Did financial market liberalisation lead to the 2008 financial crash?

 

A country like Britain is governed by people who are amateurs and who have not only never run a company, but really don't have much of an idea, about the working lives of ordinary people, because many of them have never had a proper job in their lives.

There isn't one type of capitalism but variations of it. You will find worker participation and co-determination in both Sweden and Germany. There are worker directors on the boards of many companies in both these countries and there is a high level of trade union membership.

Since the 1980s, the countries with the most marked increase in income inequality have been the U.K. and the U.S. which led the world in pursuing pro-rich policies - tax cuts for the rich, privatization and deregulation. Markets are routinely rigged in favour of the rich and there is mis-selling of financial products and lies told to regulators. Money gives the super-rich the power to legally or illegally buy up politicians and political offices.

The financial crash in 2008, that nearly brought the whole capitalist financial system to its knees, was man-made and didn't arise from any war or economic slump. Many blamed it on easy credit and sub-prime lending, but a lot of the blame lies with the deregulation of financial markets and a belief in something called the "Efficient Markets Hypotheses" that made policy-makers believe that financial markets needed no regulation. The 2008 financial crises was presaged by many earlier smaller crises following radical financial market liberalization.