ABSTRACT
In 2008 the latest financial bubble burst. One by one, the pillars of Wall Street and their equivalents in capitals around the world began to default on their debt obligations and collapse. As soon as the major financial institutions of the western world and its most esteemed and profitable corporations – J.P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Bank of Scotland, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mack – were threatened with bankruptcy, governments leapt to the rescue, pledging billions of dollars of taxpayer monies to ‘save’ them from the consequences of their own mismanagement and fraud. The victims of their risky and illegal financial manoeuvres – the thousands who lost their homes to foreclosed mortgages, whose jobs disappeared, whose pension and savings were wiped out – received no such largesse. What explains this instantaneous – and generous – government response?
