When a banker invites a regulator to a meeting on a mountainside, the regulator gets suspicious. At 5000 feet, “cliff effect” takes on a whole new meaning. That’s one of the reasons why I am pleased to have so many distinguished witnesses here today. While Douglas Flint may have had terminal velocity in mind for me, I am more interested in discussing the prospects of the global and British economies achieving escape velocity. In physics, escape velocity refers to the speed necessary to escape from a planet’s gravitational pull. The economic analogue is the momentum necessary for an economy to escape from the many ... (full story)