Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that gets you smarter, faster, on the collision of tech

business and politics. I'm Dan Pramack. On today's show, Apple's big announcement and a fascinating

fight over spin bikes. But first, the financial crisis revisited. Saturday will mark the 10-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers's

bankruptcy, which is viewed by many as the official start to what became the worst financial

crisis since the Great Depression. Now, there had been plenty of warning signs beforehand,

including negative GDP in the first quarter of 2008 and the collapse of Bear Stearns,

but in general, most folks didn't see it coming.

So for those who are too young to really appreciate the financial crisis, all I can tell you is that

there was legitimate fear that the entire system would melt down. People rushed to ATMs to take out

money, worried they wouldn't be able to do so much longer, and it wasn't an irrational or paranoid thing to do. So fast forward 10 years, and we're still actually feeling the impact of what

luckily became a crisis instead of a collapse. So for starters, we kind of now just accept

government bailouts for private business owners, as evidenced by what President Trump just did

with farmers as it relates to tariffs. And we also have a

fundamental distrust of Wall Street, which previously was viewed more with kind of this listless sort of loathing.

Plus, there's a whole generation that has a fundamental disinterest in buying big items like houses

or cars. But perhaps the financial crisis's biggest consequence was the one we touched on briefly

in Tuesday's podcast, in that it

helped create our polarized politics. The Tea Party, which led to Donald Trump, was a direct

response to President Obama's stimulus plan. Occupy Wall Street, which introduced us to Elizabeth

Warren and elevated democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders, was a direct response to income

inequality exacerbated by the financial crisis and the

seeming lack of banker accountability for the mess they created.

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