The Changes Brought by 2008

The Changes Brought by 2008

12. Populism

The financial crisis deepened the sense of being left behind felt by many in the old economies of the West. Made unemployed by the recession they waved goodbye to their savings and became easy picking for old and new populists on the nationalist right. The far-right parties and exponents such as U.S. President Donald Trump, French politician Marine Le Pen or Germany's AfD party try to invoke a utopia of a world where the old nation states are fully sovereign and free to erect trade barriers if they so wish.

13. Female Investors

The failure to stop the rot in 2008 was a failure of the self-proclaimed experts – male experts who couldn’t foresee the problems. The revelation of how badly the high-risk approach failed opened for the thesis that a more sustainable investment strategy, favored by the typical female banker, would have fared better. Investors still are mainly male, but women have become more prominent both as clients and as investment experts.

14. Advice Has Its Price

The advice given by a bank to its clients used to be very convenient for customers, because it seemingly came for free. The banks hid the costs by selling complex products. As those vehicles crashed, the banks were forced to start charging a fee for their advice – also because technology started to squeeze their margins.

Charging for advice may have increased the transparency within the industry but many banks so far failed to show that their performance is worth the charges.