Using the past to solve the great supply-chain massacre

Drivers queue for fuel at an Esso petrol station in Bournville, Birmingham, last month; a shortage of truck drivers to deliver fuel to forecourts led to shortages across England. 

In the period leading up to the 2008 global financial crisis, a few prescient voices warned of potentially catastrophic systemic instability. 

In a famous 2005 speech, Raghuram G Rajan explicitly cautioned that although structural and technological changes meant that the financial system was theoretically diversifying risk better than ever before, it might in practice be concentrating risk.