But there have still been failings, as Mr Haldane freely admits. It is obvious in retrospect that problems were building in the banking sector in 2005-06. Leverage had risen and the regulations of the time served to obscure the nature of the risks the banks were taking. Mr Haldane has emphasised how important banks were in fuelling the crisis in an earlier speech.** Yet in the decade preceding the financial crisis of 2007-08, the minutes of the monetary-policy committee’s meetings suggest that it spent just 2% of its time discussing banks.