Inside Investment: Bring out your dead

Zombie banks are stalking the global economy, choking off credit to viable businesses. The solution, writes Lincoln Rathnam, is a straightforward separation of the good from the bad.

For years it was received wisdom to fret about buccaneering hedge funds, their extreme leverage and exotic and complex derivative strategies, and the threat they posed to the stability of the financial system. We were right about the riskiness of some of their strategies, and one-third of their kind are expected to disappear below the stormy seas of volatility this year. Many of the survivors are hors de combat, having struck the Jolly Roger and limped back to their secret coves, there to deleverage and lick their doubloons.

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