That’s where we are with markets: non-change change, in the form of bonus regulation and ring-fencing; no change or change for the worse in the case of complexity and shadow banking and too big to fail; and no overall reduction in the level of risk present in the system. We are back with the issue of impunity. For the people inside the system that caused a decade of misery, no change. For everyone else, a decade of misery, magnified by austerity policies. Note that austerity policies were not recommended by mainstream macroeconomists, who predicted that they would lead to flat or shrinking GDP, as indeed they did. Instead politicians took the crisis as a political inflection point – a phrase used to me in private by a Tory in 2009, before the public realised what was about to hit them – and seized the opportunity to contract government spending and shrink the state.
from London Review of Books https://ift.tt/2lFGpGG
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