Back in 2005, Raghuram Rajan, then economic counselor at the International Monetary Fund, stood up in front of the annual meeting of prominent economists and bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyo., and gave a presentation that his listeners could never have expected. The U.S. investor community was reveling in the high growth and stable financial conditions then prevalent around the world, but Rajan had examined global financial markets and come to a very different opinion. He argued that increasingly complex markets, which spewed out complicated instruments like credit-default swaps and mortgage-backed securities in ever greater quantities, had made the global financial system a riskier place, not less so as many believed. Such comments were considered near blasphemy at the time, and Rajan’s audience didn’t take him very seriously.
via A Global Financial Guru Who Predicted the Crisis of 2008 Says More Turmoil May Be Coming | TIME.
