The Great Crisis and the Financial Sector
The Great Crisis and the Financial Sector
What We Might Have Learned
This concluding chapter contends that learning from the global financial crisis depends on a willingness to ask new and sometimes more basic questions. It suggests that the crisis narrowly conceived has broad analogs. Those who made and sold unsound mortgages were like counterfeiters trading fake money. It was not that there was a criminal ring, but rather that the financial industry as a whole resembled a criminal ring. One crucial point is that the discipline did not recognize this. In fact, the rise of modern financial economics helped make this possible while the discipline as a whole was dominated by an orthodoxy that obscured what was going on. The chapter describes that the entire discipline was overrun by a “radical cult” and that its interests were perfectly aligned with predatory financial power. It concludes with a discussion of the importance of multiple perspectives about the global financial system.
Keywords: global financial crisis, mortgages, financial industry, criminal ring, financial power, global financial system
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