The sovereign debt crisis is a transmuted and camouflaged banking crisis

Evidence

The cost of bailing, recapitalizing, and otherwise saving the global banking system has been, depending on, as we shall see later, how you count it, between 3 and 13 trillion dollars. Most of that has ended up on the balance sheets of governments as they absorb the costs of the bust, which is why we mistakenly call this a sovereign debt crisis when in fact it is a transmuted and well-camouflaged banking crisis. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 35

Categorization

• XREF: Direct antecedent to Mattei’s thesis tracing the state’s absorption of banking costs into sovereign debt. Core framing for the austerity literature. — connects to: The REBLLs’ post-communist growth was a banking crisis waiting to happen — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 594; European austerity serves to reserve sovereign balance-sheet space for too-big-to-bail bank rescues — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 617; The sovereign debt crisis was actually a banking crisis in disguise. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 33 (+23 more)

Broader Connections

• Banking crises precede sovereign debt crises in 80 percent of cases #corroborates (0.90) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 206
• Neoliberalism’s crisis strategy redirected blame from banks onto state debt #corroborates (0.90) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 475
• The European debt crisis resulted from banking losses, not sovereign overspending #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 40
• Downgraded sovereign debt collateral trapped leveraged European banks in a funding spiral #expands (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 238
• The Eurozone crisis was wrongly blamed on sovereign fiscal profligacy #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 152
• European bank exposure to periphery sovereign debt reached dangerous multiples of national GDP #expands (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 239
• A banking guarantee transformed private debt into sovereign debt overnight #expands (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 184