Comment on Europe’s $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

• Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I just want to inject here my experience in Britain during the 2008 Crash and its aftermath:

  In Britain, the Finance Industry was 17% of GDP, so when the Crash happened the country was disproportionally hit.

  After the crash the autorities chose to protect Asset Owner above all:

  • Interest rates were lowered to 0%, thus protecting lenders (i.e. those with the money to lend or ownership of Banks which in the modern system can de facto create money: if you don’t believe me, read the paper “Money Creation In The Modern Economy” from the Bank Of England) from debt defaults, indirectly protecting Asset owners by avoiding asset firesales from collateral confiscated after a default thus avoiding the associate asset price falls, most notably for Land and Housing (in the UK the housing bubble never really stopped being inflated and Land Ownership is the core of Old Wealth)
  • Banks were unconditionally saved by the state taking a share in them. That Public share was then put under management of a group made up of bankers “so that the government doesn’t interfere in the market”.De facto pressure for changing from the very practices that had cause the Crash was removed and most of the people having the blame for the failures of the Crash kept their positions of privilege.
  • All this was paid by most people through Austerity. Public services were cut, Social Security (aka "Benefits) were reduced, salaries stagnated.

  By 2015 the incomes of the top wealthier 10% of the population were growing in real terms 23% per year whilst the bottom 90% were seeing their incomes fall 1% per year in real terms.

  This was roughly how thing were going for about a decade after the Crash. UK inequality is nowadays huge, social mobility near non-existent, average incomes when measured in a currency other than the pound - which went down following Brexit - have stagneted, overall economic growth anemic and concentrated in highest wealth layers since the official “growth” is mostly asset prices going up.

  This is the process by which the billionaires make sure they win: everybody gets hit more or less in a Crash, but in during the subsequent period when the state is supposedly trying to fix it, you get also sorts of “extreme measures required by extreme times” that, “curiously”, help the billionaires the most, so some years later everybody but the wealthiest slices of society are worst of whilst the wealthiest are much richer even than before the Crash.

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  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m pretty sure this is same exact thing that happened in USA.

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    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yeah, I believe so based on what I saw from affar, but I’m more intimatelly familiar with Britain - especially the more subtle element of politics and policy - since I lived there during that period.

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• ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Not everyone wins in a failing economy. If one billionaire makes out, three more lose money.

  No, yeah, that’s true. But the billionaires are also competing with each other in a (perceived) zero-sum game and they believe the ones who are cozying closest to Trump will be the best ones positioned to make money - either in a corrupt or a failing economy. But every recession has been a golden opportunity for billionaires.

  Heck, in post-collapse Russia, this is how oligarchs first appeared - the “shock therapy” of the 1990s transition to a market economy dropped the value of resources to nothing, and the rich at the time bought them and became the ultra-rich. Some didn’t make it. ( Like a super-bacteria forming from the ones not killed by antibiotics, the ones that survived were even more resistant to control.)

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  • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Good example, especially given that it looks like a Russian oligarchy is where we’ve been headed since 2016

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    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Good example, especially given that it looks like a Russian oligarchy is where we’ve been headed since 2016 since 1776

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      • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Nah, since the 80s at the earliest. The wealthiest were taxed up to 90% and corporations didn’t get the tax loops they have now until Reagan took office.

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• technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If one billionaire makes out, three more lose money.

  That’s just what you say. And who cares about billionaires losing money anyway?

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  • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    The billionaires will be buying up what the millionaires sell off to stay afloat.

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