ABSTRACT
This book analyses how a small lapse in controls enabled Leeson to obtain a licence to trade despite being potentially ineligible. The main point of analysis concerns how actors may act in ways that are rational and rule-governed and yet their actions produce unwanted and unintended consequences. In order to do that it is first necessary to identify intention and then to specify what were the unanticipated and unwanted consequences arising directly from that action (further discussed in Merton 1936: 894-96).
