The financial crisis becoming known as the Great Recession is an interesting one for many reasons. One of its most compelling aspects is the tendency to highlight the absurdity of capitalist systems, or indeed, any monetary system. Things like bureaucracy, law, and money have usurped moral words that once had a great deal of spiritual meaning; words like freedom, liberty, justice, rights, and criminal. Criminals, for instance, are thought of as a very specific group of people who share the common characteristic of somehow betraying their community.
