Bankers escaped 2008 accountability because society depended on their payment systems

Evidence

As a brief side note, you may well ask: when the bubble finally burst, why did we not let the bankers crash and burn? Why weren’t they held accountable for their absurd debts? For two reasons. First, because the payments system, the simple means of transferring a sum of money from one account to another and on which every transaction relies, is monopolised by the very same bankers who were making the bets. Imagine having gifted your arteries and veins to a gambler. The moment he loses big at the casino, he can blackmail you for anything you have simply by threatening to cut off your circulation. Second, because the financiers’ gambles contained, deep inside, the title deeds to the houses of the majority. A full-scale financial market collapse would, therefore, lead to mass homelessness and a complete breakdown in the social contract. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 224

Categorization

• SHARE: The ‘arteries and veins gifted to a gambler’ blackmail metaphor is a vivid way to explain bank too-big-to-fail; worth sending to anyone teaching finance.
• XREF: Foreshadows ecosystem dependence on platforms in the technofeudalism thesis — same structural blackmail logic. — connects to: Blame for the 2008 crisis was displaced from banks onto borrowers; Economics escaped crisis blame because the banking sector it protected escaped unscathed — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 555; Bank bailouts exemplify society’s protective countermovement against markets — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 400 (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 224

Broader Connections

• Economics escaped crisis blame because the banking sector it protected escaped unscathed #corroborates (1.00) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 555
• Bank bailouts exemplify society’s protective countermovement against markets #corroborates (1.00) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 400
• Blame for the 2008 crisis was displaced from banks onto borrowers #responds-to (0.95)
• The 2009 bailout rescued bankers while imposing austerity on workers #corroborates (0.95) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 391
• Banks resisted capital requirements that would restore consequential responsibility for losses #complicates (0.90)
• Market-based finance eroded the network centrality of commercial bank boards. #qualifies (0.85) — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 107