Comment A larger compounding mistake (Score 1) 97
Promoting and allowing even more debt at all levels and securitizing every transaction revenue stream is not going to help in the long run.
Countries need to very slowly reduce the total debt and financial derivatives in use.
Each expansion of debt beyond a point (likely in the 1990s) public or private increases the cost of living and reduces inflation adjusted wages.
Lower wages, losing out to inflation, easier to get debt means less growth, less housing, less household formation and less births.
It maybe as simple as one of the larger countries banning short selling for stocks under $20 or small cap stocks, requiring banks and lenders to keep another 1% more of each loan they issue, reducing the total face value of derivatives by 1% each year, etc.
Large changes have been done before with 1986 as an example
- Depreciation on commercial real estate and rental housing was reduced more than half
- Tax rates were cut so that building a building, keeping it empty, depreciating it, and owning it as a 70% tax bracket individual was not profitable
- Ending the income tax deduction of credit card interest
There is an end game coming where established countries and their stock markets will have a drastically shrinking financial sector with few actively traded large stocks . https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fca.finance.yahoo.com%2Fn...
Number of publicly listed companies in Canada down 32.7% and initial public offerings down 94% since 2010, reflecting country's economic stagnation
December 18, 2025
The net long term effect is that there will be fewer and fewer places to invest one's retirement money outside of government bonds and bank CDs.
