We took the fruit from the Garden of Eden and bit into it in the form of cheap loans, mortgages, and re-mortgages for that nice shiny car. We got greedy and bought property to rent out to others and will pay for the consequences for many years to come. In the UK we will have to put our trust in the FSA to be the guardians or our rights and to make sure we the people get a fair deal from these giants of capitalism. In time real choice will come back, and that will be a good thing; but when it does, we must all think back to 2008 and keep ourselves in check.

This has become common wisdom, but it's exaggerated at best and nonsense at worst. Cheap loans became poisonous because real income was either stagnant or falling. If real pay had followed productivity, the loans would have been unnecessary.

Instead the loan sharks have made a killing. Some ate so much they exploded, and the most adaptive are feeding off their remains.

The structural issue - practical wealth sharing - is barely being mentioned.

The nonsense will continue until governments start publishing metrics of street-level economic health which aren't as detached from everyday experience as GDP and stock prices are.