#2008 Financial Crisis

[alpaca-clouds]

A Reminder of the Fact, that Billionaires are not Real

I know. I know. Most people right now expect me to do more historical write ups. But please listen to me for a moment. This is kinda important. Because with Trump trying to make himself a fucking god emperor or some shit, I need y'all to understand this one thing.

This is a reminder: Billionaires are not actually real. As in: There is not a person who has a ten-figures amount of money on their bank account or anything like that. Nobody. Not Elon Musk. Not Jeff Bezos. Not Zuckerberg. Nobody. They are valued in the billions, but they are not actually billionaires. In fact some of them might not have so much as a million on their bank account from all we know.

So, why are they billionaires?

Because they own assets. Everyone who is really, really rich does not own money, but assets. Those assets are:

Real Estate and land

Luxury vehicles, yachts, private jets etc.

Art

Investment portfolios

Shares in companies

Stuff like mines and natural ressources

Patents and Copyrights

General stuff Marx would call: "The means of production"

The "net worth" that gets thrown around is just what people estimate the stuff those people own is valued at. But again: Very for of them have more then a few million actually on their bank accounts. And this also is the reason why right now we have so many billionaires.

Because since the entire bullshit in 2008 (for those who just turned 18: The real estate bubble burst and what not - watch "The Big Short" for more context) something has been happening called "the asset inflation". Basically the worth of all those assets has shot up in price BY A LOT, which made people who had been "just" multimillionaires before into billionaires suddenly.

But what you need to understand is, that this is just... It is fictional. It is a mirage. And if we all could just agree on that, they literally would have nothing. Because you cannot eat a yacht. You cannot eat company shares. You cannot do shit with any of that. You cannot even buy something with that.

You know how billionaires buy stuff? They go to a bank and go: "Hey, look at all this shit I have. I want to buy XY, so if you give me the money to do that, I will tots pay you back. And if I don't, you tots can take some of my shit, fair?" And the bank will go: "Yeah, whatever. Here. Have 20 billion fantasy dollars."

But all of this just works, because everybody agrees that if the billionaire or the bank sold whatever assets the billionaire offers up to someone else, they would actually get the money.

I wrote about this before: This is why we cannot get away from fossil fuels. Because right now everyone who has the money to invest in energy has not actually real money, but just valued assets - and those assets are oil pumps, and coal mines, and gas plants. And if we all agreed that we no longer want oil, gas and coal, those would be worthless - and those investors would no longer have money. Because their "money" is just the worth that those mines, pumps, and plants have.

And that is also, why they are so much against the "capital gains tax". It is more than it appears to be on the surface. See, a capital gain is, when those assets you hold gain in value. Which currently happens at an alarming rate. Some of them gain literally 20 or more percent in value each year. So if you implement proper capital gains taxes, those "billionaires" would have go give some part of the theoretical monetary gain they made each year from the inflation of those assets - and obviously newly gained assets - as money to the government.

Just look at our most hated billionaire: Elon Musk. In 2023 he had a net worth of 180 billion, in 2024 he ended the year on 410 billion. That is a gain of 230 billion. Almost all of it falls under "capital gains taxes". Now, let's say we implemented a really, really soft capital gains tax of just 5%. Which is nothing in terms of tax. You and I pay more taxes on our salary. But 5% of 230 billion is 11.5 billion. And because you cannot pay taxes in assets, Elon would need 11.5 billion to actually pay his taxes. And he does not have that. Nobody does. Again, I doubt that there is really anyone who has more than a billion in liquid assets (= actual money or anything that can be used as flat payment). In fact I doubt that most billionaires have actually a billion in liquid assets. Some might have several hundred million, sure, but nothing more. Again, this is basically monopoly money.

And if they would implement a capital gains tax this entire fantasy construct would come down. Because, yeah. Nobody actually has the liquid assets to pay the taxes. And they would have to admit that.

Right now their influence is build mainly on the fact that most people do not understand how "rich people economics" work. Which is why you need to understand it.

They do not have money. They have just assets. And those only are worth billions, because people let them get away with claiming this.

You know. We can just... adjust for that.

[arctuuz]

2008 FINANSSIKRIISI!

Vuonna 2008 oli finanssikriisi, ja kaikki oli köyhiä tai jotain, en muista.

[blackbrownfamily]

[naneki-maid]

I met my wife on Match.com. My profile said, “I am a medical student with only one eye, an awkward social manner, and $145,000 in student loans.” She wrote back, “You’re just what I’ve been looking for.” She meant honest.

The Big Short (2015)

[captain-303]

The 2008 financial crisis is to me what the 2nd Impact is to the Eva pilots

[theculturedmarxist]

Warning signs of the instability of the global financial system abounded in the months leading up to the 2008 Lehman Brothers crash. Among these early signs were the astounding revelations about UBS, the world’s largest private bank, by Stephanie Gibaud, who was employee at the bank’s French division. Gibaud refused instructions given to her and other employees to delete all their company files. In doing so, she helped reveal a vast web of corruption and fraud linking UBS to a shadowy tax evasion scheme. More than 15 years later, Gibaud has endured harassment, professional ostracization, lawsuits, and threats. She joins The Chris Hedges Report to speak on her ordeal and the extent of corruption in the international banking system.

Chris Hedges:  Stephanie Gibaud in June, 2008, was ordered by one of her managers at the UBS Bank in Paris, to destroy all her computer files that related to customers with offshore accounts in Switzerland. The order came in the wake of the 2007 American banker, Bradley Birkenfeld’s disclosure of client information to the US Department of Justice, which suggested that UBS was facilitating massive tax evasion schemes for its American clients, which ultimately led to a penalty of $780 million. Swiss banks have long been havens for those seeking to avoid taxes. In 2014, for example, Credit Suisse, which would also plead guilty to sheltering money for its clients so they could avoid paying taxes, had to pay $2.6 billion in penalties.

Gibaud, however, was the only bank employee at UBS who refused to delete her files. She protested to UBS management and French regulators. Her documents would eventually help to identify 38,000 offshore bank accounts amounting to $12 billion. UBS responded by trying to fire her as part of a mass redundancy of 100 employees during the 2008 financial crisis. The French Ministry of Work intervened, but her life at UBS became excruciating. She suffered harassment and discrimination along with social and professional isolation. She endured constant anxiety and depression. UBS fired her finally in 2012. She was sued for defamation by the bank after writing her book, The Woman Who Knew Too Much, part of a series of lawsuits that plague her to this day.

She requested compensation totaling 3.5 million euros and the judge gave her 4,500 euros, which barely covered her legal fees. UBS was eventually forced to pay a record fine in 2019 of $4.9 billion, but Gibaud found herself financially ruined and blacklisted from the financial sector where she had spent her career. The French legal system does not compensate whistleblowers, unlike the US. The Commodities Future Trading Commission, for example, recently awarded an anonymous whistleblower around $200 million for providing information about Deutsche Bank’s manipulation of the LIBOR benchmark. Birkenfeld, who exposed UBS’s offshore accounts for American clients, was handed a check from the US Treasury for $104 million, minus taxes. Gibaud is currently battling in the French courts to become the first legally recognized whistleblower, which could pave the way for greater protection and compensation.

[chemicalarospec]

Trying to solve a plot hole in my fic: Maybe what this needs is 2008 financial recession

[frankenstein-was-a-grad-student]

The hardest era to write about from a technology standpoint must be 2008-2015. Shockingly small changes in narrative can have a dramatic impact on the accuracy of your setting and the tools your characters can deploy. I cannot figure out when Paul Murray thinks he’s set his book The Bee Sting. It’s described as “post 2008 financial crash Ireland” with a car dealership going under. Yet, everyone seems to have a smartphone (glass screen for typing so I’d assume iPhone which is insane from both a class perspective and a European perspective) with mostly reliable internet, Instagram is the app of choice for the teen protagonist (despite not even existing until October 2010), memories from years before including Minecraft (released 2011), characters text each other gifs, and the teen boy wants to buy the Nintendo switch. Leads us to believe we’re in minimally 2017 (by the switch), or at least late 2010 (by use of Instagram forgiving the switch). In the latter most generous scenario we need to believe that this teenager in Ireland downloaded Instagram almost immediately after it came out as well as all her friends AND her 12-13 year old little brother already has a burner account. Moreover, we need to believe her phone internet was good enough to constantly have access to it. It all seems rather unlikely.

I was very excited to read this book because it existed in such a fun era for children and young adults: the tackiest phones (give me a Razr or a T Mobile sidekick), the joy of logging onto the internet to check 9gag or Imgur, T9 texting, the displays of class and wealth evident from the type of phone you had or whether or not your parents had fast enough internet to watch YouTube in anything other than 360p.

Being a kid in this era was strange—technology grew with you in a 0-60 kind of way. Sad to see Murray hasn’t quite captured that in this otherwise lovely work.

[christianbalefanatic]

Christian Bale as Michael Burry in The Big Short (2015) dir. Adam McKay

(christianbalefanatic edit)

[bitchesgetriches]

A Brief History of the 2008 Crash and Recession: We Were All So Fucked

Keep reading.

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[nevermind-stop-forever]

Oh! The 2008 recession was really fucked up! The banks knew the whole time! And did nothing! Told no one!

[alpaca-clouds]

Tumblr. I need to ask y'all something.

Did you, in school, learn ANYTHING about the 2008 financial crisis?

I know this is a place where a lot of millennials congregate, and we might be a bit to old. Most of us left school around the time this happened. But the Gen Z and Gen Alpha folks. Did you learn anything about this?

I am trying to figure something out here.

If you want, please leave informations in the tags. Like, when did you go to school? Where? And if you talked about this, what did they tell you?

[ponguon]

who played the drums

answer quick please

[blackbrownfamily]

[wabble-dee]

i think that the people who maed him cycle all day are probablu bad people and i think they should be puncished.

it reminds me of myself, i'm in a constand cycle every fday and i would like a snack.

[shot-in-the-sky]

1992-2008 really be one decade characterised by a relentless amount of romance comedies starring Hugh Grant that could only be stopped by the biggest financial crash since 1929