Populist attacks on central banks intensified while technocratic crisis responses expanded

Evidence

In September 2019 Trump launched another Twitter attack in response to the Federal Reserve’s meager interest rate drop by 0.25 points: “Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve Fail Again. No ‘guts,’ no sense, no vision! A terrible communicator!” In 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Reserve’s rapid technocratic response (injecting billions of dollars’ worth of liquidity into the US economy) contrasted even more sharply with Trump’s flippancy, but by that point of the crisis the conflict between experts, central bankers, and populists had entered a new chapter. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 702

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the reader’s theme of finance reassembling social imagination — the populist-vs-central-bank conflict is a live instance. — connects to: Neoliberal crisis response expanded rather than shrank state power — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 288; Populists combine nationalism with speed rhetoric and a govern-by-chaos doctrine — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 251; The rhetorical conflict between ethno-nationalism and financial markets dissolved once populists took power — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 250 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal crisis response expanded rather than shrank state power #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 288
• Post-2008 anxieties produced populist fed-up-ness with technocratic elites. #corroborates (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 74
• The rhetorical conflict between ethno-nationalism and financial markets dissolved once populists took power #complicates (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 250
• Populists combine nationalism with speed rhetoric and a govern-by-chaos doctrine #expands (0.78) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 251
• Anxiety both fuels authoritarian populism and may enable radical resistance #expands (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 532
• Central banks were trapped into a doom-loop of falling interest rates #expands (0.72) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 415