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We live in the aftermath of one of the biggest financial and intellectual mistakes ever made. For a generation the world, with the London/New York financial axis at its heart, surrendered to the specious theory that lending and financial contracts could grow many times faster than the underlying economy. There was a blind belief that in a free market banks could not make mistakes. Free markets didn't make mistakes – only clumsy bureaucratic states made economic mistakes. Or so they said. Financial alchemists, guided by the maxims of free market fundamentalism, could make no such errors.
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People educated in spin and business school myths invented money while increasing their incomes by $millions. For if they were responsible, then a finance employee is paid like his counterpart (a lineman) in an electric utility.
As usual, bills come due many years later - maybe a decade. So they played more money games (Ponzi schemes) to invent more money to hide their lies. LTCM was the canary in the coalmine. The world ignored the obvious insisting that economics is too hard to understand.
Austerity means nobody can afford expensive (£500) dinners. IOW no more employees in gourmet restaurants. Superboxes repriced for the common man because corporations must spend more on their employees and less on top management. Put most people into jobs that actually create innovation - increase productivity. Create machines that do more with less people. That also creates more jobs.
Applying austerity by using spread sheets means productive jobs get destroyed alongside jobs that create new stadiums, luxury lawns, exclusive gold courses, and McMansions.. The problem is not austerity. The problem is applying austerity to the right places. Mostly to those who are the problem - the richest.