response to each crisis. We focus, in particular, on how the various official narratives of each crisis and subsequent “Lessons Learned” Reviews sought to attribute and allocate responsibility for endangering financial stability in the events leading up to each episode of instability. We argue that the responses to the Victorian crises were as concerned with systemic issues as the modern ones. Official responses to financial instability during these decades - and particularly the 1850s - reveals a clear understanding of and concern about systemic risk and contagion, and the importance of bolstering the system through regarding the quality and character of management within individual institutions as the primary line of defense. Despite the similar understanding, the Victorians framed very different prophylactic institutional reforms to curb the likelihood of future systemic shocks. We juxtapose the differing responses to episodes of financial crisis and failure, which are so distant in time and yet demonstrate remarkably similar demands both for accountability at law for the past and for law to help ensure a safer future, and argue that there is sound reason to play close attention to the lessons the Victorian approach might have to offer.
Author(s): Arvind TT, Gray J, Wilson S
Editor(s): Hollow,M; Akinbami,F; Michie,R
Publication type: Book Chapter
Publication status: Published
Book Title: Complexity And Crisis In The Financial System: Critical Perspectives on American and British Banking
Year: 2016
Print publication date: 31/01/2016
Acceptance date: 08/12/2014
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
URL: http://www.e-elgar.com/shop/complexity-and-crisis-in-the-financial-system
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9781783471324
