[on the morning of October 7, 2008] ... ‘I remember being summoned out of the meeting to talk to Tom McKillop and he said things were just terrible, that money was pouring out of the door.
‘He said, “What are you going to do about it?” Which I thought was a quite remarkable thing to say – what are YOU going to do about it!
‘I said to him, “We’re almost ready to go. How long can you last?” I thought he might say maybe a couple of days, and what really shook me was that he said, “Well maybe two or three hours and that’s it.”
‘What was in my mind at that point is that if people thought the biggest bank in the world had failed, there would not be a bank in the western world that would be safe.
‘The risk I have always seen is that people forget just how close we came to a complete collapse and the thing about a collapse of the banks is that it wouldn’t just have been the banks in ruins, it would have been complete economic and therefore social collapse. People without money can do nothing – you can’t buy your petrol, you can’t buy your food, anything.
‘It was rather like a nuclear war, you know you think it will never happen. And then someone tells you that a missile’s been launched. It was very scary. That moment will stick with me for the rest of my days.’
