What has made the post-2008 crash most remarkable is not merely the delusion that the way to get rich is by debt leverage (unless you are a banker, that is). Most unique is the crash’s aftermath. This time around the bad debts have not been wiped off the books. There have indeed been the usual bankruptcies – but the bad lenders and speculators are being saved from loss by the government intervening to issue Treasury bonds to pay them off out of future tax revenues or new money creation.This paragraph, I believe, is the main thesis of the article: that this economic collapse is different from the past ones. I have lived through many recessions and I've felt also that this one is very different. This article helps to clarify why it is different. It is different not only because of the magnitude of the debts that accumulated, but the way the US ruling class has chosen to deal with the crisis.
Unfortunately, the propaganda organs of the ruling class have thus far succeeded in convincing most ordinary Americans that "the policy of saving the bankers rather than the economy as having been necessary"; that it was necessary to bail out...
Wall Street – and thereby the wealthiest 1 per cent of Americans – while saying there is no money for Social Security, Medicare or long-term public social spending and infrastructure investment, the beneficiaries are obvious. So are the losers. High finance means low wages, low employment, low industry and a shrinking economy under conditions where policy planning is centralized in hands of Wall Street and its political nominees rather than in more objective administrators.
