After the Fall: Ten Years After the Crash

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n13/john-lanchester/after-the-fall

by dbcooper • 8 years ago

203 172 8 years ago

lrb.co.uk

We use the words after the fall, but some EU countries like spain, Italy and Greece are still on the brink with massive youth unemployment

misja1112• 8 years ago

The problems in Greece were not caused by the credit crisis. Sooner or later Greece's model of government spending without a solid tax regime would have collapsed, the crisis only made the underlying problems more apparent.

maze-le• 8 years ago

Without the Euro, the greek central bank could have increased inflation and downvalued the Drachma, so the government could spend, spend, spend. This was the Modus Operandi before the Euro.

I don't say, that this is a responsible way of managing a countrys finances, but if the alternative is increasing infant mortality and extreme unemployment for almost a decade, I can't see whats so bad about that.

isolli• 8 years ago

And what are your thoughts regarding Spain and Italy?

at-fates-hands2• 8 years ago

It doesn't help there massive amounts of refugees flooding into those countries as well. I realize people are fleeing war and violence, but they're going to countries where there isn't any jobs, and the economic situation is dire.

It's the worst possible scenario. They're leaving their home countries with nothing and arriving with an even bleaker future ahead of them.

cubano2• 8 years ago

If they are leaving a place of "war and violence", I am sure some unemployment as the worst social condition hardly could be construed as an "even bleaker future ahead".

icebraining2• 8 years ago

There aren't, though. Immigration has dropped a lot in 2016, and again in 2017. Mediterranean crosses more than halved from 2016 to 2017. Last year, the EU only granted protection to 540k persons, in an EU with over 500M inhabitants.

ploika• 8 years ago

I know some Mediterranean economies could be a bit stronger and the Dublin Regulation isn't really working that well, but you'll have a hard time convincing anyone fleeing barrel bombs that things are better in Eritrea or Syria than in Spain.

emodendroket15• 8 years ago

There are no longer "massive amounts of refugees flooding into the country" but that now-false perception won't go away

tonyedgecombe2• 8 years ago

Watching what happened in the UK it appeared we were making a lot of poor decisions on the hoof. In particular pushing Lloyds into buying HBOS didn't work out so well.

I often wonder what would have happened if we hadn't bailed out the banks.

arethuza3• 8 years ago

Well, the UK government seemed to genuinely believe that had they not bailed them out that we might have been in a pretty bad situation: looting, troops on the streets etc.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24184728

However, with the benefit of some hindsight - I do wonder if these stories were just a bit exaggerated for political reasons.

Also, if the implosion of the payment system is an existential threat to a country then why haven't done anything to ensure that this couldn't happen again? Yanis Varoufakis mentions in one of his books that he proposed a alternate government controlled payment system that could be used if Greek banks stopped functioning - why don't we have something like that prepared to fall back on in a future crisis?

grey-area• 8 years ago

They have in the UK at least - UK Banks have been forced to ringfence core retail banking, so that other arms could be allowed to fail, but customer banking be unaffected:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ring-fencing-info...

Similar to Glass Steagall from 1933 in the US, which was watered down over decades and eventually repealed when we reached the end of history in 1999:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_legislation

Unfortunately it appears history is probably going to repeat in more ways than just cycles of crisis and financial regulation. I expect trade war and then global war in the next decade - we’ve reached around 1935 by my estimation.

andy_ppp2• 8 years ago

It's probably because if you build such a system the banks would believe the government could bin them next time around and consequently make a "run on the banks" more likely.

It feels like none of this is really over and we are currently paying for it in our political climate.

dageshi• 8 years ago

An awful awful lot of uncertainty and panic would've happened I think.

It's that old saying from General Patton "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.", I think that very much applied in this situation, as bad as things were they could've been MUCH worse.

tonyedgecombe2• 8 years ago

An awful awful lot of uncertainty and panic would've happened I think.

I don't doubt that, what I wonder is if it would all be a distant memory now instead of dragging on for decades (we still have a lot more debt than before the crisis).

howard941• 8 years ago

In the US the failing banks' owners would have shared in the loss along with the govt to the extent of deposit insurance, but the remaining institutions would have been smaller, perhaps smarter, definitely better disciplined in the knowledge that they had "skin in the game."

baybal2• 8 years ago

This writing is brilliant.

A follow up: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-bir...

And another one: https://www.dawn.com/news/1417420/a-new-upper-class

ycombinete• 8 years ago

The LRB always always has great writing. I've subscribed for 2 years now, and have never regretted it at all.

andy_ppp2• 8 years ago

If you guys like this I highly recommend the University of Cambridge politics department analysis of current affairs.

https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/

fineline• 8 years ago

Interesting to see an article that recognises the role QE has played in driving inequality and disrupting political landscapes, but I wonder why Mr Lanchester doesn't consider the alternative policies that could have been enacted. i.e. if governments had focussed on spending money into the real economy instead, through infrastructure spending and real nation building projects - creating jobs, real (not paper) wealth and the platform for further economic growth - rather than spending funny money into existence supporting markets that blow up prices without any real addition of value.

JumpCrisscross9• 8 years ago

if governments had focussed on spending money into the real economy instead, through infrastructure spending and real nation building projects

The Federal Reserve is an independent agency. It repeatedly implored Congress to increase fiscal spending. That didn’t happen, so monetary policy had to attempt to compensate.

creating jobs

At least in America, we did a good job of this. Ben Bernanke navigated us away from an alternate history in which the GFC was a second Great Depression. In New York, the Hudson Yards are coming up as one of the biggest public works project since the Great Depression. Things could have been better, but they could easily have been a lot, lot worse without QE.

weirdstuff• 8 years ago

We've done a pretty bad job at bringing back jobs. Labor force participation rate has fallen, while people are retiring later. Retirement/aging doesn't even help explain the drop. Especially since the younger generation has more than replaced the older one, and the older one isn't retiring at the same historic rate.

We're not in great shape, employment wise.

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

justin66• 8 years ago

the Hudson Yards are coming up as the biggest public works project since the Great Depression

It'd be impressive if a development project in NYC ends up costing more than the interstate highway system.

andrepd• 8 years ago

Ben Bernanke was responsible for the financial crisis of 2008. He was part of the group of people that wilfully and knowingly created the conditions for the crisis to erupt, becoming handsomely rich in the process. The suffering of billions of people is on his hands and those of similar ilk.

lkrubner2• 8 years ago

This part of what you say is true:

"It repeatedly implored Congress to increase fiscal spending. That didn’t happen, so monetary policy had to attempt to compensate."

This part is not true:

"At least in America, we did a good job of this."

High unemployment should have been brought down in 2009 but instead did not come down till 2013. Labor force participation remains suppressed. Wages for men have been in decline for most of the period since 1973, and that only includes their monetary wages -- if you consider the decline in what's covered by health insurance, then the situation is even worse.

The situation since 1973 has been bad, and the situation since 2000 has been awful, and the USA has yet to show the political regeneration that will be necessary to turn this situation around and resume the broad based prosperity that the USA enjoyed during the mid-20th century.

dv_dt• 8 years ago

They could have been worse, but QE could have been constructed very differently to move funds to people first while still bailing out the banks. e.g. you get xx% of fed money on a mutual required refinance at a now lower principal. The bank gets some money, people keep the property with still loan, but now a much smaller payment & principal. It would have spent/printed a similar amount of money, but left a lot more wealth in the hands of people. Instead the QE program resulted in more mortgage defaults while transferring down pmts & other equity from people to the financial system.

sgt101• 8 years ago

The funny money goes on the central bank balance sheet and not onto the national debt. Therefore the national debt interest cost remains constant, therefore taxation isn't pushed up. In addition government is not well placed to make the investment decisions required; the hope was/is that bank lending would effectively make these decisions by keeping businesses open and facilitating new projects organically.

RobertoG4• 8 years ago

If the FED is a USA government institution and new money was created by that institution:

why the money doesn't add to the national debt and doesn't change its cost?

emodendroket15• 8 years ago

Wasn't QE only such a big part of the strategy because relentless political opposition to more stimulus spending, especially once the Democrats lose control of the legislature?

exelius• 8 years ago

Very interesting article! I agree and have felt the tremors the author mentions throughout my own work in a related field.

The last decade has taught me that corporations matter more than nations, at this point. In the case of corporate capitalism, governments act like special interest groups protecting the corporations that fund their lifestyles.

To that end, if a major bank like RBS were to go belly up and now be beyond the ability of the U.K. to save, what are the chances we see a “national merger” where a country offers to absorb the losses in the banking system in exchange for absorbing the entire nation (population, economy and all)?

This sounds extreme, but it’s effectively what happened in the feudal era. Wealthy nobles would support whichever king had the resources to protect them. Only thing I’m doing is replacing “wealthy nobles” with “corporations” — which are essentially “jointly owned” among the entire “nobility” (I.e. the capital class in the West).

Ultimately I think we will avoid World War III because the corporations don’t want it; and they control enough of the global logistics supply chain to prevent it. So a peaceful way to transition failed governments and financial systems back to prosperity will be needed if we want to avoid a repeat of the Weimar Republic.

cubano2• 8 years ago

Ultimately I think we will avoid World War III because the corporations don’t want it;

..today, it should have ended with.

Tomorrow, as they say, is a whole new ball game and it's certainly hard to predict what our sociopathic corporate masters will want for us then.

I agree with your premise, however. Killing your customers is usually considered "bad business" and is to be avoided most times.

However, given certain political and economic conditions, I do believe corporations could easily be convinced to give the go ahead to War.

emodendroket15• 8 years ago

Before the first World War people also imagined that there could never be another big war because the world's economies were so connected.

darpa_escapee• 8 years ago

War has always been great for plunder and profit. Some of the biggest corporations are in the war racket. Arms dealers arm both sides in a conflict, sit back and rake in the profits. Corporations constantly stoke the WWIII fire, little people like us are lucky that a situation beyond our ability to contain it hasn't developed.

philwelch• 8 years ago

This sounds extreme, but it’s effectively what happened in the feudal era. Wealthy nobles would support whichever king had the resources to protect them. Only thing I’m doing is replacing “wealthy nobles” with “corporations” — which are essentially “jointly owned” among the entire “nobility” (I.e. the capital class in the West).

OK, so let's look at a major US bank, JP Morgan Chase: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/jpm/holders/

75% of the bank is owned by "institutions" like Vanguard, Blackrock, Fidelity, State Street, etc. which are mostly proxies for mutual funds, index funds, and ETF's. The largest individual fund is the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, followed by a number of other index funds from Vanguard and others.

Index funds are owned, not just by rich investors, but also by workers with 401(k) and IRA retirement accounts, university endowments, and pension funds. The top ten university endowments account for over $150B (https://www.collegeraptor.com/college-rankings/details/Endow...) while the California Public Employees Retirement System by itself holds even more in public equity alone (https://www.calpers.ca.gov/page/investments/asset-classes/tr...).

NVRM• 8 years ago

https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/YyPhfM9s-Revised-Bi...

crwalker2• 8 years ago

The ten-year anniversary is a good moment to look at the Case-Schiller index today and compare it to the peak of the bubble in 2006.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA

I think there will be some great deals in real estate by 2021.

germinalphrase4• 8 years ago

Can anyone tell me what happened/changed in 1990/2001 to influence the following acceleration of prices?

appstateguy• 8 years ago

It was probably the expansion of financial instruments like Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) [0] along with shadow banking mortgage companies (like Country Wide [1]) that simply sell mortgages to banks that in turn securitize the mortgage into CDOs.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_America_Home_Loans

isostatic3• 8 years ago

Baby boomers paid of mortgages and use the savings to start buying houses to add to their retirement portfolio

More and more dual income housing, people can afford to spend more on a house so prices go up, then families have to have two incomes to have the same house that the previous generation had on one income

More households -- parents get divorce, now it's 2 houses needed for 2 parents and 2.4 kids

frgtpsswrdlame• 8 years ago

2008 didn't happen because house prices were high, it happened because bad mortgages were labeled as good and then financial institutions placed levered bets on them.

Downturns have reasons - Savings and Loans issuing long-term fixed rate loans at low interest rates, investors finally waking up to the shaky financials of dot-coms plus some accounting scandals, and mortgage defaults finally breaking through. If we want to predict the next recession we have to point at a reason not just high prices.

padobson4• 8 years ago

Love this. I can't see a specific bubble yet. As someone in the tech industry, I'm tempted to say startups, but while the latest batch of IPOs seem underwhelming, none of them seem like out-and-out dotcom-style failures. SnapChat, Dropbox, Airbnb and their ilk seem like viable businesses to me.

crwalker2• 8 years ago

I appreciate this counterpoint.

It's much easier to see a pattern than to understand why it occurs.

jeffreyrogers2• 8 years ago

Maybe, but it's hard to predict. I don't think real estate prices are going to crash unless mortgage delinquency rates go up dramatically, which hasn't started yet: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRSFRMACBS

At least not nationally, maybe in some metro areas it has. Mortgage lending standards have started to loosen though, but I think it'd take a while for that to have a substantial effect. Housing prices tend to increase because good land is scarce in most places people want to live.

ra1n853• 8 years ago

prices tend to increase because good land is scarce in most places people want to live.

Prices are driven by demand. A crash will inevitably reduce demand. Just like equities, real estate involves speculation. It may not be as bad as 2008, but we will still see a significant drop in real estate prices.

gizmo385• 8 years ago

As a side note, holy hell I didn't realize that the delinquency rate made it up to 11.5% after the financial crash... As someone in my early 20s, I remember that the crash was bad, but it's hard to appreciate the scope of it sometimes.

germinalphrase4• 8 years ago

My wife and I have been looking to purchase a house, and it’s amazing how many people tell us “it’s a terrible time to buy. Don’t do it”.

That’s fine advice, as far as it goes, but what would we be wait for - another crash? This chart does suggest that prices are inflated, but what do I do with that information? Wait for a downturn in two years? Ten?

phyller4• 8 years ago

The average home price going up more than 80% from 2000 to 2006 is extreme. The average home price going up 100% from 2000 to 2018 isn't that crazy. Maybe prices will go down, maybe not, I wouldn't call it a bubble yet. There are also a higher percentage of people living in cities, and I would suspect more people renting, which can drive purchase prices up for legitimate reasons.

That index is not adjusted for inflation.

lazerpants5• 8 years ago

The Case-Shiller Index IS normalized for inflation.

"The indices kept by Standard and Poor are normalized to have a value of 100 in January 2000."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case%E2%80%93Shiller_index

snarfybarfy• 8 years ago

You call 100% in 18 years normal? I sure do hope that your salary also doubled in those two decades.

emodendroket15• 8 years ago

I read this piece last week and I liked it a lot. Anyone read his book?

fullshark2• 8 years ago

“What if the governments of the developed world turned to their electorates and explicitly said this was the deal? The pitch might go something like this: we’re living in a competitive global system, there are billions of desperately poor people in the world, and in order for their standards of living to improve, ours will have to decline in relative terms.”

This is a guaranteed losing platform

dbatten• 8 years ago

It's also preposterous. Wealth isn't a zero-sum game. Compared to our ancestors in, say, 1000 BC, the vast majority of humanity is far, far, wealthier while the few who are arguably no better off are not worse off either. That's all wealth we've created.

We can talk about whether it's a good or moral idea to transfer wealth, but let's not pretend like that's the only way to deal with poverty.

ionised• 8 years ago

Wealth isn't a zero-sum game

I keep seeing people say this but is there not a finite amount of wealth in the world at any given time?

There are also the finite land and natural resources required for wealth creation.

dragonwriter7• 8 years ago

Wealth isn't a zero-sum game.

It expressly refers to relative, not absolute, wealth, which necessarily is zero-sum. (There's also quite a lot of evidence that relative, not absolute, wealth is the more important driver of exoerienced utility: humans are strongly programmed to be satisfied or not based on performance relative to expectations set by social environment, not absolute material condition. For this reason relative wealth is generally more important.)

rohit2412• 8 years ago

I've never understood this argument. Sure, wealth/trade isn't a zero sum game. That means that the net wealth in the system increases. But that doesn't mean each individual participant in the game is better off. The game night have a large competition component (which is zero sum) and would mean that the participants are not better off.

bequanna2• 8 years ago

Exactly, this is where he lost me. The pitch is incredibly naive.

If the latest presidential election in the US has taught us anything it should be that middle class people with stagnating wages couldn’t care less about the troubles of the worlds poor.

geggam• 8 years ago

Pretty sure you can say that about most folks. We tend to run on the selfish side as a species.

emodendroket15• 8 years ago

The argument is kind of two-pronged and would involve wealth transfers from the rich to the middle and lower class. Heard anyone railing about elites lately?

emodendroket15• 8 years ago

I think if you finish reading that part to the end it seems much more reasonable. Cutting him off seems unfair. To wit:

Perhaps we should accept that on moral grounds: we’ve been rich enough for long enough to be able to share some of the proceeds of prosperity with our brothers and sisters. I think I know what the answer would be. The answer would be OK, fine, but get rid of the trunk. Because if we are experiencing a relative decline why shouldn’t the rich – why shouldn’t the one per cent – be slightly worse off in the same way that we are slightly worse off?

jandrewrogers2• 8 years ago

The problem is that the economic argument is nonsensical unless you significantly raise taxes on people who are not in the 1%, as the amount of potential revenue involved is a pittance. At least in the US, only 20% of the population pay net taxes (tax payments minus transfers from all sources), so even if you raised effective tax rates to 100% on the upper few percent, ignoring the immediate collapse of that tax revenue, the amount of new revenue would be underwhelming.

For the US, the policy challenge is that the distribution of net tax payers is significantly more biased toward the top end of the income range than in many countries in Europe (i.e. it is more progressive, ironically). There is no practical way to sustainably raise substantial tax revenues without expanding the number of people who pay net taxes. This means substantially raising taxes in the 2nd (60-80%) quintile, who have five-figure household incomes on average, and probably the 40%-60% quintile as well.

Any definition of "rich" that could generate substantial net tax revenue is going to come significantly out of the pockets of the middle class. Convincing someone earning $90k in California that they are so wealthy that they should downgrade their lifestyle would be an unenviable task for a politician.

dragonwriter7• 8 years ago

Yeah, a better expression would be:

“There a billions of desperately poor people in the world, and in order for them not to have a strong interest in either immigrating into the developed world by any means necessary or smashing the international order, both of which produce adverse consequences that was have to deal with, their relative standard of living must improve, which also had costs for the developed world, but much less than continuing to deal with the consequences of the current level of structural inequality.”

mrguyorama3• 8 years ago

That's a lot of words that people still don't want to hear

olivermarks3• 8 years ago

"...According to calculations that Zucman himself says are conservative, the missing money amounts to $8.7 trillion, a significant fraction of all planetary wealth. It is as if, when it comes to the question of paying their taxes, the rich have seceded from the rest of humanity." A sobering reality...especially when you consider the ultra rich design and run the political systems that define the tax bases and laws the rest of the world are organized under...

hippich5• 8 years ago

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/06/a-closer-loo...

"A Pew Research Center analysis of IRS data from 2015, the most recent available, shows that taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more paid well over half (58.8%) of federal income taxes, though they accounted for only 4.5% of all returns filed (6.8% of all taxable returns)."

olivermarks3• 8 years ago

That report is parochial research of onshore tax payers who are in the US system. The vast majority of the elites wealth is parked offshore

tomp• 8 years ago

rich != income-rich

nimbius• 8 years ago

hindsight is 20/20, but does anyone recall some of the ludicrous things we actually did to prop up some of our structurally too-big-to-fail institutions?

as an automotive mechanic the one institution during this crisis that stuck out in my mind was "cash for clunkers." Essentially the government subsidized ordinary americans to trade in whatever car they had so long as it got relatively poor gas mileage and wasnt more than 25 years old. This was a 3 billion dollar program designed largely to get anericans to start spending money on cars --any car-- by bribing them to destroy their own car.

Two studies basically declared the program a failure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System

But I have still a deep sense of chagrin when I remember mixing sandy batches of "engine disablement compound" and pouring them directly into a perfectly good truck or minivan. Sure, it might not win an award for climate change but these cheap cars and trucks could have gotten a single mother to and from the grocery store or school once or twice a week as needed. We intentionally destroyed them all. For those thinking the process was sane and simple, it wasnt. Doing this is loud, dirty, and throws a cloud of smoke you can see for a mile or more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2Sz5vtfanw

We were even so desperate to fix the economy that the government basically started cutting people checks. The idea being they would spend the money on a shopping trip to the mall or something... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Stimulus_Act_of_2008

I spent my check on groceries when I got it, and put the rest into savings.

lkrubner2• 8 years ago

"I spent my check on groceries when I got it, and put the rest into savings."

That is entirely appropriate. When the economy is depressed, we want people to both spend more and pay off any debts they might have, so your mix of spending and savings is just what the economy needed. The boost to consumption helps the economy get going again. And to the extent that people are paying off debts, their debts are moved on to the ledger of the government. Since the government pays a lower interest rate than private citizens, this reduces the overall burdens on the economy, and, again, helps the economy get going again. Both aspects of this help.

emodendroket15• 8 years ago

Ideally people spend all the stimulus money they get rather than saving it.

rubicon33• 8 years ago

I think the point he is making is that he didn't "spend more".

He bought groceries, which he would have done any other week. If your economic stimulus bill is intended to help people buy groceries, then you ought to appropriately name it a economic relief bill.

NeedMoreTea• 8 years ago

Wasn't it Steve Keen (Australian economist) who wanted the cheque to go to debt forgiveness before cash and for that to get the funds that ultimately went into QE?

I'm hazy on the details now but I think the idea was it would both help the citizens and also help with deleveraging the banks.

He seemed to be cropping up in the media every other day in 09.

s2g• 8 years ago

This isn't a boost to consumption, it's hoarding cash. Buying just the bare essentials.

emodendroket15• 8 years ago

There may have been some missteps there, but for the most part I think Obama's problem was he was too timid to seriously hold anyone's feet to the fire and too anxious to restore the status quo ante.

Latteland2• 8 years ago

Plus congress decided to start the obstruction program so it was hard to get anything passed.

jsoc815• 8 years ago

For anyone interested in this line of thinking, I highly recommend reading Ron Suskind's "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President". [1]

As a Washingtonian, I can safely say that there are many actors who prefer the status quo, however flawed it might be, to an unknown other.

[1] http://ronsuskind.com/books/confidence-men/

lumberjack• 8 years ago

Cash for clunkers is still going on in many European countries.

war1025• 8 years ago

You alluded to it in your post, but an interesting side effect of Cash For Clunkers was that there is an entire set of model years basically missing from the used car market.

The people most likely to take advantage of the program were those who liked having new or nearly new cars, so the cars that got destroyed were actually on the newer end of the used car spectrum.

So then when people such as myself, who have no problem driving an older vehicle, went to upgrade, the cars weren't there.

I'm still driving a 1995 Pontiac Grand Prix largely because when I would have been interested in a cheap upgrade there weren't any moderately used cars to be found. At this point, I just plan to keep driving it until it finally gives out on me. It's lasted me this long, so why not?

tabtab• 8 years ago

Re: We were even so desperate to fix the economy that the government basically started cutting people checks.

That's pretty much how Keynesian economics is supposed to work: the gov't saves up during good times and distributes cash during bad times to get people to consume again. Otherwise, economies can get stuck in a circular rut where nobody is spending because they have no jobs, and there are no jobs because nobody is spending. (The problem is politicians don't bother to pay down debt during good times.)

sf01• 8 years ago

Here's a discussion with the author, if anyone's interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFIa_szx_U

mcguire4• 8 years ago

"From a sociological point of view, the crisis exacerbated faultlines running through contemporary societies, faultlines of city and country, old and young, cosmopolitan and nationalist, insider and outsider. As a direct result we have seen a sharp rise in populism across the developed world and a marked collapse in support for established parties, in particular those of the centre-left."

Weirdly, the "winners"[1] of the populism have been rural, older, nationalist, and very much insider[2]. Think of both Trump and Brexit supporters. I'm not entirely sure, but these don't seem to have been the people hurt the most by the economic crash. The whole situation has an incredibly strong disconnect between what's actually going on and the facade or veneer of what they think about it. Ideology trumps reality?

[1] I'm using "winner" because I can't think of anything better, but the "victory" is Pyrrhic. Not only are they shooting themselves in the foot, even if they weren't they would not have a good end game.

[2] Yes, the rhetoric is about outsiders, clearing the swamp and that sort of thing. But those are the most inside outsiders I've ever seen.

speeder• 8 years ago

A really bizarre data that I saw during US elections, was that during pooling (before actual elections) the map of Trump voters, was almost identical to the map of places with high death rates.

Also largest trump voter demographic, as the media currently keep harping all the time as "racist whites males", is the only demographic in US with rising death rates.

I don't know why certain US demographics started since 2008 to die at such speed, suicides for example rising unusually fast, and "gun crime" when you actually split homocides and suicides, also show ludicrous numbers of suicides (while gun homicides are less than with other weaponry, like knives and bats).

So whatever happened, it affected a certain demographic epically bad...

And when someone propose to be a saviour, no matter how much you hate that person, you will vote for it... When people have literally nothing to lose and next "step" in their life, is death, anything else is better.

EDIT: tried to find original source, failed, but found this article instead... still make the same point: http://www.businessinsider.com/maps-counties-where-opioid-de...

mcguire4• 8 years ago

"A crackdown on international evasion is difficult because it requires international co-ordination, but common sense tells us this would be by no means impossible. Effective legal instruments to prevent offshore tax evasion are incredibly simple and could be enacted overnight, as the United States has just shown with its crackdown on oligarchs linked to Putin’s regime. All you have to do is make it illegal for banks to enact transactions with territories that don’t comply with rules on tax transparency."

Like Switzerland?

After the Fall: Ten Years After the Crash

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