Re: So just as rubbish as the old Vaio's but more expensive...
so, someone saw Dell's plan and thought it was a good idea?
On the mitigation side, I think we're seeing the effects of the GFC & QE. Inflation goes up, salaries are not keeping pace. It's the economic re-adjustment to the volume of debt and losses we've incurred. Rather than let the banks / governments go under, we (the public) are paying their debts by having our income reduced in real terms by inflation. If you accept that the banks are too big to fail, it's pretty much the only politically acceptable way to deal all that bad debt which has been accumulated.
I can see some value in the "too big to fail" argument, but I think that implies we should actually prevent them getting to that size, rather than insuring dodgy business practise. Banking collapse isn't brought on by some nebulous thing out there called "the world economy" its brought on by poor business acumen and practises by banks in assessing risk, and it is encouraged institutionally by knowing that the taxpayer will bail them out when it all goes wrong. If we can't or don't want to break up large financial institutions, perhaps we should have an escalating scale of required reserves as an institution grows. Certainly, that hampers "growth" but it also dampens the effect of a crash. Our problems stem from the depths we sink to in hardship, not failing to reach stratospheric heights during times of plenty; and no, the good times do not make up for the bad. The increasing rich/poor gap demonstrates that trickle-down is barely real. Certainly we need better regulation, but I fear that the corrupting of politics by money means that won't happen. /off-topic-rant