Biology provides insights into recent banking crisis
FEB 18, 2011
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.025071
Guardian : Biology is providing surprising insights into the financial crisis that brought the banking system to its knees, according to Ehsan Masood, editor of Research Fortnight . Over a period of several weeks, Masood worked with biologists who were advising the Bank of England on how to reform global finance, as part of a documentary for BBC Radio 4. Ecologist and former government chief scientific adviser Robert May and others made the case that the most stable ecosystems are those with a diversity of species; less stable ecosystems have less diversity and a higher degree of connectedness between species. Their results, published in Nature , revealed that the banking system was relatively homogeneouswith many banks having similar characteristics and doing the same thingsand also super-connected.
© 2011 American Institute of Physics
