This can't be repeated enough. The banks should have bit the dust. A great many pensioners and households would have suffered, but then the government could have introduced emergency bankruptcy laws and ameliorated the worst of it. The crash would have provided its own antidote.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/bankruptcy-...
In my country every person I ever talked to was against the bank bailouts. Democracy didn't happen here and neither did capitalism. That's the inconvenient reality for the left and right. Their old enemies aren't to blame. What we have is a failure of governance, not ideology.
The European Union officials were right behind the government in this. We actually have phone recordings of corrupt bankers describing manipulating idiot government officials.
http://www.thejournal.ie/the-anglo-tapes-9-jaw-dropping-quot...
Then later the EU forced the debt down our throats. With friends like this...
I'd like to know what the leftist solution is to that. We can't replace unelected officials. Because they seem to just go back to their hobby horse of blaming the capitalism ideology for this.
One capitalist solution would be to get rid of central bank controlled interest rates. The governance problem remains unsolved though and all this could basically happen again.
Exactly, bail out the people, not the corrupt institutions.
The cumulative intelligence and decision making capability of the herd is great at wasting everyone's time and the worlds resources. Thanks to visionary lizard person Mark Zuckerberg, we are all connected now whether we like it or not. And the stampeding brainless herd is going to be dragging each one of us in directions we have no control over.
As long as China doesn't implode, they have an opportunity here to show the world a way out. If they do implode we have to just wait around for a better, more effective centralized system to evolve.
Centralization was practical before, but now with technology we have an increased capacity of descentralization.
I think this is more of a general response against governments who don't have the capacity to fullfill their promises,which is something that the spread of technology has made more evident.
'Neoliberalism' or libertarianism has definitely put the state under the scope and has made the bar higher: governments around the world failing to address the issue of income/wealth inequality is a case for a smaller state, not a bigger one.
Being from Argentina, believe me I understand how Neoliberalism was used as an excuse for politicians to profit from selling state assets, but then how the solution to a corrupt institution be give that institution more power? Much like the 2008 crises which was pinned on lack of regulation of banks: almost 10 years passed and no banker went to jail, and the rules are the same. Milton friedman would have said to let the banks fail, but the governments didn't, and that expectation is one of the causes cited for banks taking such large risks.
I have hopes for a future decentralized government, one where few dont hold the power of the many, and decisions are done more organically and interests can be better represented. The advent of technology is making that easier to achieve year by year.