Professor William Black:

The assurance was preposterous given what the regulators knew, because, for example, the regulators knew all of the things that are summarised in the Nyberg report. They knew about the stagnation that people have asked me about. They knew the difference with rents. They knew that the asset book was terrible and had pathetic underwriting.

They knew very large numbers of things. Your regulators did an enormous disservice to the nation. I do not put primary blame on them. I certainly agree it is the banks - more precisely the bankers - to follow my own chiding and I will chide myself. I meant bankers, not banks. The bankers knew these things and the senior regulators assuredly had the facts to be able to do vastly better analytics.