The Bracken column is named after Brendan Bracken, the founding editor of The Banker in 1926 and chairman of the modern-day Financial Times from 1945 to 1958.The consensus explanation for the global financial crisis is that reckless lending to high-risk borrowers in the US created the credit crunch. This personalises the crisis (bonus-driven behaviour) and simplifies the solution (more state regulation). But this diagnosis is false and the consequent remedy would not prevent the next property boom and bust.