It’s often said the 2008 Lehman collapse and its aftermath typified the drawbacks of capitalism. I don’t buy that for one moment.

 The financial crisis happened because “independent” central banks, egged on by myopic politicians, pumped up equity and debt markets with cheap money. 

That caused inevitable problems because bank regulations, built over generations and designed to keep financial markets relatively orderly and mass speculation in check, had been severely diluted.

And that dilution had itself happened due to a slew of campaign donations and other inducements channelled from the financial classes to ruling parties and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.

Interest rates were set to juice up asset prices. Then when the bubble burst, those who caused the mess and become extremely rich in the process, were shielded from the economic wreckage bestowed on the rest of us, as banks’ vast losses were shoved on to taxpayers.

Too-big-to-fail banks that “lever up” taxpayer-backed deposits to place one-way bets are anathema to free markets. The extortion of government bail-outs by a financial elite that knowingly drives the Western banking system to the point of implosion, risking untold economic damage and serious civil unrest, is anathema to free markets.

Liam Halligan Telegraph 8 August 2021

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/08/just-like-did-2008-crash-capitalism-needs-reboot/

Vem skall man tro på om Lehman Brothers?

Englund blogg 2009-11-19

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2009/11/vem-skall-man-tro-pa-om-lehman-brothers.html

Lehman Brothers at IntCom

https://internetional.se/lehman911.htm