From New York, a special issue on America, 10 years after the financial crisis. Botching the Great Recession: Paul Krugman on why the slump went on so much longer than it should have. Rich people broke America and never paid the price. Charts of the day: The banking industry ten years after the crash. The question isn’t when is the next recession coming — it’s what are we going to do about it. Whitney Curry Wimbish on the calm before the crash: Things are going great, according to the Wall Street propaganda machine. Ten years after the crash: The financial crisis of 2008 was years in the making and has had a lasting impact on American political life. The world of today brought to you by the financial crisis.
From Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Tom Sorell (Warwick): Responsibility in the Financial Crisis; Kendy Hess (Holy Cross): Who’s Responsible? (It’s Complicated): Assigning Blame in the Wake of the Financial Crisis; Mark Hannam (London): Blaming Ourselves; and Joseph Heath (Toronto): Mistakes Were Made: The Role of Catallactic Bias in the Financial Crisis. The next financial crisis lurks underground: Fueled by debt and years of easy credit, America’s energy boom is on shaky footing. After the financial crisis, Wall Street turned to charity — and avoided justice. Our financial system only works for the 1% — it will take another crash to fix it. Ten years after Lehman’s collapse, these ten risks could cause the next crisis.
From the Congressional Research Service, a report on Costs of Government Interventions in Response to the Financial Crisis: A Retrospective. Many lawmakers and aides who crafted financial regulations after the 2008 crisis now work for Wall Street. From the global financial crisis to know-nothing nativism: Jonathan Kirshner reviews Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze (and more and more). The forgotten history of the financial crisis: Adam Tooze on what the world should have learned in 2008. Neel Kashkari says Wall Street is “forgetting the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis”. A legacy of the financial crisis? The makings of the next one.
Robert H. Nelson (Maryland): The Financial Crisis as a Religious Crisis. We thus arrive at the topic that more than any other sums up the decade since the crash: inequality. Duncan Weldon on how economists predicted the wrong financial crisis. The financial crisis cost every American $70,000, Fed study says. Ryan Cooper on the biggest policy mistake of the last decade. “How about a Mueller probe but for all of US banking during the housing bubble and crash”. Ten years after the financial crash, the timid Left should be full of regrets. Tom Gallagher reviews Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? by Robert Kuttner. Why did the slump last so long? Cynical, bad-faith Republican politics.
From Congressional Research Service, a report on Regulatory Reform 10 Years After the Financial Crisis: Dodd-Frank and Securities Law. Ben S. Bernanke, Timothy F. Geithner and Henry M. Paulson Jr. on what we need to fight the next financial crisis (and a response by Dean Baker). The winners and losers of the longest-ever bull market: The nine-year rally is a window into the uneven nature of the recovery from the Great Recession. A record-breaking market doesn’t matter to most Americans. The banks change — except for all the ways they’re the same. Fears of the next recession: What will it do to the many millions of Americans who still haven’t recovered from the last one?
Jason Furman (Harvard): The Fiscal Response to the Great Recession: Steps Taken, Paths Rejected, and Lessons for Next Time. He was the resistance inside the Obama administration: Timothy Geithner’s refusal to obey his boss has had long-term political and economic consequences. We must thank The Washington Post for running Robert Samuelson — he can always be counted on to get almost everything wrong. The source of the next recession: History suggests that the Trump administration’s zeal for financial deregulation could lead to an economic crisis. The folks who missed the last financial crisis are warning about the next one.
A time for big economic ideas: To end the worst stagnation in living standards since the Great Depression, the country needs to be bold. Heather Long on the alarming statistics that show the U.S. economy isn’t as good as it seems. The credit crunch and the Great Recession: Ben Bernanke argues that it was mainly about finance. The 2008 crisis really did start off worse than the Great Depression. A decade after the financial crisis, many Americans are still struggling to recover. Republicans are sowing the seeds of the next financial crisis — it’s way bigger than the Volcker Rule. We’re measuring the economy all wrong: The official statistics say that the financial crisis is behind us — it’s not.
The financial crisis may have scarred a generation for life. The bailouts for the rich are why America is so screwed right now. Ten years after the crash, we’ve learned nothing.
