"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive - But to be young was very heaven!" Two hundred years after poet William Wordsworth’s take on the French revolution, a new generation of renegades decided to globalise the financial system.

Under the benign gaze of US Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, banks competed to originate and securitise loans across the world with a view to boosting revenues, and by implication, bonuses.