Capitalism is crazy: private profits, social losses
Will the stock-market crash of 21 January continue, or ease? We don't know. But what about the monolines? The monolines? They are a fairly specialised part of the financial sphere. Yet their current crisis could have huge repercussions. That is how capital works. Hiccups in the tricks and speculations of tiny cliques of financiers can wreck the livelihoods of millions. In early 2007, low-security, high-interest mortgage lending in the USA went into crisis. By the end of 2006, those "subprime" mortgages totalled about $1.5 trillion, of which $600 billion had originated in 2006 alone. A lot of...