At the end of the riveting film The Big Short, now showing in Ireland and based on Michael Lewis’s book that charted the spectacular fraud and avarice that led to the US financial collapse in 2008, the narrator makes a joking assertion that such was the level of malpractice underpinning the economic crash in the US, safeguards were put in place to ensure it would never happen again and those responsible were held accountable. Immediately after that we are told the truth: that nothing changed and no one was held accountable.