4. Conclusion
The politics of austerity represents perhaps neoliberalism’s greatest triumph, in that it has retained its hegemonic status despite the growth model it supports experiencing a profound crisis. It has survived in the UK by moving further towards what Mirowski might understand as monetarist neoliberalism— – so much so that the limits of monetary policy have been breached, with monetary activism in the coalition and Conservative governments’ economic policy agenda (building to some extent on their predecessor’s immediate response to the events of 2008) bleeding into extensive fiscal risks and spending commitments by the state in order to sustain the growth model and the housing market in particular. At the same time, the legitimation …show more content…
The transformation of individual economic practice that financialisation both embodies and demands has, via austerity discourse, come to seen as the only way for individuals to ensure their security in a harsh economic climate, even if this ultimately entails taking greater rather than fewer risks with our financial well-being. The fiscal consequences of the state helping us to live more ascetically, primarily through home-ownership, are obscured by the imaginaries conjured by austerity, irrespective of what they cost. That the economy has finally returned to growth— – a rather unremarkable feat— – takes on an almost epic significance as the consequence of collective belt-tightening. It is of course the result of the opposite, with greater spending by individuals on housing, and consumer spending enabled to some extent by housing wealth, coupled with what amounts to a comprehensive housing market stimulus package from the Treasury and the Bank of England, playing a decisive role in nudging the statistics in the right direction. The arrangement is unsustainable, because housing bubbles burst. Yet austerity has triumphed in embedding the norms of financialisation in common sense, helping to define the crisis of financialisation as one of not enough financialisation, and obscuring the herculean efforts of policy elites to salvage a process that had been imperilled by the 2008
The politics of austerity represents perhaps neoliberalism’s greatest triumph, in that it has retained its hegemonic status despite the growth model it supports experiencing a profound crisis. It has survived in the UK by moving further towards what Mirowski might understand as monetarist neoliberalism— – so much so that the limits of monetary policy have been breached, with monetary activism in the coalition and Conservative governments’ economic policy agenda (building to some extent on their predecessor’s immediate response to the events of 2008) bleeding into extensive fiscal risks and spending commitments by the state in order to sustain the growth model and the housing market in particular. At the same time, the legitimation …show more content…
The transformation of individual economic practice that financialisation both embodies and demands has, via austerity discourse, come to seen as the only way for individuals to ensure their security in a harsh economic climate, even if this ultimately entails taking greater rather than fewer risks with our financial well-being. The fiscal consequences of the state helping us to live more ascetically, primarily through home-ownership, are obscured by the imaginaries conjured by austerity, irrespective of what they cost. That the economy has finally returned to growth— – a rather unremarkable feat— – takes on an almost epic significance as the consequence of collective belt-tightening. It is of course the result of the opposite, with greater spending by individuals on housing, and consumer spending enabled to some extent by housing wealth, coupled with what amounts to a comprehensive housing market stimulus package from the Treasury and the Bank of England, playing a decisive role in nudging the statistics in the right direction. The arrangement is unsustainable, because housing bubbles burst. Yet austerity has triumphed in embedding the norms of financialisation in common sense, helping to define the crisis of financialisation as one of not enough financialisation, and obscuring the herculean efforts of policy elites to salvage a process that had been imperilled by the 2008