This is not a credit crisis

Using an analogy with ancient Babylonia as its leading motive, this Viewpoint argues that the credit crisis is the symptom of an underlying problem. Fuelled by government policies, unprecedented debt levels were run up in industrialized countries over the last quarter century. Present policies of financial sector bailouts are not only unwise use of taxpayer’s money. They maintain economic structures opposed to what Classical liberals such as JS Mill envisaged as a free market economy.