28 Sep 2011
Boomers Greed Led To Global Financial Crisis
The most privileged, most profligate generation in human history – my generation, the baby boomers (most often defined as those born 1946 to 1964) – drove the world for the past decade to this moment of reckoning, running up a gigantic bill that has now come due. Responsibility for this bill lies mainly with the boomer-and-bust generation, but the cost will be borne by all.
The three great economies of the advanced world – the US, the European Union and Japan, with their 940 million people – did not get to the level of debt stress and wealth destruction we are witnessing without being made to pay a real price. That price is structural change, a decline in expectations and lower living standards.