During the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, central banks’ rescue of finance continued on an unprecedented scale for ten years with what is called Quantitative easing (QE). The striking effect of this was to send prices of financial assets sky-high and thereby substantially enrich the bankers, speculators and the already rich holders of these assets at levels that are much higher than before the crisis.
At the same time, ordinary people found themselves lastingly out of work on a huge scale. Governments whose own finances deteriorated steeply – not least because of their aid to the financial sector – rushed to cut back on their spending, especially on welfare. Everywhere, classic right-wing governments but also social-liberal left ones as in France adopted deflationary policies to cut the cost of labor and loosen up the labor market rules, thus making ordinary people’s working and living conditions far worse. While cutting again the taxes on the super-rich and corporate earnings to preserve the country’s « attractiveness. » [...]
In these conditions it is scarcely surprising that both classic right-wing and left-wing parties are utterly discredited in working class eyes all over the world. The remedy to the crisis should have been to fight these deflationary tendencies by creating public sector jobs and providing support for infrastructure and human capital (education/skills training/R&D et al)investment projects, strengthening regulation of the labor market and wage-earners’ social security, returning to progressive taxes and redistribution of wealth…
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