Richard Jeffrey: They're forever blowing bubbles

Given the nature of the financial crisis and the depth of the accompanying recession, the recovery process was always going to be a hard grind.

There were a number of aspects of bad behaviour in the economy we might hope will not be repeated for another few cycles. An obvious focus of attention has been the role played by the banks, which overextended their balance sheets through a mixture of poor quality lending, extreme financial engineering and ill-judged corporate transactions. Very often, banks are cast as the bad guys, with the authorities forever trying to curb (with varying degrees of success) their all-too-animal spirits. However, banks perform their role within a policy and regulatory framework established by the autho...