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The subprime debacle was a symptom, not a cause.
The cause was massively over-leveraged banks and hedge funds pushing incredible numbers through each and every facet of each and every market with the intention of gaming/cornering/etc, which they were allowed to do because of irresponsible deregulation, which was pushed through due to hopelessly corrupt political systems in the heart of most of the world's financial centres.
The old term for economics was 'political economy'. I think the term should be revived.
EVERYONE should know that when a person speaks about an economic system, they ALWAYS have a particular ideological axe to grind.
Political economy uses numbers, narratives and philosophy to explain observed phenomena... Econometrics, or statistical economics (statistical political economics), attempts to make predictions based on reductive models derived from an economic theory.
I mean, even if you take every nation on the planet... that's still less than 300 for a sample size. Not big enough to test or prove anything... as any social scientist will tell you.
Damn fools.
Banks should be mutuals or blended consumer/worker cooperatives and SMALL. then, no matter how light the regulation, the damage done couldn't hope to bring down a superpower.
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"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--
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