Dire warnings abound about an imminent re-run of the Great Financial Crash unless the world’s long-suffering taxpayers quickly pledge even more of their children’s incomes to the poor, hard-done-by banks.

Funnily enough, almost everyone except the banks themselves, together with the national and international institutions they hold captive, has known since 2008 that the only possible outcome of piling debt upon debt via ‘extend and pretend’ bailouts would be GFC II anyway.

So we’re getting the same old softening-up treatment – like this from today’s Times:

We could see a repeat, or worse, of the paralysis in financial markets of 2009, which tipped the western world into deep recession. The confidence of investors and lenders would collapse. Liquidity would dry up. Businesses would fail, jobs would go, asset values would collapse.

Andrew Gavin Marshall over at GlobalResearch finds conspiracy where some might only see collective own-backside-preservation by the big financial players but his article The Great Global Debt Depression: It’s All Greek To Me is a good, well-documented read.

As for liquidity seizing-up because banks are suspicious of one another, read Ellen Brown’s article on the close relationship between the collapse in lending to main street businesses and the Fed’s introduction of interest payments on bank reserves.

Strange that while Governments everywhere are being arm-twisted into burdening their current and future citizens with more debt to save the banks, the self-same banks in the US are apparently sitting on $1.6 trillion of ‘excess reserves’ earning a nice wodge of interest from the Fed.

But if you were a big bank, why would you lend money to small businesses with one hand while the other is busily screwing-up the real economy in which they operate?