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Saturday, July 28, 2012

Typhoid Mary and the Spanish banking crisis

There is an episode of a BBC series called Filthy Cities about New York which - in between a whole series of rather ghastly stories and images from its murky past - quickly retells the story of a cook called Mary who - being immune to typhoid fever and not prone to washing her hands after sanitary (or in her case unsanitary) stops - succeeds in killing off quite a few of her clients by presenting them with Salmonella-enterica infected food. The authorities identified her as the cause of the illness and threw her in jail, but at some point let her go free when she promised not to do it again. A few years later, the woman we now know as "Typhoid Mary" was back in the kitchen, killing even more people. My gut reaction was probably the same as that of most people: indignation. How could she?!? Didn't she care?

I stored this little factoid away as a draft blog entry, and didn't really know what to do with it until I saw  the president of the Board of Directors of two large Spanish banks answer questions about the financial crisis during a public inquiry. Both were asked the big question: how could this have happened? One answered that at the time the most important decisions were taken, no one really had an inkling of the possible problems and of the fact that they were systemic, not incidental, and that this was at least partially due to the fact that no one wanted to see the warning signs. He was also very careful not to point the finger of blame at any specific person or group. The other only seemed concerned with blaming others for the failure, and showed no indication of remorse or of caring for the people who were now paying for the mistakes made.

I agree that we should try to avoid pointing the finger at any specific person or group, but I can't help thinking that things would be a lot better if we had more people who do care and do their best, and get rid of the Typhoid Marys of the finance world.

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