Bailing out finance was the single most important event protecting orthodox economics

Evidence

The preemption of the breaking up of the financial sector in reaction to its insolvency in almost every country has been the single most important event that has bolstered both the transnational orthodox economist profession and the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Absent the maintenance of the previous leisure class and the further subsidy of the wealthy, the politics of the situation would potentially have been strikingly different. The relationship between the immunity of finance and the imperviousness of change in economic ideas has been direct. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 975

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A dense causal claim: the rescue of banks and the imperviousness of economic orthodoxy were not separate events but two faces of one process — the immunity of finance and the immunity of ideas are directly linked.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the sacrifice theme: bank bailouts as a financialized form of ritual sacrifice stabilizing the prevailing order.
• XREF: connects to: Bailouts persisted because nobody could admit the economy was ungovernable — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 545; Bank bailouts exemplify society’s protective countermovement against markets — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 400

Broader Connections

• Bank bailouts exemplify society’s protective countermovement against markets #exemplifies (0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 400