There have been many economic discussions of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown of 2008 that triggered a global financial avalanche and arguably shifted Western hegemony to a multipolar world with China rising towards dominance. The economic analyses generally revolve around the reflection that the investing world made a short sighted error in favor of quick money. While this hindsight explains the causal relationships between policy, lending strategies, and the meltdown, it does little to explain the archetypal inflations and conflicts that led to the breakdown.
If we examine the deregulation of mortgage lending as a triad complex in which the authority (Zeus) allows the marketeer (Hermes) to commodify housing (the sphere of Hestian stability), we see the depth psychological disaster begin to unfold. Overseeing order, the government, failed to check the psychic inflation of the financial sector and (as expected from any archetypal lens) madness began to take root. The highest risk investments became the everyday and served as the cheap fuel for an inflating bubble. The responsibility of the Hestian archetype was all but lost, as housing became not only a potent market driver but THE indicator of market success!
Sadly, these two worlds should not meet. With housing, individual is both debt and equity holder, literally living inside debt. What is beyond the threshold of the front door should be tenderly treated as a market investment (if at all). Predatory loans permitted by deregulation threw this precarious balance off center, inflating the negative aspects of Hermes the marketeer. In our credit driven world, where debt is casually treated as essential to life, how do we keep the vagaries of Mercurius in check. Perhaps more importantly, how does our government inoculate itself against the market tricksters that have become "too big to fail" when it has to contend with the free speech of a culture lost in an archetype?
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