This is the grim story of how, in the 1980s, bankers forgot Aesop's fable of the dog with the bone. Of how, by coveting their neighbour's business rather than nurturing their own, bankers lost their reputations, their profits and a fabulous amount of their customers' money. Unfortunately for all of us, such enormous sums cannot simply disappear. As the banks struggle to restore their solvency we, taxpayers, customers or shareholders, will have to shoulder the cost of an extraordinary string of financial disasters. In this book, the author analyzes the banking revolution in which he was intimately involved. In conclusion, he offers some hope that current banking losses will not trigger a world depression, as they did in the 1930s, but he does suggest that this new crisis will force banking reform onto the political agenda.