xvi Newton, L (1990) “Overconfidence in the Communication of Intent: Heard and Unheard Melodies.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University) as cited in ‘The Curse of Knowledge’ by Heath, C and Heath, D, Harvard Business Review, December 2006. Available at: https://hbr.org/2006/12/the-curse-of-knowledge xvii Luhmann, N (2000), “Familiarity, Confidence, Trust” and H. Farmer, R. McKay, M. Tsakiris. “Trust in Me: Trustworthy Others” “in Gambetta, Diego (ed.) Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, electronic edition, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, Chapter 6, pp. 94 – 107 and Farmer et al (2013). xviii The Bank aims to move female representation at senior levels from 30 to 35 per cent by 2020, and BAME representation at senior levels from 6 to 13 per cent by 2022. xix Social Mobility Commission (2016a), “State of the Nation 2016: Social Mobility in Great Britain”, November;; Cabinet Office (2016), “Socio-Economic Diversity in the Fast Stream”, February; and Social Mobility Commission (2014), “Elitist Britain?”, August; Institute for government research: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/civil-service-fast-stream-six-charts . See also Friedman, D and Laurison, S (2015), “Introducing the ‘Class’ ceiling”, LSE sociology department working paper; and Social Mobility Commission (2016b), ”Socio-Economic Diversity in Life Sciences and Investment Banking”, July. xx A US study showed that gender and ethnic representation in the US economics profession (academic and student populations) remains below that in other disciplines. Interestingly, diversity had improved in Science and Technology (STEM) subjects and business and management studies, but not in economics.

In spite of this, due to satisfactory levels of capitalization and liquidity, the banking sector coped well with such developments. In terms of general developments, the banking sector asset annual growth slowed to 12 percent, compared to 19 percent of the previous year. In addition to a decline in loan growth, the loan quality also worsened and non-performing loans reached 6.6 percent of total loans. But the comfortable ratio of loans to deposits still supported a solid annual credit growth of around 35 percent. The financial result of the banking sector for 2008 was positive but lower than the previous year due to a slowdown in profit-making activities. The exchange rate of the domestic currency was stable over the year and with depreciating tendencies versus the euro and the American dollar over the first quarter. In relation to expected domestic developments for 2009, we expect economy to face greater challenges. Economic growth will be positive, but almost half of what was in 2008. The planned fiscal stimulus will be harder to reach, due to potentially higher difficulties in realizing revenues and in providing other sources for financing the expenditures. Hence, there might be a need to prioritize fiscal expenditures over the year. Financial intermediation of the banking sector, to the public and the private sector, could be lower and potentially with higher cost, due to supply and demand factors. Due to tighter financing conditions, businesses and households are expected to undergo a painful but necessary adjustment process in the short term.