Broken

Cracks in the glass of a public clock in San Francisco. In 2014, Bank of America paid close to US$17 billion (that’s 17,000,000,000) in fines and reliefs for its role in the subprime mortgage crisis. The crisis claimed financial market titans like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, and led to the greatest recession since World War II, effects of which many economies are still grappling with today. The aftermath of the crisis yielded a sea of literature enough to rival two decades of Italian soap opera, rife with details on corporate greed, lax lawmakers, toothless watchdog agencies, broken financial systems.

Only time will tell whether the lessons from the crisis endure, of if the cracks are a sign of worse things to come.