This final chapter focuses on three interrelated themes. The first section considers, with particular reference to the UK, the nature of the recovery now under way in many Western countries in the wake of the Great Recession. The second takes stock of what, if anything, has been done about the ‘too big to fail’ banks. And the third section asks whether the crisis is really over.

A slow recovery

Several years on from the crash, and it is clear that there has been a return to growth in much of the Western world, including the US, UK, and even the Eurozone.1 The recovery has been slow in coming, and there may well be an underlying reason for this, as set out below.

But the nature and timing of recovery also depends on country-specific factors, and this is a task for specialists to comment on and evaluate. I confine myself here to presenting some data relating to the nature of the recovery occurring in the country with which I am most familiar, the UK.

At the time of writing (September 2015), what I think can best be described as a fragile recovery has been in place in the UK for some two-and-a-half years, with economic output at last surpassing its precrisis peak, and unemployment falling to 1.91 million, or 5.8 per cent of the adult population, in the three months to the end of November 2014, according to the ONS. When the great financial crash hit, the unemployment rate was a little over 5 per cent, or 1.6 million. Towards the end of 2009, it was almost a million higher, at 2.5 million, or 8 per cent. Unemployment peaked at almost 2.7 million at the end of 2011.

The pain of the recession has also been spread widely through lower wages,2 although real wages, too, were 1 per cent higher in the final quarter of 2014 than a year earlier.