The Doom Loop in the Financial Sector

In the past year, the world has experienced how unsound economic practices can disrupt global economic and social order. Today's volatile global financial situation highlights the importance of managing risk and the consequences of poor decision making. Systemic Financial Riskreveals an underlying paradox of risk management: the better we become at assessing risks, the more we feel comfortable taking them. Using the current financial crisis as a case study, renowned risk expert William Leiss engages with the new concept of "systemic risk" risk so great that recovery from its negative consequences may prove impossible. His risk-centred analysis of the lead-up to the crisis reveals the practices that brought it about and how it became common practice to use limited risk assessments as a justification to gamble huge sums of money on unsound economic policies. In order to limit future catastrophes, Leiss recommends international cooperation to manage systemic risks. He believes that, failing this, humanity could be susceptible to a dangerous nexus of global disasters that would threaten human civilization as we know it.

William Leiss is a fellow and past president (1999-2001) of the Royal Society of Canada and an officer in the Order of Canada. He currently works at the McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment at the University of Ottawa. Over a period of twenty-five years he has worked extensively in a consulting capacity with industry and with Canadian federal and provincial government departments in the area of risk communication risk management and public consultation. He is author, collaborator or editor of fifteen books and numerous articles and reports.