Huffpost Austerity Series -Ten Years Since Lehman Brothers Collapsed, It's The Public Who Have Suffered A Decade Of Misery
Ten Years Since Lehman Brothers Collapsed, It's The Public Who Have Suffered A Decade Of Misery
David Hillman - 14 September 2018
Remember the bewildered Lehman Brothers employees leaving their HQ with the contents of their desks in cardboard boxes? Unbelievably that was 10 years ago this week. That’s when the unthinkable happened - the banking system seized up. Cash machines were about to run out of money and people were on the verge of losing their life’s savings, even their homes. We all know what followed: the government injected billions into the banks’ coffers to give them a new lease of life and stuck us with the bill, claiming it was the bitter pill we all had to swallow.
So here’s the thing - the crash may have caused the recession but the government did not need to respond with austerity. You can also invest to get the economy going again. Cuts were a deliberate political choice, a decision to use the crisis to shrink the public sector, increase the private, and favour the interests of the rich.... See more