As the United States teetered on the edge of financial crisis in 2007, one prescient voice within the Federal Reserve was all but silenced when he warned that problems at Wall Street bank Bear Stearns were not contained and posed "enormous risk."

It was at the U.S. central bank's policy meeting in June 2007, where policymakers discussed Bear Stearns' recent bailout of two of its hedge funds hit by losses on subprime mortgages.

But Richard Fisher, the former hedge fund manager and then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, challenged his colleagues around the table. He argued there were indeed worrying similarities between Bear Stearns and Long-Term Capital Management including an over-reliance on computer-based stress tests and uncertainty around the true value of underlying securities.