With the publication of the Vickers Report in September 2011 there has been much debate about how to prevent further banking crises. Much of this has ignored the historical context. In this provocative account, Thomas Lines looks at the 28 years following the Second World War when there were no such crises. He concludes, drawing on a well known result on the stability of systems from ecological theory, that we need to reduce the interconnections between banks by introducing severe restrictions on interbank lending and derivatives trading, and reintroducing exchange controls.