The following was written in 1991:
“The largest banks know, however, that they are literally 'too big to fail' and can count on a helping hand from government if the worst comes to the worst. America's political leaders would step in to prevent the crash of a major financial institution on the grounds that it could set off a lethal chain reaction culminating in widespread disaster. ... Thus, in yet another intriguing but ominous irony of history, 10 years of ultra-liberalism have resulted in a US financial system whose future may only be assured with the help of federal government handouts”
~p.61 of Capitalism Against Capitalism, by Michel Albert.
Albert was the CEO of a French insurance company. This is interesting, because one of the issues with the sub-prime mortgage crisis was the failure of AIG due in part to its insuring of credit default swaps. Insurance companies had a role, along with regulatory agencies, brokerage firms, and governments themselves, in making banks feel safe about the bets they were playing by the process of securitization, and thereby content to continue their game of economic roulette. The world is not discrete pieces or discrete entities; it is connections.
I retrieved this quote from the wiki on 'Rhine Capitalism,' as contrasted with the term 'Anglo-Saxon Economy.' Note that neither term seems to have acquired very wide currency. However, given that fiat or credit money is issued as debt and thereby given worth only by economic expansion that will represent the value presupposed by each additional dollar put into circulation, our currency isn't wholly reliable either. Like a gambler, we are placing our bets not on the present, but on the future. Isn't that what printing money as a loan to oneself is? Betting that, in the future, you will have the value you lack today? Perhaps that is why Americans are more religious than other nations; we love our money, and it tells us to have faith in God that our currency won't collapse. All you can do, my friend, is have a little faith; but complacency will do just as well.
