From the early 1980s, debt-fueled consumption in the United States drove global economic growth and facilitated the spread of globalization. Economic policy was formulated based upon the belief that markets are most efficient when left unregulated. Exchange rates floated, massive trade imbalances were ignored, and for three decades the world was transformed by one economic miracle after another. Then, in 2008, that economic paradigm collapsed, its philosophical underpinnings exposed as a delusion. Government bailouts were required to save global finance from systemic destruction. Government spending was increased dramatically to offset the collapse in consumption by the private sector. Government intervention thus prevented an economic breakdown into worldwide depression.