PROJECTIONS ONTO THE PAST: MEMORIES OF DEMOCRATIZATION IN SPAIN, GREECE, AND PORTUGAL DURING THE GREAT RECESSION*

This article engages the argument that the 2008–2009 Great Recession forced a revisiting of the period of transitions in Spain, Greece, and Portugal as “political masterpieces,” especially among a younger generation of activists. It argues that this radical reevaluation turned the conflicting generational recollections of the past into pivotal components of present political contestation. Moreover, it shows how the redeeming power of the transitions animates the political, cultural, and public discourse of young politicized people who, although (or precisely because) they have not experienced these events directly, keep returning to them to make sense of contemporary politics. The complex relations between past and present are analyzed using oral histories with the so-called Generation 2 of the transitions, namely people who have only “projective memories” of these events during the 1970. Especially relevant is the effects of their participation in the 2011 indignados movements.

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Financial Crises and the Public Discourse on Financial Elites

10.1093/oso/9780198782797.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Youssef Cassis ◽

Giuseppe Telesca

Keyword(s):

Great Depression ◽

Great Recession ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Codes Of Conduct ◽

The Public ◽

The Great Recession ◽

The Great Depression ◽

Early Twenty ◽

Before And After ◽

Late Twentieth

Why were elite bankers and financiers demoted from ‘masters’ to ‘servants’ of society after the Great Depression, a crisis to which they contributed only marginally? Why do they seem to have got away with the recent crisis, in spite of their palpable responsibilities in triggering the Great Recession? This chapter provides an analysis of the differences between the bankers of the Great Depression and their colleagues of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century—regarding their position within, and attitude towards the firm, work culture, mental models, and codes of conduct—complemented with a scrutiny of the public discourse on bankers and financiers before and after the two crises. The authors argue that the (relative) mildness of the Great Recession, compared to the Great Depression, has contributed to preserve elite bankers’ and financiers’ status, income, wealth, and influence. Yet, the long-term consequences of their loss of reputational capital are difficult to assess.

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A Long Stagnation, or Capitalism without Growth

10.1093/oso/9780198828211.003.0012 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Louçã Francisco ◽

Ash Michael

Keyword(s):

Great Recession ◽

World Economy ◽

Economic Stability ◽

Secular Stagnation ◽

The Great Recession ◽

The Past ◽

The World ◽

History Of ◽

Growth Prospects

Chapter 11 assesses the growth prospects of the world economy. The history of global economic doomsaying is traced briefly, a frequently reasonable position that has not done well with the facts for the past hundred years. Capitalism has been adept at escaping from the pit and pendulum. A set of global imbalances is then reviewed that are seen as posing a severe threat to global economic stability and certainly to the prospects for sustainable and equitable growth. The Great Recession following the Crash of 2007–8 might be “different this time.” Historical and contemporary fears of “secular stagnation” are discussed but the speculative nature of stagnationist assessments is acknowledged.

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Shock or Design: What Drives Fiscal De/Centralization? A Comparative Analysis of Twenty-Nine OECD Countries, 1995–2017

Publius The Journal of Federalism ◽

10.1093/publius/pjaa032 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 51 (1) ◽

pp. 1-26

Author(s):

Tobias Arnold ◽

Sean Mueller ◽

Adrian Vatter

Keyword(s):

Crisis Management ◽

Great Recession ◽

Political System ◽

Multidimensional Approach ◽

New Paradigm ◽

The Great Recession ◽

The Past ◽

Fiscal Centralization ◽

The Impact ◽

Active Policy

Abstract Over the past decades, decentralization has become the new paradigm in how states should organize power territorially. Carefully planned institutional re-designs are the most visible expression thereof. Yet the Great Recession of 2007–2009 has pushed governments into the opposite direction, i.e., towards centralization, to better weather the fiscal drought. Given these contradictory developments, this article compares the effects of twenty-three separate state reforms with the impact of the Great Recession on fiscal centralization in twenty-nine countries over more than two decades. In the main, our analyses attribute a larger effect to design, i.e., pro-active policy making through reforms, than reactive crisis management after a great shock. However, this difference is only apparent once we consider a state’s institutional structure, that is whether a political system is unitary or federal. Our findings thus highlight the need for a multidimensional approach to better understand the drivers of fiscal de/centralization.

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The Great Financial Crisis: an Ethical Rejoinder

Hegel Bulletin ◽

10.1017/s0263523200000306 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 33 (01) ◽

pp. 19-32 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

David Charles Merrill

Keyword(s):

Financial Crisis ◽

Market Economy ◽

Great Recession ◽

Ethical Question ◽

Heterodox Economics ◽

Ethical Philosophy ◽

The Great Recession ◽

The Past ◽

Modern Economy ◽

Radical Reconstruction

The Great Financial Crisis that broke in 2008 and the Great Recession that followed has led many to question the very structure of contemporary economies. Some argue that the economic model of the past forty years is now broken. Criticism has also been directed at the orthodoxies of economics. For example, neoclassical equilibrium economics, the mainstream economics of the day, is accused of failing to understand some of the most basic aspects of the modern economy (debt and money), of supporting policies that have led to the economic breakdown (deregulation), and of failing to see the crisis coming (Bezemer 2012, Keen 2011). Consequently, heterodox thinking in economics is getting a hearing as never before. Heterodox economics offers itself as the requisite radical reconstruction of the science of economics and also proposes policies for the radical reconstruction of the major economics.Yet to talk of the reconstruction of the modern market economy is at the same time to raise the ethical question: what shape ought the market economy to take? Heterodox economics may acutely analyse the inadequacies of real economies and propose plausible reforms, but as an essentially descriptive science there will be limits on its ability to state what ought to be. Rather, what is required seems to be a systematic prescriptive ethics. In other words, recent events in the world of economics have provided an opening for what ethical philosophy should be best at providing. Determining whether a specific ethical philosophy, to be identified shortly, has the capacity to address the questions raised by heterodox economics is the task of this paper.

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The Great Depression and the Great Recession in Interwar Greece and Today: A comparison

Review of Economics ◽

10.1515/roe-2015-0203 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 66 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Sophia Lazaretou

Keyword(s):

Great Recession ◽

Empirical Studies ◽

Economic Downturn ◽

The Great Recession ◽

The Past ◽

Greek Crisis ◽

The Great Depression ◽

Terra Incognita ◽

Cross Country ◽

Nominal Anchor

AbstractThe past Greek crisis experience is more or less terra incognita. In all historical empirical studies Greece is systematically neglected or included only sporadically in their cross-country samples. In the national literature too there is little on this topic. In this paper we use the 1930s crisis as a useful testing ground to compare the two crises episodes, ‘then’ and ‘now’; to detect differences and similarities and discuss the policy facts with the ultimate aim to draw some ‘policy lessons’ from history. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to study the Greek crisis experience across the two historical episodes. Comparisons with the interwar period show that the recent economic downturn was faster, larger and more severe than during the early 1930s. More importantly, analysing the determinants of the two crises, we conclude that Greece’s problems arose from its inability to credibly adhere to a nominal anchor.

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War 2008 das neue 1929? Richtige und falsche Vergleiche zwischen der Großen Depression der 1930er Jahre und der Großen Rezession von 2008

Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik ◽

10.1111/j.1468-2516.2012.00391.x ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 13 (Supplement) ◽

pp. 36-57 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Albrecht Ritschl

Keyword(s):

Great Depression ◽

Great Recession ◽

Global Financial Crisis ◽

The Political ◽

Final Phase ◽

Main Hypothesis ◽

The Great Recession ◽

The Great Depression ◽

Political Response ◽

Fast Spreading

AbstractThe Great Recession of 2008 hit the international economy harder than any other peacetime recession since the Great Contraction after 1929. Soon enough, analogies with the Great Depression were presented, and conclusions were drawn regarding the political response to the slump. This paper is an attempt to sort out real and false analogies and to present conclusions for policy. Its main hypothesis is that the Great Recession resembles the final phase of the Great Contraction between 1931 and 1933, characterized by a fast spreading global financial crisis and the breakdown of the international Gold Standard. The same is also true of the political responses to the banking problems occurring in both crises. The analogy seems less robust for the initial phase of the Great Depression after 1929. The monetary policy response to the Great Recession largely seems to be informed by the monetary interpretation of the Great Depression, but less so by the lessons from the interwar financial crises. As in the Great Depression, policy appears to be on a learning curve, moving away from a mostly monetary response toward mitigating counterpart risk and minimizing interbank contagion.

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Betrayed by the Elites: How Corruption Amplifies the Political Effects of Recessions

Comparative Political Studies ◽

10.1177/00104140211047415 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 001041402110474

Author(s):

Carlos Sanz ◽

Albert Solé-Ollé ◽

Pilar Sorribas-Navarro

Keyword(s):

Great Recession ◽

Fixed Effects ◽

Political Corruption ◽

The Political ◽

Difference In Difference ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Level Data ◽

Political Effects ◽

History Of ◽

Municipal Level

We investigate whether corruption amplifies the political effects of economic crises. Using Spanish municipal-level data and a difference-in-difference strategy, we find that local unemployment shocks experienced during the Great Recession (2008–2015) increased political fragmentation. This effect was four times larger in municipalities exposed to malfeasance than in municipalities without a history of political corruption. We bolster this evidence by showing that, conditional on province and population strata fixed effects, there is no evidence of differential pre-trends. We also find that the interaction of unemployment and corruption harms the two traditional main parties and benefits especially the new party on the left ( Podemos).

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The Role of Policy in the Great Recession and the Weak Recovery

The American Economic Review ◽

10.1257/aer.104.5.61 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 104 (5) ◽

pp. 61-66 ◽

Cited By ~ 35

Author(s):

John B. Taylor

Keyword(s):

Economic Performance ◽

Great Recession ◽

Regulatory Policy ◽

Poor Performance ◽

Economic Policies ◽

Slow Recovery ◽

The Great Recession ◽

The Past ◽

Severe Recession

This paper reports on recent research showing that the severe recession of 2007-2009 and the weak recovery have been due to poor economic policies and the failure to implement good policies during the past decade. Monetary policy, fiscal policy, and regulatory policy became more discretionary, more interventionist, and less predictable in comparison with the previous two decades of better economic performance. At best these policies led to growth spurts, but were followed by retrenchments, averaging to poor performance. The paper also considers alternative views-that the equilibrium interest rate declined during the decade and that the seriousness of financial crisis caused the slow recovery.

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