Reply #5: John Kenneth Galbraith came up with an ingenious concept he called 'the bezzle.'

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http://blog.dralexgoodall.com/2008/10/bezzle.html

The Bezzle

In his classic text on the origins of the great depression, The Great Crash, John Kenneth Galbraith came up with an ingenious concept he called 'the bezzle.' Basically, he argued that at any one point a certain number of people are filtering money out of the system through illicit means of embezzlement and fraud. In a time of easy money supply, rapid economic growth and widespread prosperity, people are much less likely to watch where every one of their pennies is going, and much more willing to lend money to people who may be less than scrupulous, meaning there's more scope for fraudulent activities. In Galbraith's terms, the size of the bezzle - the total amount of capital available to be defrauded from the system - grows. By contrast, in a time of economic contraction society seeks to account for itself, understand its finances, repay debts, and watch those pennies. The size of bezzle thus shrinks massively, and people who are busy committing frauds suddenly find themselves high and dry.