The writer is an adjunct lecturer at William & Mary and author of forthcoming book ‘The Confidence Map’With all the attention on Sam Bankman-Fried and the crypto collapse du jour, it feels as if the crowd is missing the big picture.
If we step back and look at the major collapses of organisations over the past five years, they are different from other meltdowns. When the dot.com and housing market bubbles burst, what we witnessed was the failure of institutions that then resulted in a subsequent crisis of confidence in their leaders.
Enron’s demise took down Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, while WorldCom’s failure upended Bernie Ebbers. In 2008, banking failures led to the ousting of bank chief executives. We witnessed a “Lehman moment” rather than a “Fuld finale”.