This is the right time to tell the story of how I nearly started a banking crisis. In the summer of 2007 I started work at Credit Suisse, as the tremors of the credit crisis were building. I finished a long day’s work with an interview with Bloomberg TV USA where the topic of conversation was an alarming sell-off in banking stocks. At the time I thought I was being very careful with my wording, stating that the ‘market is treating banks as if they were toxic’. Given the broad based denial of an impending financial crisis, such a remark was – whilst measured – a step well beyond the consensus.
To my misfortune the Bloomberg new headline writers picked up on it. By the time I had crossed London on my way home, my Blackberry (remember those) was buzzing with messages and emails. The headline writers had taken my remark and turned it into the headline ‘Credit Suisse says banks are toxic’.
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