“FAIRY gold” in kids’ fables is magic money — a fortune that soon crumbles to be revealed as leaves, dust or worthless rubbish. More colloquially, it is precarious or illusory wealth that may vanish as swiftly as it is acquired. That was certainly the case with some speculators following the global banking crisis of 2007–2008.

The real victims, of course, were ordinary working-class families who lost their savings, their homes, their jobs and, sometimes, their lives as a consequence.

The crisis wasn’t some kind of aberration. Marx pointed out that while crises are endemic to capitalism, those involving what he called “fictitious capital,” a subset of financial capital, were central.