The 2007 - 2009 Financial Crisis: Narrating and Politicising a Calamity

   Noel Castree

   Manchester University 

 The  events  triggered  by  defaults  on  ‘sub-prime’ mortgages  have  been  widely  described  as  constituting  a  ‘crisis’. But  a  crisis of what  exactly? Several different  explanations  of  the  20 month  drama  that unfolded from summer 2007 have been proposed by a wide range of commentators. These include journalists,  academics,  politicians,  business-people,  pundits and public  administrators,  among others. This  essay parses this superfluity of crisis talk into five principal accounts. It focuses on the Anglo-American scene. The interpretations  presented  range  from  the  simplistic and populist to the complex and specialised. They are compared and contrasted, and in each case their diverse normative  implications are sketched. As a Marxist, I argue  that  the fifth  interpretation – which  speaks  to macro-economic imbalances and asymmetries of class power – is the most compelling. But I also argue that each of the other interpretations can be narrated and politicised  in  such  a way  as to  advance  Left  arguments for  far-reaching  socio-economic  reform.  Yet,  this fact  notwithstanding,  the Left – by which I mean those positioned left of both New Labour  and  the Democrats – has so far failed to use the recent crisis to its political advantage. This, I suggest, is  a  sign  of  its  long-standing marginality  in Britain and the US – a marginality so entrenched that even an acute economic crisis has been unable to alter it. This crisis  thus  reveals  a  seeming paradox:  the  continued strength of neoliberal capitalism despite itself.