Mr. Karl Deeter:

I know the Deputy’s vintage and I know that he also knows that the building societies regularly ran out of money which put significant financial pressure on people. They could not close on loans and there was credit rationing beyond what was reasonable. One of the side-effects of that was an increase in tenement-like conditions because when people could not buy a house they had to live elsewhere, typically with family members. That is when banks got into the game.

Regulators under Basel 1 encouraged securitisations of loans and the ability to take them off, for banks to make the next tranche of lending. That was not the banks. That was regulators. In the narrative, beating up on the banks is a great theme and will never run out of steam but there were lots of different forces in play.