The political consequences of the 2008 financial crisis

Author(s):  
Caroline Gray
2021 ◽  
pp. 0094582X2110293
Author(s):  
Tatiana Berringer

An analysis of the relationship between classes and class fractions and Mercosur under the PT (Workers’ Party) governments suggests that the transition from the open regionalism of the 1990s to the multidimensional regionalism of the 2000s and the crisis of the latter were linked to the overlap between the regional integration mechanisms Unasur and Mercosur and the social base of the neodevelopmentalist front. Multidimensional regionalism went into crisis after 2012, when the country began to suffer the impact of the 2008 financial crisis and changes in international politics and when the political process that culminated in the 2016 coup began. Uma análise da relação entre as classes e frações de classe e o Mercosul dos governos PT sugere que a transição do regionalismo aberto dos anos 1990 para o regionalismo multidimensional dos anos 2000 e a crise deste últimoestão ligados à imbricação entre os processos de integração regional, Unasur e Mercosur, e a base social da frente neodesenvolvimentista. O regionalismo multidimensional entrou em crise a partir de 2012 quando o país começou a sofrer mais o impacto da crise financeira de 2008 e das transformações na política internacional e iniciou-se o processo político que culminou no golpe de 2016.


2019 ◽  
pp. 85-98
Author(s):  
Stefan Eich

Cryptocurrencies are frequently framed as future-oriented, technological innovations that decentralize money, thereby liberating it from centralized governance and the political tentacles of the state. This is misleading on several counts. First, electronic currencies cannot leave the politics of money behind even where they aim to disavow it. Instead, we can understand their impact as a political attempt to depoliticize money. Second, the dramatic price swings of cryptocurrencies challenge their self-fashioning as a new form of money and reveal them instead as speculative assets and securities in need of regulation. While the preferential tax and regulatory treatment of cryptocurrencies hinges on their nominal currency status, it is ironically precisely their success as speculative assets that has undermined these claims. Finally, far from heralding a radical break with the past, electronic currencies serve as a reminder of the unresolved global politics of money since the 1970s. To support these three interrelated theses this chapter places the rise of cryptocurrencies in the historical context of the international politics of money between the end of the Bretton Woods system and the response to the 2008 Financial Crisis.


2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Anstead

Employing a dataset of 1843 think tank publications containing 37 million words, computer-assisted text analysis was used to examine the idea of austerity in British politics between 2003 and 2013. Theoretically, the article builds on the ideational turn in political research. However, in contrast to much ideational work which argues that ideas are important at times of crisis because they can address uncertainty, this article argues that moments of crisis can lead to the reformulation of ideas. Empirically, this article demonstrates the transformation of the idea of austerity. Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, austerity was largely understood either in historical terms or as a practice applied in other countries. In the aftermath of the crisis, both the political right and left attempted to co-opt the idea of austerity for their own ends, combining it with various other ideational strands on which they have historically drawn.


Watchdog ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 89-104
Author(s):  
Richard Cordray

In the runup to the 2008 financial crisis, lenders were offering reckless “no doc” mortgages, consumers were making unsustainable choices, and the effects were devastating not only for those lenders and consumers but also for everyone around them. Many unsound practices that lenders engaged in were entirely legal, and Congress directed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to write new rules to rein in irresponsible practices to safeguard consumers and the entire economy. Congress gave the bureau only eighteen months to complete major regulations reshaping the mortgage market. This chapter describes how the bureau created these rules, the data-driven approach it used, the role that economists and market analysts played in helping make key choices, and the political climate in which it all occurred.


Author(s):  
Michael Harris

What do pure mathematicians do, and why do they do it? Looking beyond the conventional answers, this book offers an eclectic panorama of the lives and values and hopes and fears of mathematicians in the twenty-first century, assembling material from a startlingly diverse assortment of scholarly, journalistic, and pop culture sources. Drawing on the author's personal experiences as well as the thoughts and opinions of mathematicians from Archimedes and Omar Khayyám to such contemporary giants as Alexander Grothendieck and Robert Langlands, the book reveals the charisma and romance of mathematics as well as its darker side. In this portrait of mathematics as a community united around a set of common intellectual, ethical, and existential challenges, the book touches on a wide variety of questions, such as: Are mathematicians to blame for the 2008 financial crisis? How can we talk about the ideas we were born too soon to understand? And how should you react if you are asked to explain number theory at a dinner party? The book takes readers on an unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life, from the philosophy and sociology of mathematics to its reflections in film and popular music, with detours through the mathematical and mystical traditions of Russia, India, medieval Islam, the Bronx, and beyond.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document