‘Crashed’ Connects the Dots From 2008 Crisis to Trump, Brexit and More

Very useful book review, adding it to my reading list, thank-you. Would also recommend a very good book by Japanese/American economist Richard C. Koo - "Escape from the Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap (c-2014)". Documents the ongoing sideways stagnation of the Japanese economy since the collapse of their 1991 real estate bubble (5 times the relative scale of 2007-2008 financial crisis). BoJ tried everything, nothing has seemed to work except subterfuge compounded. Japan's economic future foreshadows that of the US in my opinion. The author relates BoJ QE trap with FED experience following 2007 crisis. My next summer read will be "Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World" by Nomi Prins.

Unfortunately, we are heading toward the same scenario of Crash -- fast and surely as eggs is eggs, that will make the 2008 episode look like a gentle dress rehearsal. All the political and economic elements are there for anyone who cares to look and those "who cannot see the forest for the trees". Here is the glimpse of what is in the works: http://farazianfocus.com/2018/02/11/the-crash-of-2018/ History repeats itself, the coming Crash will be an epic one with only one lesson -- we just never learn and think ourselves smarter than the previous generation.

Fast forward to the law of consequences, what do people think Q.E. offered, because it was surely not a hall pass? Factor in the Rothschild's creation of debt instruments and multiply it by time and magnitude. Mathematics proves all expansions have limits in a universal context and gravity must intervene. We have now a global debt powder keg brewing that is at best being tended by nationalist, politicians shepherding expedited agendas and you get Crashed as the pending outcome. Debt comes home to roost!

I just don't think you can criticize the Democratic technocrats while acknowledging the "gifted obstructionists" in the Republican Party who opposed them. As Paul Krugman often points out, many if not most Democrats wanted a bigger bailout and better stimulus bill. But the Republicans played the "liberal spending deficit" card to prevent it. The bitter irony is that the party decried as anti-Capitalist saved the financial system from the deregulation-drunk Republicans. Who then parlayed anger from the working and middle class into an electoral sweep that brought us *significantly* bigger deficits thanks to a billionaire engineered tax cut. This strategy -- obstruct real help for the majority, then reap the rewards of populist backlash -- really looks great. But historians of the future writing of this chapter will not be nearly so kind.

Obama's missed opportunity was a great shame. He had the opportunity to be - and indeed was elected to be - an agent of change and a champion of the middle class. Instead, he chose to restore the same corrupt status quo that crashed the economy in the first place. What a waste. Obama could have been another FDR. Now he's just yesterday's news.

I have not read the book. I wonder if there is anything in there about homeowners who bought high, often in multiples to flip them, and who thus created their own problems by using real estate as an ATM machine. The value of my home dropped over 50% when the effects of the bursting housing bubble hit, and I was as happy as could be because it cut in half my property taxes.

Great topic to revisit, great summary. I was formerly a Mortgage Broker and in and around 2005 I was dining out with a colleague when a nearby patron had overhead me discussing my prior role. In that instance, the patron was more than happy to paint me as a depraved shark willing to feed on unsuspecting citizens. As it happened, I worked for a very reputable lender in a division that focused on lending to customers with Grade A credit. Jennifer's synopsis is probably spot on. A lot of below board behavior took place without the appropriate follow up. Should big banks have been protected? Why weren't more executives subject to civil or criminal proceedings? But I remain surprised by the sense of aggrievement many have as to why they weren't better protected against borrowing too much or perhaps borrowing to buy homes they shouldn't have bought in the first place. But yes, it is probably not a hard sell to connect the dots between the events of 2005-2008 to recent political events. Perhaps Democracy is alive and well.

In Geithner’s book on the crisis, he makes it clear that the government could either spend money bailing out banks, or bailing out citizens nearing or in foreclosure. They chose the latter because of what they deemed the greater good. I don’t disagree. But that was cold comfort to the millions of homeowners suddenly facing foreclosure, bankruptcy, and on. Unfortunately, Obama and Geithner never got the credit they deserved for saving our financial system - and if that had failed, ALL Americans would have suffered. Unfortunately, it started paving the way for Trump and his promises to fix all that Obama had destroyed. That’s ironic, given that Obama and guys like Geithner saved us all.

There's a Biblical story about a midlevel courtier who persuaded the King to forgive his debts but put the squeeze on the people who owed him money. Back then I wrote a blog observing the contrasts between the Biblical tale (wherein the courtier is condemned) and the government response to 2008 (bailling out the banks but allowing poorer people to go broke). Nobody else, least of all the Bible-thumping fundamentalists, saw the parallels.

I remember in 2007 everyone partying like there was no tomorrow. In fact a guy trying to sell me a no cost/no interest/"free money" loan at an actual party. I have kept his business card as a constant reminder. I remember the "master of the universe" heads of investment firms and banks and etc saying their expertise was needed to get through the crisis when there were a multitude of smarter, hungrier underlings sharpening their knives, we should have let the Caesars fall and broken up the financial monoliths. Where is today's leader who can say "I welcome their hatred". I remember news stories about "cleaning" companies clearing out foreclosed homes, the furniture, clothes, and children's toys of people's broken dreams and lives. I read that 10% are still underwater ten years on. I am tired of "experts" who know what will happen but don't do anything to stop it. I am tired of unbridled greed overwhelming anything decent. I am tired of political leaders who lie to protect their fragile egos, who put party over country, who are in on the grift. I also am absolutely, completely, and throughly certain that it will happen again in all of it's stupidity, fear, and despair. And this time "there will be blood"!

This Elizabeth Warrens moment.

The book author Adam Tooze and NYT reviewer Jennifer Szalai both need to read the 2017 NYT review of Eisinger’s book that implicates how U.S. Justice Department officials are the deadliest economic saboteurs–in the “Crash” of 2008 and its aftermath today. ProPublica’s Eisinger observes that most of Fraud Street’s crowds of criminal financiers were not convicted after the “crash” of 2008-because U.S. prosecutors routinely decide against convicting most of America’s biggest financial crooks, essentially encouraging them to keep trillions of dollars of stolen assets. For decades, prosecutors have been addicted to tacit future payoffs, knowing that they will be paid soon enough–upon leaving government to take money from financial criminals–in the charade of defending them from the government that won’t convict them. That’s why honest American middle-class citizens cannot compete with Fraud Street financiers. The NYT review indicates how prosecutors are “reined in by their politically appointed bosses.” Political appointees destroy Justice Department enforcement against multi-trillion-dollar financial fraud – long before the 2008 “crash” –and into the present day. The 2017 NYT review points out that for prosecutors, “Conducting the criminal investigation of an executive” would be “jeopardizing a future partnership at a prestigious law firm” that defends fraud collar financial criminals. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/books/review/the-chickenshit-club-jes...

" Greenspan has spent the last decade like a wide-eyed ingénue, declaring himself flabbergasted by events". Of course he has. Isn't he an Ayn Rand fan?

A book that shows why the capitalist system needs to be abolished. It harms the great majority of the people, makes for war, and destroys the earth.

The GOP crashes the economy, the Democrats clean up the mess, the GOP crashes it again. A familiar cycle that we very much in at the moment. The markets are heading for another crash with the GOP at the wheel and guess who will have to clean it up?

Canada's Minister of Global affairs and head of NAFTA negotiations was an economic journalist in 2014 when she entered politics. This week when she came under attack from American surrogates Saudi Arabia and other Arab States it is probably time to look at her 2014 book Plutocrats: The Rise of the Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. Chrystia Freeland knows Russia, she knows The Ukraine, She knows Canada, she knows the USA, she knows plutocrats , she knows autocrats, she knows crony capitalists, she knows corruption, she knows Putin, she knows oligarchs, she knows the denizens of Davos and she knows that in 2014 120% of the economic recovery from 2008 went to the top one per cent of the world's population. Crashed sounds like a wonderful book I will look for it but this week my mind is all about the Saudi war on Canada and its ethics and values. Aljazeera's special on what the diplomatic war is all about asked the questions that I am asking. Everyone seemed befuddled as to why America's second most important surrogate would attack Canada's ethics and values after the public relations campaign to picture Saudi Arabia as a country willing to embrace the future and end the perception of its being a backwards and brutal autocracy. An American surrogate's attack on the values of Western democracy seems more important than Trump and the theatre we watch 24/7. Canada avoided the crash of 2008 and I can't help but think we will pay a heavy price for that avoidance.

Ironic, but in some ways, the Republicans are right. Obama begat Trump. Obama should have nationalized Goldman, Citi, JPM, AIG and all the Financial Institutions, and kicked their Executives to the curb. He should have used the $800B TARP money to bail out home-owners, not Banks. The irony is the Banksters took the money and donated to Republicans, and the angry home owners tuned into Brietbart.