Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Yes, gentlemen and Chair, what I'd like to do is to present two quotes that take a little time, but then give as much time as necessary to the witnesses. So the first quote, gentlemen, I don't expect you to be familiar with this, but the Oxford University Press published an extended article in 1999 by a Peter Englund from the Stockholm School of Economics. The article is called "The Swedish Banking Crisis: Roots and Consequences". And he relied extensively on a paper that was done for the IMF the year before by two analysts. One is a director of research at the World Bank, for the record, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt and Enrica Detragiache. And Professor Englund sums up what they found, and I want to read what he says and just ... you'll be able to take note in your head, it's not very complicated. So to quote:

[This paper] identifies 30 major banking crises from the early 1980s and onwards. Most of these are in developing countries, the main exceptions being three of the Nordic countries (Norway, Finland, and Sweden) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The majority of these crises appear to have followed a common pattern. They have (i) been initiated by deregulatory measures, which have (ii) led to overly rapid credit expansion. This has in turn been followed by (iii) a sustained increase in asset prices, apparently unwarranted by fundamentals (a ‘bubble’). At some point (iv) the bubble has burst, with a dramatic fall in prices and disruption of asset markets (in particular for real estate) and widespread bankruptcies. This has been accompanied by (v) non-performing loans, credit losses, and an acute banking crisis, in many cases intertwined with (vi) a currency crisis. Finally, (vii), a weakened banking sector has inflicted a credit crunch on the private sector, the severity of which has depended on (viii) the government measures taken to salvage the ailing banks.

The point I will put to you, and ask for your comment in a minute gentlemen, after the next quote is, apart from the currency crisis, if those eight factors-----