Ralph Nader, America’s great consumer advocate, used four words – Unsafe at Any Speed - to describe the Corvair, General Motor’s death car of the 1960s. The Corvair’s engine was placed in the middle of the car, which made it flip from a nice forward path to a crazy spin that would kill you if you hadn’t said your prayers or were damn lucky.
I was lucky, damn lucky, one rainy evening in 1969. I was driving my dad’s Corvair doing 65 on a major highway during rush hour. All was calm and serene when suddenly the car tried to kill me, sending itself into a wild 180-degree spin, which miraculously hit nothing. It was precisely in those few seconds that Unsafe at Any Speed burned into my cerebellum.
Nader’s words came back to me in 2008 as I, like you, watched the global banking system collapse, which ushered in The Great Recession, from which the developed world is still reeling.
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