The disappearance of a middle class is a common theme in modern western politics. In certain circles, it is a truism that the middle class is being squeezed out of existence by a de-facto alliance between the super-rich and the underclass.
It has just occurred to me to think of this, in terms of an alliance between lenders and borrowers versus savers. Something the lenders and borrowers have in common is that they ask for bailouts: borrowers if they get into so much debt that they can't pay it back, lenders if they have too many bad loans. The resulting bailouts diminish the value of the currency or create a government debt that will be repaid by future taxes, so either way the savers lose.
No doubt I read analyses like this back in the heyday of the subprime crisis (remember "subprime"?), but I couldn't say where.
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