To get there we encounter some very familiar themes: subprime mortgage special purpose vehicles (SPVs), repo market collateral problems, and banks chasing yield in a low-interest-rate environment, as well as some unfamiliar ones such as bank resolution regimes (who has the responsibility to bail or fail banks), moral hazard trades (too big to fail as a business model), and why national debt issued in a common currency is a really bad idea. Taken together they explain why we really all need to be austere: because once again we need to save the banks, from themselves. But this time around no politician, especially in Europe, is going to admit that is exactly what is being done, which is why the bait and switch is needed.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 208