3 ms·

maybe the US govt. got smarter and something like 2008 == never again.

• AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Well, the US government got more willing to take more extreme measures. I recall at the time reading that, before Lehman collapsed - I think it was Lehman - there wasn't the political will to do what it would have taken to save Lehman. After it collapsed, everyone realized how big the damage could be, and they decide that they had to do whatever it took to stop the next huge institution from failing. But I'm reminded of how, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, rules were put in place to prevent investment banks from being the same institution as deposit-taking banks, so that bad investments couldn't destroy depositors' money. But time passed, and that whole generation died off, and nothing like the Great Depression happened again, and people forgot why the rules were there, and relaxed or removed them, and we got 2008. People will remember 2008. They'll remember the sick feeling of fear, wondering if tomorrow (literally the next day) everything would collapse. But the time will come when the people who lived through it are gone, and the people who follow won't remember why the regulations and changes were needed. They may know intellectually, but they won't know at the gut level of having lived through it. And so the guardrails will eventually be removed. And then... But this isn't that. This is just another dip in the business cycle.