I think the theory goes that by intervening we essentially created the first wave of zombie companies by papering over losses with printed money. The effect was to smooth over the immediate pain but prolong the downturn. There are some that argue that if left alone, the market would have violently corrected in short order as it had on previous cycles. By not allowing it to do so we have created an insurmountable debt load.
I think thats the general theory.
Yes. One example: rather than allow wages to fall (as other prices fell), both Hoover and Roosevelt administrations did everything possible to keep wages at the inflated level they had achieved. Consider normal supply-and-demand price theory: if you artificially keep a good or service at a very high price, there will be an excess of supply and deficiency of demand, a wasteful surplus. When the surplus is in labor, deficient demand means mass unemployment.
OH yah I remember that. The wages had the additional pressure of needing to fall during a raging banking crisis triggered by a real estate bubble that was ready to pop. Wages falling would mess up the loans. Trying to keep wages up ended up coasting all the jobs and really messing up the real estate and therefore the bond market.
something like that
This is seemingly unrelated to the actual framework built to ensure retired persons can survive.
The ponzi scheme?
Social security is a "pay as you go" retirement scheme, which means the money young people put in is used to pay for old people right now. That's exactly how a ponzi scheme works - the old investors are paid out by new investors. What about the social security trust fund? It's full of US Treasuries - IOUs from the Federal Government, just like if there were no trust fund. It's also broke now. Not ten years from now, right now Social Security is selling US bonds because it's giving out more than it takes in. If they didn't have the trust fund, the US Treasury would sell bonds to get the money. See how that's already happening?
Except that pensions are at the mercy of the bond market which cycles with the real estate market which affects liquidity and therefore jobs. Its all connected.
