We Are All to Blame for GFC

There are some documentaries you watch that are so brilliant that you need to tell others about it. This is one of them. This documentary, part one of four, details the history of today's global financial crisis. The GFC hit in 2009 but was fixed with bailouts and other policy measures designed to provide fiscal stimulus to the economy. But now what we are witnessing is the reality that these policies have uncovered massive debt in the balance sheets of sovereign governments.

While many are quick to point their fingers to bankers, I would like to add that many of us are guilty. Many people I talk to hate bankers. They tell me over and over again how bankers are greedy and evil. However, these same people, although they talk bad about bankers, their actions reveal otherwise. These people invest their money into savings accounts with these bankers. These people borrow money from these bankers to buy houses and cars. If you don't like bankers, don't do business with them. As soon as your salary is deposited into your bank account, withdraw it and put it in under your mattress, or covert it into physical gold and bury it. But nobody does that. Modern banking has become mainstream and normal. The people who detach themselves from the banking system are seen as weird and crazy. Our actions suggest we love the banks, we trust the banks wholeheartedly, yet when things go wrong we want to blame someone else.

I do believe the major bankers are at fault for plundering the public purse when the GFC hit, but what else could the government do when so many people's money was tied up in these banks? People shouldn't have trusted these banks in the first place and shouldn't have put too much money in them.

Ultimately it was greed that led us to where we are now. It was greed from people who in partnership with banks and government tried to extract as much cash as possible from residential real estate. We had too much faith in real estate. This is a good old fashioned bubble just like the bubbles of the old days, such as tulip mania. It does not matter whether debt is transferred from banks to government to taxpayers. Regardless of where the debt goes, there are three options: (1) the debt needs to be paid off (2) the debt needs to be defaulted on, and (3) the debt needs to be inflated away with money printing. The prices of stocks and other assets will go up and down depending which the relative magnitudes of these actions. Because it is difficult to know what direction government will take with regards to how much money it will print, how much spending it will cut, etc, the best we can do to protect our wealth is to diversify.