One thing is for sure: Technology will ensure that the fine art of relieving "suckers" from their monetary assets will reach ever higher levels of sophistication.
The only people that got fucked were the customers. The financiers got their just fine.
Well, I had to articulate something that will ring true (or at least be quoted) for at least a thousand years. You can't do that with measured expressions.
But on the main point, outward manifestation of deep crisis makes indeed for pop-corn consumption but I don't think I really exaggerate if I say that the crisis was a death moment for an entire industry. The resurrection worked. But it brought back a zombie.
The foundational myth of the financial sector, its calling card to society has been shredded. While in a world of TINA's the gainful milking of broken financial / banking systems continues unabated, this is not enough for a sector "to own the future" and NPV an infinite stream of cash.
It is now lost in fading memories but there was a time when the masters of the information universe were not "big tech" but "big finance".
Just like now there is a pseudo-ideology around "organizing the world's information" or "connecting all people", bankers used to have a pseudo-ideology about optimizing all the economy by transactionizing, financializing, securitising and marketising everything.
In fact, as the crypto boom conveniently reminded us, that ersatz ideology is still lurking around, available to any tribe that wants to try its hand at "reinventing finance" using tech.
Other governments did less well. Ireland got screwed over, but managed to send Sean Quinn to actual jail.
The UK lost £32bn on RBS https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights... ; Fred Goodwin was not jailed, although he did eventually have his knighthood taken away.
The Greek government was almost collapsed, despite not directly having a huge link to the banking sector at all.
In any civilized country, the government would have conditioned bailouts on the people at the top being fired and prosecuted. The business criminals specifically counted on a bailout, and they should have to pay for that with treasure, flesh, and time in prison, but instead of doing any of that, disincentivizing that behavior going forward, they instead encouraged it.
That crypto companies did not get that treatment is a function of them not being the cornerstone of the economy, just a bunch of middle-class and rich people getting fucked on the side.
Were they retired at the time?
I’m going to assume they were working. If stocks drop 40% and you still have a job and can contribute to your retirement and personal investment accounts, a 40% drop in stocks is a sale on stocks, not a bad thing. How are their retirement funds doing now that the S&P 500 is at ~4300 in 2023 instead of ~6xx in 2008? That’s a 7x increase from the bottom in 15 years.
Assuming they didn’t do something stupid like panic sell at the bottom and buy back in years later, they’re doing just fine now.
If I stole $50 from the till at the corner gas station, I'd be arrested and prosecuted. If someone steals $50 million and their company gets bailed out by the government because they're exempt from the laws of capitalism (private profits, socialized losses) they get a golden parachute and a pat on the back.
They're equity investors. The value of your investment may go down as well as up. They are by definition the people who signed up for a risk/reward tradeoff who should absorb losses first before any bailout.
> would have conditioned bailouts on the people at the top being fired and prosecuted
You can't prosecute people simply by government fiat! There has to have been a specific crime committed! Not even Matt Levine thinks everything is securities fraud. Please elaborate on which specific illegal acts by specific named people everyone is angry about?
So far as I'm aware those are limited to Sean Quinn, and IMO the "robosigning" scandal and a few other incidents like the Wells Fargo mass ID fraud scheme (not actually linked to the GFC)
> The business criminals specifically counted on a bailout
Evidence?