The crisis-as-government-fault narrative was engineered to justify austerity

Evidence

Alternatively, one might discern in its vaulting ambition the financial logic of the Structured Investment Vehicle used to hide crushing liabilities, only now being imposed on the state itself. In the meantime, as bond vigilantes conduct their attacks and government insolvency looms, states are forced by neoliberal parties and international agencies to engage in myriad forms of “austerity,” which include fire sales of viable legacy state assets and crude attempts to lower wages and renege on social insurance schemes. Indeed, this narrative that the crisis is all the fault of the government conforms so faithfully to the standard neoliberal script, trumpeted relentlessly from the think-tank shell of the Russian doll since early in the crisis, that it is hard to imagine that the tactical political economy of market-maker of last resort was not engineered to conjure this outcome. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 950

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the larger ‘market-maker of last resort’ thesis and Friedman’s Depression account; ties to the Russian doll/NTC framework from earlier in the book. — connects to: Moralistic narratives are flexibly deployed to justify diverse austerity outcomes. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 695; The Eurozone crisis was wrongly blamed on sovereign fiscal profligacy — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 152; A tiny economy’s crisis was weaponized as a metaphor for austerity — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 202 (+27 more)
• SEED: Possible angle: the Tea Party as a manufactured outcome of market-maker-of-last-resort policy rather than a spontaneous grassroots movement.

Broader Connections

• Austerity framed economic crisis as caused by governments and workers, not capital #corroborates (0.92) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 783
• Monetary austerity was designed to moralize and discipline economic behavior toward thrift #qualifies (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 759
• Austerity frames national crisis as requiring patriotic individual sacrifice in frugality and labor #expands (0.78) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 803
• Austerity persists as an ideology that resists empirical refutation #expands (0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 613
• Capitalism’s 1918-20 crisis triggered austerity as a counterrevolutionary reaction. #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 115
• Austerity arose in response to mass political challenge to capitalism itself #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 798