Macrofinance and the State: Rethinking the Politics of the Global Financial Crisis Speaking at New School 18 April 6 PM

The recent financial crisis has given rise to a resurgence of interest in the relationship of capitalism and democracy. This has given rise to calls to reimagine democracy. It has not sparked a similarly imaginative approach to the analysis of capitalism. Critiques of financialization have made a start, but they have not registered quite how unprecedented the dynamics of the 2007-2012 financial crisis were. Familiar macroeconomic categories, such as labour, production, competitiveness and trade continually reinsert themselves as the ground of the discussion. Meanwhile, in circles around the Bank of International Settlement and the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the shock of the crisis has given rise to a new approach to the financial system that centers not on national economic aggregates and imbalances but on the multi-currency balance sheets of transnational banks and shadow banks. This paper will explore some of the implications of this new economics for thinking about the state. It will argue that the specific logic of transnational financial crisis requires us to reconsider familiar approaches to the crisis-ridden relationship between capitalism and democracy.

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