Fifteen years ago, a group of people you’ve probably never heard of decided to change the world. To avoid a new Great Depression taking hold after the 2008 financial crash, the central bankers of America, Europe and Japan reduced their interest rates to zero and began injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into their economies. In doing so they rewrote capitalism’s most fundamental rule: that it should cost money to borrow money.
The way in which they achieved this feat transformed our culture and politics. Financial markets mostly trade in debt — when central banks began buying it (in the form of government bonds) in vast amounts, the returns on debt fell. This caused the money that had lain snoozing in gilts and treasuries to