Tobin Harshaw, Columnist

This Economy Isn’t Making Anybody Comfy

Bad things happened in 2008, from the global financial crisis to a blanket with sleeves. Are we headed for a replay?

April 16, 2025 at 8:52 PM UTC

Tobin Harshaw is a Bloomberg Opinion senior editor and columnist on national security and military affairs. Previously, he was deputy editor at the op-ed page of the New York Times and the newspaper’s letters editor.

Well, that was fun.
Photographer: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

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The tragedy hit in the year 2008. In retrospect, all the signals were there. Spending was spiraling out of control. Up to one in every 12 Americans was caught up in it. What was being sold as security left everybody fleeced. Slick marketing promised us flexibility, but we ended up trapped inside our investments. We all wanted a comfort zone, but many were left in the cold. And the results were hideous: