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Tackling global financial meltdowns is ‘firefighting with a water pistol’
Global market analyst Herma Koornwinder warns about the failings of our financial systems which stand in the way of sustainability and lead to crashes and crises
This summer marks ten years since the start of the recovery following the devastating worldwide financial crash of 2008 which might never have happened if warnings and analytical tools provided by a lone Dutch global markets analyst had been heeded.
Remarkably, an important new book, Firefighting: The financial crisis and its lessons (Profile Books, April 2019) bears out such a claim for the work of Herma Koornwinder who, from as long ago as 1987, when she warned that the infamous Black Monday crash was coming, has sounded the alert about outdated investment models and, from the early 1990s, the unpreparedness of the financial world for what she then described as the coming ‘tsunami’ of the digital revolution.
Today she continues to express concerns publicly about the failings of banks, pension funds and other financial institutions which prevent the creation of a sustainable system and contributed to the global financial crisis.
