The year 2018 is the tenth anniversary of the Financial Crisis. The "celebration" of the collapse of Bear Stearns occurred last week. Many more such landmarks will coming up throughout the year.
One of the most disheartening things about the Great Recession is that the typical American did so little to try to understand the causes. This lack of interest or exploration is mystifying and severely disappointing. Particularly when so many of the factors leading to the crisis still exist today. More and more provisions of the Dodd-Frank legislation are being dismantled amidst regenerated efforts at deregulation. Just as nothing was learned from the excessive leverage of exotic trading strategies that caused the Long Term Capital Management implosion in 1998, we are now in the process of repeating the same grave errors that occurred in the early part of the century. All of this in the unnaturally low interest rate environment that persists despite the profound damage this disastrous Federal Reserve policy brought about in the first place.
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So I'm gonna clear off my blogger cobwebs and try my best to do something about all this. While always trying to keep things as basic and readily understood as possible. Because the typical American's lack of knowledge about basic economics and its interaction with the world of finance does not stand alone. Congress, the Trump administration, financial regulators, and of course - the Federal Reserve - are all in the process of forgetting recent lessons while being fitted for their brand new dunce caps.
p.s. - Note that the LTCM implosion happened ten years before the Financial Crisis, which happened ten years ago. Recognize any pattern?
