Thanks for the thoughtful comment! It is not Martin Armstrong's claim that the shift to transactional banking (contractual is not the term he uses) caused anything. His claim is that the shift to transactional banking is one important facet of an infinitely complex and interconnected global economic system that has evolved over time and which he describes in his Economic Confidence Model. For example, it is not his claim that if the shift from relational banking to transactional banking had been avoided everything would be fine. The shift was one small part of a larger whole and in fact, was just a symptom of larger trends. Obviously the system is far more complex than that. I am a big fan of Armstrong's.