The financial meltdown of 2008, which soon metamorphosed into the deepest Western economic recession since the 1930’s, added fuel to the fire, as policymakers hunkered down in a non-transparent crisis-management mode, condoning massive state intervention in the economy and socialization of private-sector losses on a previously unprecedented scale. The resulting fiscal austerity plunged many below the poverty line and accelerated economic inequality, while many private institutions, having caused the 2008 bust, recovered on the public dime.