Neoliberalism in Crisis: A review of The Politics of Debt: Essays and Interviews, edited by Sjoero Van Tuinen and Arjen Kleinherenbrink

Abstract

[...]what ties the collection together is an insistence that the politics of (enforced) debt is part of a long history of the political erosion of public support in favor of high finance, and that this bad history has come to a head since 2008. [...]under neoliberalism, crisis itself is actively wielded as a tool by corporate and financial elites" (3). Goodchild begins with The South Sea Company as a case study to explain what he calls "the debts of politics" (a tweak on the volume's title), and to show how private debts in the form of taxation and investment—and sovereign authority based in credit (the promise of returns)—come to mutually reinforce each other in a system that relies on the regulatory functions of the banks. For Goodchild, this spells a crisis of faith: "Once the circle of reliable debtors shrinks to a few state, corporate and financial institutions, then it no longer offers a source of prosperity and longer time horizons for the populace at large" (72).