Nobody profits when a bad loan is made. Money that represents a promise of future spending made to someone who saved instead spent is destroyed. The only question is who is going to pay the cost.

In 2008 the wizzes of the banking industry had made billions of bad loans. Who paid for it? Anybody who saved instead of spent and invested instead of speculated. In other words, almost all of us did. Once all the pluses and minuses are canceled out we’re all poorer for it. Saying anything else is putting lipstick on a pig.