Ther are two groups of people who like Mrs Thatcher. The first and smaller of the two, are those people who did well out of her. The second and much larger group are those who do not understand what she did to this country (the UK, just in case....).

Make no mistake Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Regan changed the western world between them to such a degree that by the time they were ousted from power the countrys they had run were changed beyond all recognition. They introduced the 'Greed is Good' philosophy to the financial world and as a direct result some quater of a century later, here we stand amid the wreckage of the post 'credit crunch', 'toxic asset' ridden, 'sub-prime mortgaged collapsed, Euro-zone crisis inflicted, soverighn-debt riddled world economy of today. They managed to bring about this debacle in a number of ways but by far the most important was by THE DEREGULATION OF THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY.

What does this mean. Well since the collapse of the world economy in 2008 one of the main things you have heard economists/commentators et al shouting about is how the financial sector was allowed to perform in a totally unregulated fashion  such that it was able to bring about a global financial crisis that very nearly brought the entire western economy to it's knees. This was the result of the deregulation or lifting of the regulatory apparatus that was in place when Regan and Thatcher came to power in thier respective countries. I'm not an economist and no doubt I'll get a few things wrong in the following account but the bulk of what I say will be correct. Thatcher and Regan were both laissez-faire politicians. The term in the original french actually means 'let them do', but in essence can be thought of as 'let it be' or 'leave it alone'. The belief they shared was that the market, if left to it's own devices, would generate the maximum wealth possible without government interference.

A quick history lesson on how things were in the 1970's and how they have changed from our world of today. Back then, all of the various financial services one might use in a lifetime were run sepparately and by specialist companies whose expertise was in that field alone. So for example, if I wanted to but some additional pension cover I went to a Pension Company, Insurance I bought from an Insurance company, for a loan I went to a Bank or an HP Company and to buy my home I went to a Building Society. These sectors opperated sepparately and independantly of each other and this was enshrined in law by a number of regulatory acts that pertained to the industry as a whole. Both Thatcher and Regan felt that the presence of such a regulatory system was stymying the productivity of the industry which, if deregulated, could become a scource of great  income and wealth to both the USA and Great Britain. Deregulation would allow for much greater competition between different service providers thus improving the service overall to the customer; it would free up invested money in banks which currently had to be loaned out in certain very specific (and safe) ways, to be used as venture capital and to be invested in the stocks, bonds and housing markets. It would allow the creation of evermore strange and varied financial 'instruments' in which greater and greater wealth could be generated - and in effect the sky was the limit. So it seemed and so indded it was. We saw the rise of the YUPPIE (the young upwardly mobile proffesional) with thier crass and extravagvent displays of consumption and we all wanted a slice of the action. And yes it worked. For a few heady years the country boomed. The City of London generated wealth for the country at a vast rate and ostentatious displays of wealth became commonplace and acceptable.

But underneath all was not well. Prior to deregulation people had invested their savings in banks and building societies and this was in turn loaned judiciously by these organisations in ways that were beneficial to our society. Cheap and long term buisness loans were available from your local bank if you could persuede the almost God like figure of the manager that you were a good long term (but most importantly safe) bet. So money invested locally helped fund development of buisness locally. If you wanted a house then you saved a deposit, went to a building society and demonstrated that you were in secure employment and could afford the repayments over a long period (commonly 25 years). This had to be ratified by your employer or otherwise responsible person if you were self-employed. But the purpose of the building society was to provide cheap long term loans for first time buyers. Housing was too important it was considered to be viewed as a tool for enrichment by means of investment in property, and thus building society mortgages were limited to one per couple. Sur you could buy a second house if you wanted one - but you had to go to a bank for the money to do so and would pay proportionately more by doing so. Now these things were restrictive - but they provided a high degree of social cohesion in so being. Housing and work - the two staple needs of life (beyond food etc) - were nurtured within the boundries of this remit. But while the prospertity generated was safe and long term it wasn't exiting and it wasn't quick. Deregulation changed all of that. All of a sudden you could buy your council house, you could get as many motgages as you could stack up like a house of cards, you could buy shares in the sold off family silver ov the previousely nationalised utility companies ans you could buy endless cheap imported goods with the newly minted array of credit cards and endless flow of cheap credit flowing into the economy. To put it in context, when Thatcher came to power in the UK there were 3 credit cards available - the Acces, The Visa and the Barkelycard. By the time she left there were over a thousand. And people took them up with a vim and vigour that seemed to imply there was no tomorrow, there would be no time when the piper had to be paid. Greed really was, it seemed, good

The good times lasted uninterupted for a while and perhaps the first indication that there was a problem was in the overheating of the economy and fast rising house prices of the early 90's. Demand for housing (as expected) was massively outstriping supply as the newly available means of aquiring second and third propoertys took hold and it was forcing prices to unsustauiable highs as people scrambled to get onto and further up the ladder. Sure enough - there was a house price crash. It was bad but not the end of the world. Some people got into 'negative equity' situations as thier house value fell to well below what they had paid for it - but all they really had to do was stay put for a while until house prices rallied as they surely would, and all would be well.

But again there were rumblings of disquiet. Shareholders in the banks and newly formed investment banking sector were demanding high return for thier invested capital and were no longer happy to accept the long term steady income that pre-deregulation buisness had provided. They wanted fast profit and they wanted it now. With no requirement for the risky investment sectors and safe buisness loan sections of the financial services industries to be kept sepparate anymore, it became feasable for banks and investment companies to mingle their buisness, to concentrate their efforts on high yeilding (and high risk) opperations like overseas and venture capital investment, futures and derivatives markets (a complex form of financial gambling) and of course the highly lucrative short term credit market which was providing the money fuelling the high street spending boom. it was becoming harder to find money (and more expensive) to start a buisiness - for some reason your local manager no longer seemed to have the power to make the decission - but on the plus side regulations in respect of mortgage provision were being loosened in order to reinflate the sagging housing market. Now this was a stoke of genius. By allowing people to 'self-certify' themselves for a mortgage - ie by allowing all of the checks and verifications that someone could actually afford a mortgage to be swept asside - a demand for housing unprecedented was stimulated as every Joe, employed or otherwise, jumped on to the band waggon of home ownership. And there was no chance any of them would not be able to pay for these home loans; why they told us they would be!

Through the ninetys ant two thousands we kept on buying that stuff we wanted from the high street, The TV's and mobiles and computers etc, etc, etc. The only problem was we weren't the ones making the stuff. Those little chinese people who would work 14 hours a day for £3 were knocking the stuff out like there was no tomorrow and we were the ones soaking it up. And what was worse, when our financial systems started to feel the pinch in terms of the money that was available to keep the whole bloated system going, it was the chinese themselves, awash with money from the stuff they had sold us, who stepped in to bail us out by lending us back the very money we had paid them for all the tat we were impoting in the first place. The investment companies and banks, realising they had lent shed loads of money to people who were never going to pay it back started bundling up all the bad debts and sup-prime mortgages as they were now known (notice how the 'self-certified' has been dropped) into 'collateralised debt obligations' and a vicious game of pass the parcel of toxic assets began with each company hoping to scrape a bit mour profit out of the empty jar befor handing it on to the next sucker that would buy it. And then in 2008 it was sold to a Bank called Lehmans - and the rest I, think, is history.