At the beginning of the "Great Recession" of 2007–9, Islamic banks were "unscathed", leading to one Islamic banking supporter to write that the collapse of leading Wall Street institutions, particularly Lehman Brothers, "should encourage economists world-wide to focus on Islamic banking and finance as an alternative model." However gradually the effect of the financial downturn moved to the real sector, affecting Islamic banking. According to Ibrahim Warde, `this showed that Islamic finance was not all a panaceas, and that a faith-based system is not automatically immune to the vagaries of the Financial system.`