So how will more financial engineering help us out of the hole left by the global crisis? Some say the working-class “democratization” was just feedstock so that Wall Street and the City could securitize ever-expanding volumes of debt (while getting it graded AAA and foisting it off onto gullible money-market funds) as inadequate compensation for the dismantling of the welfare state; but people like Shiller say that the poverty and inequality could actually be mitigated by further financial engineering.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 963