If the West had let markets work in the years leading up to 2008 and beyond, there’d be no need to get rid of this crop of bad actors. When bubble-era banks went out of business because of their disastrous mistakes and mischief, they would have taken their failed leadership with them.
Yes, a few firms did fail, but not enough to change the institutional culture of Wall Street and the City (London’s financial district). Instead, institutions that should have gone under, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, have forged ahead, dragging problems that should have been solved by now into the future and harming economic growth. ...
[I]f anyone has been manipulating interest rates to pretend that everything is A-OK, it’s Western governments. In recent years, central banks in America and Britain (and in Europe) have bought hundreds of billions’ worth of bonds in an effort to keep global interest rates low, financial firms afloat, and middle-class borrowers placated.
