For anyone in doubt that it is the "lower classes" that should pay for the excesses of the last forty years, a new report authored by the National Institute for Economic & Social Research for the Resolution Foundation shows that it was the poor who drove the pre-crisis debt boom.
Yes indeed, the poor are to blame. We all knew it.
It wasn't that the banks leveraged themselves to the hilt. Nor was it that they made huge bets on ever abstracted derivatives of debt of all kinds in the great global casino. Nor that they have been printing money all these years like there's no tomorrow. Nor that their employees have been taking risks so huge that they can lose $2 billion in the bat of an all-seeing eyelid.
It wasn't that successive governments destroyed the productive capability of the nation. Or that they systematically sold off our basic economic infrastructure to private companies that have asset stripped it. Nor that our politicians stole £4 trillion from the public sector and state pension pots to fund government spending, all the while borrowing ever more from the markets. Nor was it that they systematically removed the regulatory protections which limited the madness of the banks.
It wasn't any of these things. It was the poor. The filthy, sponging poor, who took all the credit that was handed to them (would you like a sweetie, little boy?).
Now, the system is bankrupt.
Make them pay!
