The Bailout State

Why Governments Rescue Banks, Not People
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-5095-6432-3
Verlag: Polity Press

Buch, Englisch, 272 Seiten, Format (B × H): 142 mm x 217 mm, Gewicht: 363 g

How did we end up in a world where social programs are routinely cut in the name of market discipline and fiscal austerity, yet large banks get bailed out whenever they get into trouble?

In The Bailout State, Martijn Konings exposes the inner workings of this sprawling infrastructure of government guarantees. Backstopping financial markets and securing banks’ balance sheets, this contemporary Leviathan manages the inflationary pressures that its generosity produces by tightening the financial screws on the rest of the population.

To a large extent, the bailout state was built by progressives seeking to buttress the institutions of the early postwar period. The resulting tide of capital gains fostered an asset-centered politics that experienced its heyday in the nineties. But ever since the financial crisis of 2007-08, promises of inclusive economic growth have looked increasingly thin. A colossus locked in place, the bailout state disburses its benefits to a rapidly shrinking group of property owners. Against the backdrop of a ferocious post-pandemic turn to anti-inflationary policy, the only remaining way to exit the logic of the bailout, Konings argues, is to challenge the monetary drivers at the heart of capitalist society.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Konings, Martijn

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Wirtschaftstheorie, Wirtschaftsphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

1 How Did We Get Here?

2 What Keynes Missed

3 How Welfare Capitalism Worked .

4 The Promise of Growth

5 The Inflation Decade

6 Building the Bailout State

7 Asset-Driven Growth

8 Bailouts and Austerity
9 Locked in Place
10 The Future of Bailouts

Postface

Notes

Über Autor(innen)

Martijn Konings is Professor of Political Economy and Social Theory at the University of Sydney.