The question concerns the extent to which a disaster provides a opportunity for manipulation by sectional economic or political interests, or serves an ideological narrative about how the human world ought to be interpreted.
Take, for example, the financial crisis of 2007-2010: *in response to the news of credit failure, US business not only rapidly downsized, but also downsized far in excess of what the situation warranted (this was not possible in Europe to the same extent, for legal reasons). US employers cut worker's hours and jobs at a pace that far outstripped the real rate of economic contraction. On 17 July 2009 Lawrence Summers exclaimed innocently: "I don't think anyone fully understands this phenomenon. One potential explanation is greater financial pressure on firms in this recession has led them to do anything they can to shed cash flow commitments by laying off workers at a more rapid pace or leaving jobs vacant when people leave." Another explanation is, that the GFC provided the perfect excuse needed to force through unpopular rationalization of business operations already planned, and to make workers work harder for the same pay, or less pay. *The financial crisis was a stimulus for a series of government cutbacks, the claim being that bailing out financial institutions meant that there was no more money in the kitty for social welfare (even Adair Turner doesn't believe this) and that, given that people had been living beyond their means, fiscal austerity was necessary and inevitable. In reality, a very large chunk of bailout money has already been repaid, and the tax effects of the slump are exaggerated. *the economy is theorized as being too complex and unpredictable for its governance as a whole; any severe government intervention would create multiple adverse effects along complex chains of private decisions which could neither be overseen nor predicted. Jurriaan _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
