10 things we missed or got wrong 5 years ago at the height of the credit crunch and food/fuel spike

This summer will mark five years since 2008, the year of both the first flush of the global financial crisis, and of the peak of the combined food and fuel spike.

As David Steven and I have observed in various papers, the last decade was bookended by shocks – 9/11 at one end, and these two at the other. And while the resource spike and the credit crunch lacked the visual vividness of September 11, they were arguably just as significant in the way that they shook assumptions about the stability or direction of globalisation.

But it’s also intesting to look back now at that strange year, and reflect on how many of the initial fears, hopes and assumptions about the twin crises have been proved wrong with the benefit of five years’ hindsight – as well as various shifts that have taken place since 2008 that no-one foresaw at the time. Here are ten things that lots of us (well, I, anyway) got wrong or missed altogether back in 2008 – adapted from a futures presentation I gave to Oxfam last week.

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