Madman Economics
In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-9, conservative politicians like George Osborne and Wolfgang Schäuble continued to insist that the space of democratic decision-making was, whether people liked it or not, tightly constrained by what the markets would permit. One of Osborne’s first acts on entering the Treasury in May 2010 was to establish an in-house Office of Budget Responsibility, a kind of financial superego that would judge whatever fiscal announcements emanated from Whitehall. When Osborne told the Conservative Party conference in 2012 that ‘We’re all in this together,’ he was interpreted as promising that the pain of austerity would be shared equally, but he might just as well have been implying that we are all bound together under the ever watchful eye of an unforgiving market. The markets aren’t just legally encased via law and regulation, but psychically encased within the political imagination... More here.
A stunning article. Stunning.