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From Bob's archive: Three notes on the 2008 financial crisis

  A long time ago, I used to regularly schedule reposts of some of the better old content on my blog whenever I was switching off for a couple of weeks. Nowadays, I've more or less switched off for several months, but in 2024 I'm trying to schedule at least one post from the archive a month. When I did it before, I had reached 2008 in my archive, so I've decided to pick up again there.  This is an extract from an October 2008 post on the credit crunch . I've edited it slightly to bring out some of the key points, as I think that what happened in 2008 helps explain the victories of the right in the US and the UK in 2016, at a time when   1. Most British commentators blame the credit crunch on the American sub-prime mortgage market. This in turn implies blame on either (or both of) the banks for profligate lending and the "delinquent" poorer householders who really oughtn't to be homeowners. The reality, however, is that people get mortgages on the assumptio

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