Apart from the patently nonreality-based dissent of its Republican members, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission could hardly have expected the report it issued in January to arouse much excitement. After a year and a half of research and the testimony of academics and other economic experts, it came up with no more than the already conventional wisdom that the economic downturn that burst into public view in 2007 might have been avoided, having been caused by a combination of lax governmental regulation and excessive risk-taking by lenders and borrowers, particularly in the housing market. The same conventional wisdom assures us that swift government action prevented the Great Recession from turning into a full-blown depression, and that the downturn has given way to recovery, albeit a "fragile" one. No matter how often it is repeated, however, this wisdom remains unconvincing.
Why is the recovery so fragile? Why is unemployment stubbornly high? Why are the banks, newly stocked with cash by that swift government action, so uninterested in advancing it for business expansion? Why is the series of sovereign debt crises in Europe echoed in the United States by collapsing state budgets? Why do politicians call relentlessly for austerity even while the economy remains unable to satisfy the need of millions for housing, health care, education, and even food? The bankruptcy of the putative science of economics already demonstrated by the failure of experts to predict the catastrophe is underlined by their apparent inability either to explain what is happening at present or to reach consensus on measures to be taken in response.
Why is the recovery so fragile? Why is unemployment stubbornly high? Why are the banks, newly stocked with cash by that swift government action, so uninterested in advancing it for business expansion? Why is the series of sovereign debt crises in Europe echoed in the United States by collapsing state budgets? Why do politicians call relentlessly for austerity even while the economy remains unable to satisfy the need of millions for housing, health care, education, and even food? The bankruptcy of the putative science of economics already demonstrated by the failure of experts to predict the catastrophe is underlined by their apparent inability either to explain what is happening at present or to reach consensus on measures to be taken in response.
