The bank bailouts of 2008 provoked long-running and bitter recrimination and for good reason. Hundreds of billions of taxpayer funds were put in play to rescue greedy banks. Some interventions yielded a return. Others did not. Many of the choices made in the course of the bailouts were highly contentious. In the United States they would exacerbate deep rifts within the Republican Party, with dramatic consequences eight years later. But the problem goes beyond individual decisions and party political programs to the way in which we think and talk about the structure of the modern economy.
