> For me the lesson of the crisis has been how strong conservative
> ideology around balanced budgets etc has remained, even among the
> technocrats, even though it's systemically dysfunctional.
^^^^^ CB: I don't know. American conservatives seem to flip flop opportunistically on this. In Goldwater's time , balanced budget was a big conservative thing. Then when Reagan doubled the national debt from the beginning of the Republic, not a peep out of conservatives. Then Clinton balanced the budget; and Bush ran it up again without complaints from conservatives. Now, balancing the budget is important to conservatives again.
They are pretty blatant phonies/fakes/liars for anyone who pays attention.