Populism may itself express the public’s irrational exuberance

Evidence

Indeed, even in the cautionary tales of Greenspan and economists Akerlof and Shiller, which we encountered in chapter 1, populism may well emerge as a collective expression of the publics’ own ‘“irrational exuberance.” — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 686

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Reverses the usual frame: populism isn’t the corrective to speculative excess but its collective symptom — the crowd’s exuberance reframed as market bubble.
• XREF: connects to: Political populists and financiers both profit from political uncertainty. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 379; Regressive populism and speculative finance are forming new alliances. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 57; Markets and populist publics may share a common yearning for uncertainty — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 65 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Both mainstream and radical analyses of populism read it as irrational crowd behavior #corroborates (0.82) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 266
• Populist passions animate rather than oppose financial rationality #contradicts (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 268
• Anxiety both fuels authoritarian populism and may enable radical resistance #expands (0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 532
• Post-2008 economists saw speculation’s irrationality as recalibrating politics #corroborates (0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 97
• Grassroots populist speculators understood modern financial fictions deeply #contradicts (0.70) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 205