Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 9 July 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Derek Quinlan:
Well, we ... I can only ... I can't answer for anybody else, Deputy, but, I mean, we were not aware that ... I say hindsight is 20/20 vision, we were not aware how bad things were in 2008 or 2007, in fact. And, as I said in my opening statement there, the sub-prime crisis in America, nobody here could spell "sub-prime", you know, there was no sub ... what was known as sub-prime lending that took place in America ... was taking place in Ireland. And that had a devastating effect on liquidity in the banks and it came very quickly. And, as I quoted from my opening statement, Alan Greenspan, who was 19 years the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said that their own systems didn't forecast the dreadful happening that was going to happen in the financial world.
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