It's been ten years since the financial crisis and we're still making ourselves cum

Need money quickly? Well, in Idaho, Ohio and in Texas, chances are you're paying more than 600% annual interest to the company that lends it to you. In the United States, the regulation varies considerably as to the amount that a lender can charge. Apart from a few states where interest rate ceilings are aimed at preventing the debt trap, the cost of borrowing can often exceed 300 percent.

To understand why – and why 12 million Americans rely on high-interest short-term loans to put food on the table – we need to return to September 15, 2008.

That day, I stood on Fifth Avenue in New York City and witnessed the end of an era of capitalism. Lehman Brothers had just gone bankrupt, but on the giant screens that covered its headquarters, the bank's promotional video was still running, showing helicopter images of canyons, lakes and tropical islands. The subtext of the video was clear: financial capital gives you the power to hover over ordinary things.

What few people have understood is that it also gives you the power to destroy the global economy. Governments around the world have been forced to bail out banks. Growth has collapsed. Those who paid the price were ordinary people: the elderly, the shareholders, the laid-off workers and those whose health care and education suffered because of increased fees and bonuses.

What did we learn? Ten years later, we have stricter regulations imposed by central bankers who understand that the system is more fragile than expected in 2008.

But instead of borrowing less and reducing complexity, we borrowed more. Overall debts of governments, businesses and households was $ 97 trillion on the eve of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. He stands at $ 233 trillion now.

Because central banks have saved the real economy, flooding it with $ 20 trillion, they just invented on their worksheets, things are going well. But the fundamental problem remains: we use the money provided to circumvent a deeper problem that we have refused to correct. Economists call this problem financialization.

Think of it like that. At the time of my father, in the 60s and 70s, you went to work, you paid in cash, you spent most of it in local stores, you saved a fridge or a new car. Today, anyone who behaves like that would be considered a fool.

Today, we go to work and get paid salaries directly into our bank accounts. But our salaries are only a complement to an ever growing portfolio of debt and interest payments. You pay bank fees, credit card fees and interest on the loan, including your mortgage, student loan and car loan.

In my father's day, his work helped to generate profits for a private plant, which borrowed from a bank to invest. Let's say that on average, the owner of the factory has made a profit of about 12% of sales.

Today, your credit card, student loan, overdraft, mortgage and car loan all generate profits for financial institutions. And if you are poor and therefore risky, you will pay much more than 12% interest. The real companies, from car manufacturers to sports chains and hotels, are there to serve the profits of the banks. In the 1970s, banks were there to serve and provide real businesses.

If we consider capital as "money that generates more money", the global capital structure has shifted in the space of a lifetime, from the making of objects to the billing of interests. And if you look at the social results – leaving aside the risk of sudden collapse as in 2008 – the winners and losers become clear.

Since 1970, in the most advanced economies of the world, the share of income earned in wages has fallen from 55% to 39%According to a report published in 2017 by the International Monetary Fund, income inequality in each country has increased.

In my father's day, capitalism was a machine to improve the lot of everyone. Financialized capitalism does the opposite: it creates huge wealth at the top, stagnates real wages and, well, just look around Main Street for the rest of the story. Private shops and successful businesses in poverty: the pawnbroker, the payday lender and the rental shops with expensive refrigerators and microwaves.

There is a solution, and 10 years after Lehman Brothers, people start to listen to it. We need to de-finance our economy – not so hard that we have to go back to saving for every major purchase, but enough so that we do not take away the opportunity to earn money through speculation and rates of exorbitant interest the poorest.

What we need throughout the Western world is a smart reindustrialization program that brings back those high-wage jobs and high value-added industries, allied to social protection programs funded by taxing the rich.

And we must do this not only for economic reasons, but also to revive hope. People who are tied to rising debts and stagnating wages can easily lose hope. People who can see the benefits of hard work and increasing productivity in the form of increased wages and affordable housing tend to look to the future, and not to the past.

Paul Mason is a British commentator, radio personality and former economics editor for "Newsnight" and Channel 4 of BBC Two.

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