Fuck AI

Yeah, the process by which the ultra-rich came out ahead of that was that in the aftermath of the Crash the politicians they owned made sure all large asset owners were at least indirectly (and at times even directly) saved with public money, all of which was then paid with Austerity for those whose incomes don't come from asset ownership (i.e. people who work for a living).

I was in the Finance Industry before, after and during the 2008 Crash, saw things from the front row (I was literally an IT contractor for Lehman Brothers when they went *PUFF*) and spent the following years trying to understand what the fuck had happened, and as far as I can tell there was no grand conspiracy to time the Crash, and instead the collusions happened mostly afterwards. For example:

• The banks that blew up - Lehman Brothers which went bankrupt and Bear Stearns which was sold to BofA for $1 - were the two with the most exposure to Credit Derivatives by far (there was an article in The Economist a few weeks before showing exactly that)
• The bank that in the end came out the best - Goldman "Vampire Squid" Sachs - who were recognized as the smartest of the bunch would still have come out way worse had governments not indirectly saved them, both in the US were the feds unconditionally proped AIG which was the main derivatives counterparty of Goldman Sachs (so most of that propping up ended as payments to the likes of Goldman Sachs as the counterparties in AIG long bets on credit derivatives) and in the EU were the commission plus a bunch of large countries got together to literally buy Greek Treasuries directly from banks like Goldman Sachs at far more than they were worth thus saving those banks from huge losses (and after than turned around and imposed Austerity on Greece using as justification that EU money was at stake, all of which was IMHO one of the most Corrupt operations ever in the EU).

The whole thing wasn't some kind of "billionaires playing 5D chess against the rest", rather it was good old Corruption empowered by the massive crisis situation to go far beyond the level at which it normally happens because there were excuses to lay claim to and redirect far more of the overall resources of society than normal.

So for the upcoming crash, whilst many of the billionaires, being more well informed than average, will probably evade the obvious points of failure, they're going to be hit by the likely (and even more, by the thought to be unlikely) side effects and then there will be yet another massive corrupt rescue under "crisis powers" to prop-them up.

That said, I suspect most of the margin of operation that existed back in 2008 for saving the rich whilst tightenning the belts of the rest, isn't there this time around: interest rates never recovered back to their long term trend from the "temporary" ultra-low interest rates set in the aftermath of the 2008 Crash, wealth is way much more concentrated on fewer hands now than back then so there is a lot less juice to squeeze out of the working and middle classes now and in the US there are at least 2 majors bubbles (AI and car debt) as well as a lot of mid-sized and smaller bubbles (mainly realestate, stocks, hyper-speculative assets such as crypto) which will likely blow in ~~synch~~ sympathy with whatever one of the big ones blows first.

The Chinese Curse says "May you leave in interesting times", and I'm afraid we've all been cursed in that way.