Flash Crash: Explained - with Dr Chardin Wese Simen

The media have been reporting that USS has assets of £60 billion with liabilities of £77.5 billion, giving a deficit of £17.5 billion.

For those people considering going to university this year at MSc level, this financial crisis will be the first they have experienced. Yet financial crises happen every ten or twenty years. What is different this time is the severity of the crisis ? the likes of which no trader in the City has ever seen before. This article first outlines the causes of the crisis and then asks whether students should steer clear of finance, accounting and economics as subject disciplines and potential careers, until the crisis has receded? I argue that the clear answer is ?no".

The 'Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance’ series, edited by Professor Adrian Bell, Head of the ICMA Centre, Dr Tony Moore, ICMA Centre Research Associate and D'Maris Coffman, Director of Centre for Financial History, Newnham College, University of Cambridge, is set to launch on 30 January, 2014 at Heffers Book Shop, Cambridge.