I have a deep distrust of the financial system as well. How much can you just keep repackaging debt until it looks palatable? After all, that's what most financ

I have a deep distrust of the financial system as well. How much can you just keep repackaging debt until it looks palatable? After all, that's what most financial instruments are, and the financial system has enormous incentives to trap people in debt. The pattern is the same: years of deregulation allow financial giants to go on a feeding frenzy. They feed on ill-informed consumers by enticing them with deals that are too good to be true. They feed on each other by giving each other loans. The numbers look great for a while. Individuals within these firms get enormous bonuses because the numbers are so good. Then there is a moment of reckoning where the financial giants realize their credit exposure to each other is too high and furiously backpedal. They then try to obtain safe assets at any cost, crashing the market and decimating IRAs (but who cares about those). This has not been caused _by_ coronavirus. Internal data from my company (sorry, no details) have been foreshadowing a recession for months. Coronavirus just came at the most inopportune time, with a financial house of cards primed for collapse and a USFG administration that's too inept to handle it (and which encouraged the feeding to begin with). The banks are going to be hit by this, but they'll survive it one way or another. Those of us who are invested in the financial system (read: almost everyone) will get screwed. Then the financial giants, freshly bailed out with taxpayer money, will go purchase real assets at rock bottom prices and further consolidate wealth in time for the next bull market. This is when we could use an FDR to break this cycle. Instead, we have the choice of Trump, Biden, or Sanders. Yikes.