It was barely noticed at the time by anyone outside of banking circles. But the announcement by investment bank BNP Paribas in August 2007 that it no longer had any way of valuing a range of financial assets known as collateralised debt obligations because (as we now know) their value had fallen through the floor, is widely considered to be the first public alarm bell that the global economy was hurtling towards the 2007-08 financial crash.
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