Agree with previous recent statements. You can’t really divorce Joe Sixpack from what’s happening right now because the whole cycle of boom and bust stems from one collective mindset: we all want more than what we have.
As individuals or collective entities we overreach our ambitions and expectations. The banks, in their quest for ever greater profits, dreamed up ever more exotic loans and loosened lending criteria for sure…but…only to feed the latent demand out there from people who want the biggest and best they can or cannot afford. Financial collapse is a projection of and culmination of the unreal collective expectation.
We vote for politicians who promise the earth, with the outcome that politicians abandon sound economic management. There would be none of this turmoil if for example, there was a gold standard, which forces govts to only spend money held in reserve, instead of recklessly borrowing (printing money) to fund Big Brother projects and please the voter.
So it’s not a simple question of the Big Bad Bankers. We’re all in on it. As they say, it takes two to tango.