Gary Stevenson

And 2008, obviously the credit crisis, the Lehman shock, the massive 2008 economic crisis, in the long run, pushed asset prices up.

So, you know, what is happening?

Why is it that we have this thing happening, which is like totally the opposite of what is supposed to happening?

Why does it seem to be that whenever there is an economic crisis, Iran war, COVID, 2008 crisis, why do they always push asset prices up?

when we expect them to push asset prices down.

So a narrative was starting to form on this sort of like 10 years ago.

which was that, so 2008, for anyone who doesn't know, I guess I'm getting older now, 2008 was like a massive credit crisis.

It turned out that basically like all of the banks, at least in the Western world, had lent money to people who couldn't pay it back.

The banks would have gone bankrupt.

The banks stopped lending.

Nobody could get a loan.

Governments had to like go in and bail them out.

There's a massive collapse in the economy, in living standards, a massive spike in unemployment.

It's generally accepted that this was bad for the economy.

After that, three years later, we had the 2011 sovereign debt crisis, which was a crisis where basically primarily European governments found that traders and economists thought that they couldn't pay their debts back.

And governments in many cases were forced to do austerity.

The UK was already doing austerity, but most obviously Greece was forced to do enormous public spending cuts.

This was also bad for the economy.

So it was generally accepted

that these crises were bad for the economy.