If you had money and a little sense over the last decade you had that money in the stockmarket and / or housing, and saw it shoot up like magic. If you were on the minimum wage around London I wouldn't be surprised if your costs chased your income pretty closely, mainly due to rent since non-luxury goods were kept cheap by China etc. Or you might have gone backwards on credit card debt. It was a kind of rich get richer, poor stay still economy.

Because so much of the intervention on both sides of the Atlantic this time around has been preemptive, it has also been extremely conservative in a small c  way. This also goes for intergenerational equity. A true housing bust is going to be the best chance for younger people to get on the housing ladder. Its almost an extension of the problems with middle class / universal welfare in general. Great Depression did wonders for relative income inequality ...

_{The Political Science Department of the University of Woolloomooloo}
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