How to win friends 2: Our Economic Bubble
The dash for growth was laudable. It went on for many years,
but anyone with brains could see it would end in tears.
The search for greater profits seems to be a human need,
when common sense shows us that a system based on greed
contains the seeds of its destruction in the constant growth of debt.
Explained by silly terms like “leverage” and others that you get
from those who make fortunes from the gullible and yet
it wasn’t hard to see that the bubble had to burst,
but not before the bankers had secured their futures first.
House prices were ridiculous, rising at alarming pace,
Based on the daft assumption there were no losers in the race
to ever higher prices on the best investment of them all.
They forgot that prices which rise fast can also quickly fall.
It wasn’t just house prices that led us to this state.
Those “derivatives” and “instruments” would soon proliferate.
All designed by clever money men in the financial jungle.
Their god-like infallibility ensured they’d never bungle
or ruin the investments of real people when chaos came along.
“We’ll have constant growth for ever. How can we be wrong
when our forecasts have been accurate for markets based on debt?
It sounded oh so plausible. To deny nirvana was a sin.
In fact, it kept on working until bad debts were called in.
What started in the U.S.A. with debts that were “sub prime”
shook the whole thing to its foundations. And so there came a time
when many people couldn’t pay back what they owed in full,
bringing down some institutions, causing a real cull
of banks and business houses who’d helped to cause the trouble,
that led to present chaos and our Economic Bubble.
Harry McQuillan
