The financial crisis is over or so the Bank of England reckons. The Financial Policy Committee's latest Financial Stability Report noted (with some understatement) that while there was "a period of heightened risk aversion and retrenchment from risk-taking as financial institutions, businesses and households sought to repair their balance sheets" after the great financial crisis, "the system has now moved out of that period". Our banks are back to being "resilient"; credit is available again; and all is well.
There is something in this. The UK's banks have moved most of the way through their deleveraging cycle.They all scraped through their stress tests and kind Mark Carney won't make them raise any more capital as a buffer against future disasters. But while the most acute bit of the crisis might be behind us in the UK (and in America, where interest rates might actually rise relatively soon), it is ludicrous to even think of suggesting that this crisis is anywhere near over: its consequences are still being felt in economies and markets everywhere.
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