The neoliberal thought collective crafted the government-caused-crisis narrative as the dominant right-wing explanation.

Evidence

You have to give them credit: it didn’t take too many all-nighters for the Neoliberal Thought Collective to come up with what would become the single most popular story on the right in America, wrapping the entire crisis up in a neat tidy package. In this meme, the crisis was first and foremost a housing bubble, which, when it burst, had some other unpleasant side effects; loans were extended to a bunch of deadbeats who should never been given a shot at home ownership in the first place; the reason that happened was the ill-conceived Community Reinvestment Act passed by the Democrats in 1977; and then the mortgage loans to the deadbeats were enabled by the Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) Fannie Mae (actually: Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation). Hence, on both the demand and supply sides, the government had polluted the mortgage market, first causing the housing bubble, and then the subsequent collapse. It was all the fault of the government. Full stop. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 876

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the reader’s existing work on how the ‘thought collective’ manufactures post-crisis consensus narratives across institutional homes. — connects to: Neoliberalism was born in part as an emergency response to the 1938 crisis atmosphere. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 182; The crisis-as-government-fault narrative was engineered to justify austerity — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 950; The crisis narrative blaming government interference absorbed leftwing grievances to defend market orthodoxy — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 496

Broader Connections

• The crisis-as-government-fault narrative was engineered to justify austerity #corroborates (0.82) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 950
• The crisis narrative blaming government interference absorbed leftwing grievances to defend market orthodoxy #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 496