I have no qualifications whatsoever in banking, other than my own life experiences. Naively I assumed ‘banking’ looked after itself, or rather that there was proper and sufficient oversight of banking at a national and European level. In my mind somewhere there was even such a thing as a ‘World Bank,’ about which I knew very little—I considered it a positive thing in that it brought wealthy economies together to help developing countries. Modern major banks (the big names, national and international) were pillars of respectability, responsibility and hard-learned conservatism—at least in respect to their capital base and financial security. I had never set myself the specific objective of becoming wealthy. For example, I chose my career direction in keeping with my interests and what I perceived as my strengths, rather than to maximize my earnings or become a millionaire or billionaire. The distinction between the two never seemed very important to me, although in recent times in Ireland, especially before 2007, euro-millionaires (on paper) were common and included a lot of ordinary hard-working people who had not come from privileged backgrounds. These ‘millionaires’ included many who owned or had substantially paid-off their mortgages on, for example, three-bedroom houses in or around Dublin.
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