Member-only story
Here we go again…
646.
Health warning: I’ve been interested in economics and finance for years but I have to admit I don’t understand most of it. Read this at your own risk.
In 2006 I accidentally bought a book about the amount of debt stacked up in American real estate and with people generally and how the risk was sliced and diced. I read it in horror and got hold of every book I could on the subject. By 2007 I was telling everybody I met that there was a big crash coming based on unsustainable debt and fancy-pants ways of disguising it.
I was told by the (wealthy) people around me that the problems were all ‘priced in’ and everything would be fine. As I was fairly skint at the time, I couldn’t do much about it.
I got a job as an office cleaner which was a life-saver and which I kept for five years.
Sadly when 2008 came, nobody remembered that I’d told them so.
It seems to me that capitalism needs a crash every ten to fifteen years or so to clear out the debt, the zombie corporations and the small companies which have nothing wrong with them but nevertheless die too. Possibly a debt-jubilee would have the same effect without the damage — this is a custom in the Bible where after a certain number of years, all debts were officially forgiven and everybody could start again. I don’t know: I suspect…
