The Brussels conference framed the postwar economy as a patient needing drastic treatment.

Evidence

Th e austerity agenda that was shared among the Brussels meeting’s “specialists in fi nancial disease” (Davis 1920) consisted of both a “diagnosis” and “a mode of treatment.” Th e diagnosis was harsh and evoked a sense of dramatic emergency: the world economy was in severe crisis and “the severity of the malady” varied immensely “in proportion to the degree in which each nation has been immersed in the maelstrom of the war” (Brussels 1920, vol. 1, 4). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 688

Categorization

• XREF: The deliberate medicalization of economic crisis — diagnosis/treatment, ‘financial disease’ — connects to how neoliberal discourse later framed inflation and state debt as pathology needing shock therapy. — connects to: The 1920 Brussels conference convened 39 nations to craft global austerity — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 667; At Brussels, international cooperation served austerity and closed off economic-democracy alternatives — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 672