It is still the simplest things that are most likely to really bring you down.

Sir John Kay correctly says that “In times of complexity common sense must prevail” April 9 and among the danger present in going down the road of further sophistication he quotes “Goodhart’s law: as soon as reliance is placed on relationship, the significance of relationship changes”. As I see it old Murphy’s Law might be just as relevant because entering into a formal relationship with the credit rating agencies empowering them to advise the markets so much on where the risks were, was just a disaster in waiting.

In this times of complexity let us not forget that the prime detonator of our current crisis were just some simple mortgages to the subprime sector and that were so lousily awarded that anyone should have been able to see them for what they were, had they only used their own eyes and not some old data sets or fancy models.