A few weeks after Black Monday, the stock market crash of 1987, one Wall Street banker gave a common view of the crisis to Barron’s magazine. “We’re observing the end of an era in two very specific areas,” he said. “First is the uncontrolled deregulation of global financial markets ... The second point is, the mindless commitment of human and financial resources to securitisation has reached its peak and now will contract for the indefinite future.” That he turned out to be entirely wrong illustrates how hard it is to judge the weight of a crisis still under way. The credit crunch is now a year old, but unless a deep real recession follows, it looks like cause for reform rather than revolution in the financial system.

The bogeymen of 1987 were computerised trading – now universal – and equity index futures – now among the largest markets in the world. Many called for the reregulation of the financial sector as a result, but by 1999 Glass-Steagall, the measure that separated US banks and securities traders, had been repealed. It takes more than a crash to change the world.