The capitalists spectacularly exploited every opportunity that followed, by socialising yet more of their private losses… and continued laughing all the way to their yet more profitable shadow banks. Ably led (& fed) by the Central Bankers cartel, they continue to party on…
Most people identify banks with Retail Banking activities. We trust these banks with our money! The banksters masquerade behind a banking label to make themselves seem more trustworthy, yet consider such boring banking business to be beneath themselves. Shadow Banking, aka shady banking, was forced to reveal some of their dark underbellies under the spotlight of the financial crisis.
A decade of post-crisis litigation has provided at least a partial picture of what happened to many of the players in the chain that extended out… through the global financial system. [3]
Do you think we had competent, responsible, or accountable leaders? Who were they beholden to?
Philip Stephens: Populism is the true legacy of the 2008 crisis [2]
The 'hard working classes' so beloved of politicians were the victims of the crash
The legacy of the global financial crisis might have been a re-imagination of the market economy. Anything goes could have made way for something a little closer to everyone gains.
The culprits, who include bankers, central bankers and regulators, politicians and economists, have shrugged off responsibility. The world has certainly changed, but not in the ordered, structured way that would have been the hallmark of intelligent reform.
Most striking is how little has changed in the operation of international financial markets. A handful of bankers were sacked, and some institutions faced hefty penalties and fines. But the burden has fallen on the state or on shareholders. The architects of unfettered financial capitalism are still counting the noughts on their bonuses. The worst that has happened is that they must wait a bit longer before cashing in.
Despite initial regulatory reforms — banks have to hold somewhat more capital and employ armies of compliance officers — life on Wall Street and in the City of London has gone on much as before. Bankers are paid the earth for socially useless activities, taxpayers fund large state subsidies in the shape of too-big-to-fail guarantees, and clever young mathematicians create new, dangerously obscure instruments to keep trading rooms busy. Now, as then, profit is privatised and risk nationalised. Missing is the competition that keeps capitalism honest.
To the extent there were postmortems, radical conclusions were put aside to gather dust as soon as they were published. Central bankers denied complicity. So did the agencies charged with market oversight.
The cost of the crash fell largely on the shoulders of those least able to bear it. Fiscal retrenchment focused largely on cuts in public spending rather than higher taxes… The less you earn, the more you rely on state spending.
The emotion that has done most to swell the ranks of the populists has been a sense of unfairness — the belief that elites are…
Historians will look back on the crisis of 2008 as the moment the world's most powerful nations surrendered international leadership… The rest of the world has understandably concluded it has little to learn from the west.
People were fed up with the establishment and their actions or inactions leading up to and beyond the financial crisis. Voting the leaders out was the least the masses could do. And terming this disappointment against the establishment as populism is shameful, as somehow this could or would abrogate their culpability in all this.
The crisis reared it's head in 2006, and was well underway in 2007. Unless you were wearing a tin hat, you would have known about it. By 2008, the horse had bolted from the stables. Terming this the 2008 crisis is a bit misleading of The FT.
[1] Financial crisis: Are we safer now?
[2] Populism is the true legacy of the 2008 crisis
[3] Story of a house
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