The 2008 bailouts permanently broke the US deficit’s profit-recycling mechanism.

Evidence

So, here comes the briefest of eulogies: the Cretan Minotaur was slain by an Athenian prince, Theseus. Its death ended prehistory and ushered in the classical era of tragedy, history, philosophy. Our era’s Minotaur died less heroically: a victim of cowardly Wall Street bankers whose hubris was rewarded with massive state bailouts that did nothing to resuscitate the Minotaur. For while the American deficit returned with a vengeance a year after the crash of 2008 and the subsequent bankers’ bailouts, it never restored the beast’s capacity to recycle the world’s profits. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 237

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s prior knowledge of the Minotaur/deficit-as-world-consumer argument from Varoufakis’s earlier work and the notion of a world demand-absorber. — connects to: The 2008 bailouts discredited neoliberalism while powerfully reasserting capitalist realism. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 161

Broader Connections

• The 2008 bailouts discredited neoliberalism while powerfully reasserting capitalist realism. #complicates (0.72) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 161