The Price of Blind Faith—And the Reckoning We Can No Longer Ignore

[Hello folks, here's an article I've been working on with my new research assistant, Grok3. 😜 Now, young Grockie has been a wonderful help to pull together all sorts of goodies for me to toy with and shape. Before I put it up on an obscure website, or try to offer it to some "prestigious" industry rag, like the Aussie Financial Review 🤣 I thought I'd put it up here first for peer review and critique.Anyone willing to indulge me and this weekend's distraction?]

The Price of Blind Faith—And the Reckoning We Can No Longer Ignore

In 2009, Sheri West, one time owner of a Shelter for the Homeless, watched helplessly as her home was foreclosed. (Peter S.Goodman. New York Times, 2009) She joined 10 million Americans evicted in the wake of a financial crisis sparked by Wall Street’s unchecked greed.

Across the Atlantic, Dimitris Christoulas, a Greek pensioner, shot himself in Athens’ Syntagma Square in 2012, leaving a note blaming austerity cuts that slashed his pension to nothing.(Helena Smith. The Guardian, 2012).

In sub-Saharan Africa, IMF structural adjustment programs, (Anup Shah, Global Issues, 2013) gutted healthcare funding, leaving children to die from malaria while foreign creditors collected their dues. These aren’t abstract numbers—they’re the human wreckage of economic policies rooted in a delusion.

That delusion is neo-classical economics, a doctrine promising equilibrium and prosperity through self-regulating markets and rational actors. It’s a fantasy that’s cost us dearly. Australian economist, Steve Keen, who predicted the 2008 crash, nails it: “The neoclassical vision of equilibrium is a fantasy that blinds us to the dynamics of debt.” (Steve Keen. Debunking Economics, 2011) Yet, this ideology was weaponized by leaders who should have known better.

Alan Greenspan, former Fed chair, ignored ballooning household debt, insisting markets would sort themselves out—until they didn’t. Angela Merkel, Germany’s "Iron Frau," (Independent, 2010) enforced austerity in the EU, that shrank Greece’s economy by a quarter, turning a debt crisis into a humanitarian one. Christine Lagarde, then at the IMF, pushed policies that prioritized bank balance sheets over human lives across the Global South.

The fallout didn’t end with 2008. The same blind faith persists, repackaged as bailouts, bail-ins, and digital currencies. Post-crash, trillions of dollars in public funds rescued banks while families who thought they were as safe as houses, like Sheri and Demitris, lost everything and more.

Today, across multiple jurisdictions, bail-ins—where banks can raid your savings to save themselves—have either gained legislated approval or loom grisly and large on the near horizon, as the next hidden and hush-hushed threat. Cyprus, 2013: depositors lost up to 47% of their savings overnight. (Menelaos Hadjicostis. AP - USA Today, 2013). Meanwhile, China’s digital yuan trials hint at a future where governments can monitor and control every transaction. (Mikayla Cheng. BYU, 2024). These aren’t glitches in the system—they’re features of a framework that puts ideology over people.

Now picture this: you check your bank account one morning, and half your savings are gone, seized to prop up a failing financial giant. Or your digital wallet locks you out because an algorithm flags your spending as “suspicious.” This isn’t science fiction—it’s the trajectory we’re on. In 1917-18, the Bolsheviks confiscated bank deposits (James Marson. The Moscow Times, 2009) during the October Revolution to fund their new order. My Grandfather’s family, were one of many directly disenfranchised by that revolutionary-backed ransacking of the Moscow Central Bank.

Today’s bail-ins and programmable currencies are the 21st-century version—economic theft dressed up as crisis management. The West in it's mock outrage over China’s tying of personal financial access to a Social Credit Score, amounts to nothing more that crocodile tears in a teacup, compared to Canada’s de-banking of protestors (PostMedia News. Toronto Sun, 2023) AND people who donated to the cause. And let’s not forget the ongoing FARCE highlighted by a UK bank de-banking Nigel Farage! (Dan Woodland. The Daily Mail, 2023). British economist, Ann Pettifor emphatically believes that bank bail-ins are a betrayal of the social contract, and she’s not wrong. The trust that underpins economies is fraying, and we’re sleepwalking toward the consequences. “And, you can take that to the bank!”

The architects of this mess—Greenspan, Merkel, Lagarde, and their ilk—walk free, unaccountable for decisions that have demonstrably ruined countless people’s lives. Greenspan’s mea culpa was a shrug; Merkel’s legacy is a fractured Europe; Lagarde’s IMF tenure left a trail of misery and abject poverty. And let us not overlook the disgusting atrocities of economic malfeasance caused by Reagan, Clinton, and Thatcher! These weren’t missteps—they were choices, made with eyes wide open, to prop up failing economic systems, at the financial, physical and mental expense of the people they were meant to serve. Hyman Minsky, the prophet of financial instability, warned us: “Stability breeds instability.” We ignored him once. We can’t afford to again.

What to do? Demand Justice! Push for international courts—be it the ICC, ICJ or some UN tribunal—to investigate Economic Atrocities as rigorously as War Crimes. Insist on reforms that put people first: Debt Forgiveness for nations and households crushed by speculation, Universal Basic Income: at least for the most vulnerable in society, Democratic Control over Digital Currencies, and Criminal Penalties for reckless economic stewardship. Above all, reject the neo-classical dogma that’s failed us time and time again. The next crisis isn’t a question of “if” but “when”—and it won’t just be bank accounts and digital wallets at stake. It’ll be trust itself, the bedrock of society, shattered by betrayal on a global scale.

If we don’t act, history won’t just repeat—it’ll escalate. The warning IS abjectly clear: Hold the Guilty to Account! Or brace for a reckoning that will make 2008 look like an Amuse-bouche.

[T. Tempest, 2025.02.23]

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