Market designers and anti-TARP critics converged on shared anti-government assumptions.

Evidence

Once that happened, things turned ugly: the market designers for hire themselves became some of the most fierce critics of the TARP, denouncing Cash for Trash. In an interview for NPR, Ausubel complained, “Instead of conducting transparent auctions, the Treasury is going to instead distribute suitcases of cash”; for Cramton, “It really is moving down the path to crony capitalism, in my mind, where the government is picking winners and losers in a nontransparent way.” This turnabout, however turncoat, was easy to pull off because both the market designers and the anti-TARP petitioners now claimed to have shared very similar assumptions about the economic role of government. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 862

Categorization

• XREF: Illustrates how the market-design faction merged with the larger neoliberal/anti-interventionist thought collective — the ‘crony capitalism’ rhetoric is a branch of the broader post-2008 discourse. — connects to: Market designers flipped their public stance on TARP once they lost auction contracts. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 874; The crisis narrative blaming government interference absorbed leftwing grievances to defend market orthodoxy — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 496; Antidevelopment arguments across disciplines converged on the cost of disregarding natural processes. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 640

Broader Connections

• Market designers flipped their public stance on TARP once they lost auction contracts. #complicates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 874
• The crisis narrative blaming government interference absorbed leftwing grievances to defend market orthodoxy #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 496