How bankers have learned to operate outside the rules in the murky world of private credit

Boom and bust. Fear and greed.

For all the intelligence, real and artificial, that drives our lives, when it comes to money, so much of our future is driven by raw human emotion.

Time and again, we commit identical errors, jump aboard the very same bandwagon, push the boundaries until breaking point, and are left stunned and horrified when it all comes to grief.

There's a common ingredient in the rise and fall of financial markets.

On the way up, it's usually couched in warm and encouraging terms like leverage, credit and any number of synonyms that gloss over the dangers. Loading...

When things implode, the headlines take on a harsher tone. Words like debt, obligations, liabilities and mortgage come to the fore.

Every major stock market boom in the past half a century has been sp