And it is being exacerbated by three characteristics that are widespread, though not ideological: first, that fast growth had concealed, or even encouraged, the existence of many poorly run and poorly regulated banks; second, that some Asian governments have been slow to accept that tough remedies were needed to avert banking collapses, instead preferring, like Malaysia, to blame outsiders; and, that in several East Asian countries worries about political instability threaten to make economic uncertainties even worse.

hi i wonder why in the first sentence it is "had concealed"instead of just simple past tense concealed.

thank you very much

Question

And it is being exacerbated by three characteristics that are widespread, though not ideological: first, that fast growth had concealed, or even encouraged, the existence of many poorly run and poorly regulated banks; second, that some Asian governments have been slow to accept that tough remedies were needed to avert banking collapses, instead preferring, like Malaysia, to blame outsiders; and, that in several East Asian countries worries about political instability threaten to make economic uncertainties even worse.

hi i wonder why in the first sentence it is  "had concealed"instead of just simple past tense concealed.

thank you very much

Answer

‘Had concealed’ works because the characteristics encouraged the existence of poorly run banks in the past. ‘Concealed’ by itself wouldn’t sound wrong but wouldn’t explicitly tie the poorly run banks to the characteristics that encouraged them. So it’s the best choice.

Answer

Are you sure it wasn't "has concealed?" "Had concealed" is the Past Perfect tense, which is used to say something happened before some point in the past or before something else happened in the past. That doesn't seem to the case here. Unless there's more context in a previous sentence specifying when the "fast growth" stopped or slowed or when it quit concealing poorly run banks, then the Present Perfect ("has concealed") would be more appropriate.

The Simple Past doesn't work as well as well as the Present Perfect here because it doesn't provide a connection to the present. One of the main triggers for the Present Perfect is when an action has continued until the present time, and another is when an action is affecting the present. Both of those things seem to be true here.