The 2008 crisis was nonlinear and multicausal, leaving it overexplained and overdetermined
Evidence
The crisis is overexplained in that there are so many possible suspects who can be rounded up and accused of being “the cause” that authors can construct convincing narratives featuring almost any culprit from Fannie and Freddie to leverage ratios to income inequality—even though the meltdown obviously was a deeply nonlinear and multicausal process. The crisis is overdetermined in that, being a nonlinear, multicausal process, many of these supposed causes could be ruled out and the crisis could still have occurred. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 74
Categorization
- DEFINE: Provides clean working definitions of ‘overexplained’ versus ‘overdetermined’ as distinct analytical problems in causally explaining a nonlinear crisis.
- XREF: The overdetermination argument directly parallels the structural-institutional method of the Mattei austerity canon and critiques of single-cause crisis narratives. — connects to: The 2008 crisis was fundamentally a crisis of economic ideas — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 132; The 2008 crisis invalidated the preceding thirty years of financial orthodoxy — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 133; The 2008 crisis was systemic, not caused by state spending or individual morality — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 118 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- The 2008 crisis was fundamentally a crisis of economic ideas
#corroborates(0.82) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 132 - The 2008 crisis was systemic, not caused by state spending or individual morality
#corroborates(0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 118 - The 2008 crisis invalidated the preceding thirty years of financial orthodoxy
#complicates(0.72) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 133 - The 2008 crisis briefly turned mainstream economics criticism into a mass public phenomenon
#expands(0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 452