Why the best response to the financial crisis would have been a recession

The authorities’ response to the 2008 financial crisis may have ended up neutering capitalism – the greatest poverty destroying system ever.

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John McDonnell: politics now focuses on wealth redistribution, not wealth creation
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When the world's central banks leapt into action to save the global financial industry in 2008 there was not much discussion about whether that was the right thing to do. Some economists observed that the central banks had shown a bizarre level of incompetence in allowing a credit crunch to turn to crisis on their watch so gambling that they were competent enough to fix it seemed a bit nuts. But for most people, the imperative of avoiding meltdown indeed avoiding any real recession at all trumped these concerns.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.