Neoliberalism

[Dreamwoven]

Neoliberalism refers to the return to the policies of laissez-faire that were introduced by President Reagan - sometimes called Reaganomics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics) - in 1971. Taxes were reduced, especially on private and company incomes.

[kev67]

Neoliberalism is a term I have often heard banded about, but wasn't sure what it meant. It is used almost as a term of abuse by left-wingers. Is Neoliberalism different to Conservatism, in which case why do Conservative Party politicians get accused of it? The Liberal Democratic party in this country are really very social democratic, and they were so even when they were just the Liberal party. So why is Neoliberalism called Neoliberalism? I gather it is because Liberal policies used to be different 150 years ago, when they believed in giving business owners a free hand to do what they thought best. Another source of confusion is that there is a Neoclassical school of economics. This has been the predominant school of economics for the past thirty years, but has been given a bit of a bashing recently. Do Neoliberal politicians follow Neoclassical economics, or are they not really linked?

[Dreamwoven]

But what came before Neoliberalism? The answer is Ordoliberalism: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordoliberalism. And where did that come from? It was a German perspective on what was needed to prevent the occurrence of another major recession like the one in the 1930s. But neoliberalism took the world by storm, deaf ears turned towards the ordoliberal view and its carefully designed measures to prevent another major recession.

Many of their ideas were developed in the exile of ordoliberals during the Hitler era. They moved to Switzerland where universities and the German language provided a home for the ordoliberals. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburg_school.

But after the Reagan years in the USA and the European phenomenon of Thatcherism, ordoliberalism was no longer "fashionable". There was instead "a rush to the market".

In this thread I want to examine the question of such major U-turns in history. This U-turn is interesting for a number of reasons. The end of poverty proved not to be what was hoped for. The election of President Trump is one expression of this. Not was the abandonment of ordoliberalism as being redundant in the early post-war prosperity. Instead we have a return to the boom-slump cycle. Class differences are once more widening, as the super rich begin to comprise a new ruling class, alongside the emergence of a disadvantaged underclass.

[kev67]

I've never heard of Ordiliberalism before. In the UK, it sounds somewhat similar to what we already have. We have a Monopolies Commission to stop any one company from dominating a sector, a minimum wage, and various watchdog bodies to ensure big business is behaving.

I think by the end of the 70's, there was a feeling that the government was incompetent at running businesses and that it was better to leave it to the professionals. All the nationalised industries were permanently on strike except when they were making shoddy products no one wanted. Inflation was high, Keynesianism had failed, and there was a sense the country was going to the dogs. I think this is why Margaret Thatcher won the election in 1979. I don't know what the situation was in the US. At the time I thought President Carter lost to Ronald Reagan because the Iranians had humiliated the US with the hostage taking at the American embassy, and Carter failed to deal with it robustly enough. I do not know if really, a lot of the economic problems in the 70s were just down to oil price shocks.

I read a booked called The Spirit Level. It argued that once a country had become wealthy enough so that basic needs of its citizens could be met, the contentment of its citizens was determined more by how equal everyone was rather than how much money they actually had. Japan and Sweden were the happiest. Pay differentials in Japan between top and bottom earners is much narrower in Japan than in many countries. In Sweden there is a high degree in wealth redistribution through taxes and welfare payments. Among the OECD countries, the US was the most unequal society with the most unhappy citizens. The UK was fairly unequal and unhappy too. Unhappiness manifests itself in social problems: drug abuse, crime, low life expectancy, etc; but it can also be detected by measuring stress hormones. I am not saying I buy all this, but this is what the book was arguing.

[Dreamwoven]

The Spirit Level seems like an interesting book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level:_Why_More_Equal_Societies_Almost_ Always_Do_Better. I must read it.

[Dreamwoven]

If you want to learn more about ordoliberalism this link may help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy

[kev67]

The Spirit Level is not the only book about inequality. For example, Joseph Stiglitz has written at least two books on the subject. I have not read any of his books. He is not a fan of Neoliberalism.

[Dreamwoven]

There is a word in Swedish that expresses well the sense of neither too much, nor too little - lágom. It is a very Swedish word.

[Dreamwoven]

Jock Young, the critical criminologist, - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_Young - wrote a trilogy of books on late modernity. Two of these The Vertigo of Late Modernity (2007), and The Exclusive Society (1999), are studies of neoliberalism today.

[Dreamwoven]

There is a word in Swedish that expresses well the sense of neither too much, nor too little - lágom. It is a very Swedish word.
This is the Wikipedia entry on Lagom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom

[Dreamwoven]

At the time liberalism was "reinvented" by President Reagan in the early 1970s no-one thought neoliberalism would have negative consequences. Now, we know know better. The 1929 crash - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929 - was matched by the 2007-2008 financial Crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–2008:

"The financial crisis of 2007–2008, also known as the global financial crisis and the 2008 financial crisis, is considered by many economists to have been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s."

[Dreamwoven]

It has also involved the Federal Reserve to try to control the financial market using a special set of measures to keep interest-rates low. This zero interest-rate policy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest-rate_policy - (ZIRP) - is managed by Janet Yellen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Yellen. It is still in force, a decade after the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

[Dreamwoven]

ZIRP is an unusual policy, hoping to dampen demand that was stimulated by the subprime mortgage crisis leading up to the 2007-2008 financial crisis. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis and the US Housing Bubble: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_housing_bubble. In short, ZIRP was an attempt to control the housing bubble. On this see Acting Man Blog, this post, especially: http://www.acting-man.com/?p=49118.

[Dreamwoven]

The tricky part is to judge when the Federal Reserve should phase out ZIRP? And what do people think of the Federal Reserve using its power over interest rates to "fool the market"? Will it work, or will its unintended consequences rebound on us?

[Dreamwoven]

The whole business about ZIRP is a huge experiment. We have no idea where it will lead...

[Dreamwoven]

I am reading Jock Young's book The Exclusive Society (1999). In it he discusses the concept of umwelt in everyday life and the management of risk in late modernity, referring to Irving Goffman and Anthony Giddens, among others: "an attitude of wariness, of calculation and of reflectiveness" (pp.71-76). We all have an awareness of guarding our own personal security. Its a fascinating subject.

[Dreamwoven]

At the time liberalism was "reinvented" by President Reagan in the early 1970s no-one thought neoliberalism would have negative consequences. Now, we know know better. The 1929 crash - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929 - was matched by the 2007-2008 financial Crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–2008:

"The financial crisis of 2007–2008, also known as the global financial crisis and the 2008 financial crisis, is considered by many economists to have been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s."

It is important to remember that many governments baled out their banks in an attempt to save their economies. They were subsequently re-privatised.

This is something that the citizens of each country must sort out for themselves. But it also makes it easy to neglect what happened. How banks were nationalised at great expense and then re-privatised.

For more information see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008

and, of course, the cities of each country need to make their own studies of events in their own country.

[Dreamwoven]

the US liabilities from the Federal Takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac can be seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae_and_Freddie_Mac. It is just over 5 trillion dollars out of total public debt of 9.5 trillions at the time of the takeover.

[Dreamwoven]

In November2003 John Laub, in his presidential address to the American Society of Criminology's annual meeting in Denver, Colorado commented: when I entered the field as a graduate student in the 1970s,cfiminology was an exciting field, because people were passionate about ideas. Today "career concerns" are centre-stage,for example, publication counts, citation counts, the amount of external funding generated, departmental rankings, and so forth are the new measures of intellectual impact and scholarship (2004 p.3).

He talked about ´the golden age of theory` then added, almost soto voce, in a footnote one can ask in all seriousness, "why is so much criminology today boring? Jock Young The Criminological Imagination (p.83)

Jock Young was caught up in the enthusiasm of the National Deviancy Symposium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Deviancy_Symposium, just as I was. I decided then to apply to an American university and got a studentship at Minnesota University. Kerstin and I went there in 1951, the one place where symbolic interaction was replaced by statistics, after just one first year course. I resigned and we returned to Europe.

[Dreamwoven]

Once back in Sweden we lived in a small flat in Gothenburg. There I went to the Sociology Department and showed the head of department my publications, and registered for the Ph.D. Went back some years later and I wanted to submit my proposal to the Department. It was accepted and I defended it at the viva, made changes to the final manuscript and submitted it: an interactionist approach to macrosociology. It was while in Gothenburg I decided I wanted to do research in housing. This was at the time when neoliberalism was coming to Sweden.

[Dreamwoven]

Margit Mayer "Whose City? From Ray Pahl's critique of the Keynesian city to the contestations around Neoliberal Urbanism" The Sociological Review vol.65 no. 2, May 2017

"Since Pahl first explored the ways in which local authorities and their urban managers appropriate and shape cities according to their own rather than residents’ interests, both the ‘who’ and the ‘city’ have become thoroughly redefined. While Pahl could show how the ‘urban managerialism’ of the Fordist city produced territorial inequalities and social exclusions, today’s answers to his original formulation have become rather more complex. This complexity has been revealed by linking the analysis of urban (governance) restructuring with that of movement mobilizations, that is, by considering institutional actors and urban protesters as constituting one and the same field of conflict. Those who own and run ‘the city’ today are no longer only traditional city bosses and their managers, but also global finance capital and other corporate players. And the object of contestation, the city itself, has been redefined as access to ‘the urban’ more in the shape of a global commons than to some central area walled off by insurmountable (and clear) boundaries. At the same time, urban social movements have turned the question ‘whose city?’ into a battle cry for reappropriating what ‘the one percent’ is increasingly denying the ‘99 percent’: the ‘right to the city’, which stands not only for the right to ‘the city we want’ but also for the right to representation and recognition of all who are being disenfranchised and dispossessed by the process of (extended) neoliberal urbanization."

[Dreamwoven]

Fred Block and Margaret R. Somers [/]The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique[/I]

This book explains clearly and concisely why the market fundamentalists were wrong, all the way down the line. It evaluates the strength of Karl Polanyi's arguments. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Polanyi. Karl Polany was an Austro-Hungarian, jewish, and fled to England in 1933, thence on to Canada after the war. Block and Somers present Polanyi's ideas. I will be using the coming posts to examine Polanyi's critique.

[Dreamwoven]

One thing I learned from Block and Somers (2014) was how Reaganomics impacted on the US economy. He was not "de-regulating" the market but was continuing the re-regulation started by Jimmy Carter, by shifting the burden of taxation from the super-rich to middle-income and working class earners.

[Dreamwoven]

"Reagan's re-regulative policies started a dramatic shift of income in favour of the top 1% of households...the share of income going to the top 1% increased from 10% in 1981 to 23.5% in 2007". Much of this shift can be traced to the bold opportunities that Reaganite re-regulation created for Wall Street. Under the new rules, employment and profits in the financial sector grew spectacularly...Dozens of new billionaires suddenly appeared simply by making deals and trading pieces of paper including authorised derivatives such as credit default swaps and collateralised debt obligations." (Block and Somers, 2014 p. 20).

[Dreamwoven]

The Great Transformation:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book) is the most famous of Polanyi's works. In it he explains the Speenhamland System - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system - as being the response to the hardship caused by the high grain prices in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Much of Block and Somers (2014) deals with this:

"The sociologists Fred L. Block and Margaret Somers argue that Karl Polanyi's analysis could help explain why the resurgence of free market ideas have resulted in "such manifest failures as persistent unemployment, widening inequality, and the severe financial crises that have stressed Western economies over the past forty years." They suggest that "the ideology that free markets can replace government is just as utopian and dangerous" as the idea that Communism will result in the withering away of the state.[12]"

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book) for more information on this, under the heading of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book)#Support.

[Dreamwoven]

I looked up on the internet "neoliberal business structures" and was surprised at how many hits I got. The alternatives are many, including taxation, company registering, the nature of profits, who is liable for the company. There are many alternatives.

Here are some of the links I got:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/75118
Book by David Harvey "A Brief History of Neoliberalism": https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/75118
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/neoliberalism.asp

[Dreamwoven]

At the time liberalism was "reinvented" by President Reagan in the early 1970s no-one thought neoliberalism would have negative consequences. Now, we know know better. The 1929 crash - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929 - was matched by the 2007-2008 financial Crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–2008:

"The financial crisis of 2007–2008, also known as the global financial crisis and the 2008 financial crisis, is considered by many economists to have been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s."

In this post I want to look closer at the US Housing Bubble: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_housing_bubble and the 2010 US foreclosure crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_foreclosure_crisis.

(1) The US Housing Bubble:

The United States housing bubble was a real estate bubble affecting over half of the U.S. states. Housing prices peaked in early 2006, started to decline in 2006 and 2007, and reached new lows in 2012.[2] On December 30, 2008, the Case-Shiller home price index reported its largest price drop in its history.[3] The credit crisis resulting from the bursting of the housing bubble is—according to general consensus—the primary cause of the credit default swap bubble of the 2007–2009 recession in the United States.[4]

(2) The US Foreclosure Crisis:

The 2010 United States foreclosure crisis, sometimes referred to as Foreclosure-gate or Foreclosuregate,[1][2] refers to a widespread epidemic of improper foreclosures initiated by large banks and other lenders. The foreclosure crisis was extensively covered by news outlets beginning in October 2010, and several large banks, including Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup temporarily responded by halting their foreclosure proceedings in some or all states.[3][4] The foreclosure crisis caused significant investor fear in the U.S.[5] A 2014 study published in the American Journal of Public Health linked the foreclosure crisis to an increase in suicide rates.[6]

See also the subprime mortgage crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

[Dreamwoven]

Europe also suffered from bank runs, the most dramatic being that of Northern Rock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Rock:

"Northern Rock, formerly the Northern Rock Building Society, was a British bank. It was based at Regent Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. Northern Rock was best known for becoming the first British bank in 150 years to suffer a bank run after having had to approach the Bank of England for a loan facility, to replace money market funding, during the credit crisis in 2007.[2] Having failed to find a commercial buyer, it was taken into public ownership in 2008, and was then bought by Virgin Money in 2012. During 2012 the Northern Rock brand was phased out and replaced by Virgin."

The EU Financial Crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_debt_crisis

"The European debt crisis (often also referred to as the Eurozone crisis or the European sovereign debt crisis) is a multi-year debt crisis that has been taking place in the European Union since the end of 2009. Several eurozone member states (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Cyprus) were unable to repay or refinance their government debt or to bail out over-indebted banks under their national supervision without the assistance of third parties like other Eurozone countries, the European Central Bank (ECB), or the International Monetary Fund (IMF)."

The Icelandic Financial Crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008–2011_Icelandic_financial_crisis

"The Icelandic financial crisis was a major economic and political event in Iceland that involved the default of all three of the country's major privately owned commercial banks in late 2008, following their difficulties in refinancing their short-term debt and a run on deposits in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Relative to the size of its economy, Iceland's systemic banking collapse was the largest experienced by any country in economic history.[1] The crisis led to a severe economic depression in 2008–2010 and significant political unrest."

[Dreamwoven]

On the same day, the Sveriges Riksbank, Sweden's central bank, made a credit facility of 5 billion Swedish krona (€520 million) available to Kaupthing Bank Sverige AB, the Swedish subsidiary of Kaupthing. The loan was to pay "depositors and other creditors".[71]

On 9 October, Kaupthing was placed into receivership by the FME, following the resignation of the entire board of directors.[72] The bank said that it was in technical default on its loan agreements after its UK subsidiary had been placed into administration.[73] Kaupthing's Luxembourg subsidiary asked for, and obtained, a suspension of payments (similar to chapter 11 protection) in the Luxembourg District Court.[74] Kaupthing's Geneva office, which was a branch of its Luxembourg subsidiary, was prevented from making any payments of more than 5000 Swiss francs by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission.[75] The directors of Kaupthing's subsidiary on the Isle of Man decided to wind up the company after consultation with the Manx authorities.[76] The Finnish Financial Supervision Authority, Rahoitustarkastus, announced having taken control of Kaupthing's Helsinki branch already on 6th, to prevent money from being sent back to Iceland.[77]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008–2011_Icelandic_financial_crisis

On the same day, the UK Treasury issued a licence under the Landsbanki Freezing Order 2008 to allow the London branch of Landsbanki to continue some business.[78] A second licence was issued on 13 October,[79] when the Bank of England provided a £100 million secured loan to Landsbanki "to help maximise the returns to UK creditors."[80]

[Dreamwoven]

Some links to critical criminology, still a thriving community!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_criminology
http://divisiononcriticalcriminology.com
http://critcrim.org

[Dreamwoven]

http://www.acting-man.com/?p=49220: few honest central bankers nowadays...

[Dreamwoven]

Silent Spring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring. I watched two one-hour TV programs one on the threat of bees becoming extinct, and the other on the use of pesticides and mechanised farming that makes the soil barren. What has this got to do with neoliberalism? the hunt for profits is turning agriculture into a deeply exploitative agrobusiness.

[Dreamwoven]

There was very little soil, a yellow dust, more likely, that could easily blow away. Carrots had been grown here, harvested, ingeniously, mechanically, all the same size and length. Very efficient...The equipment used was also hi-tech. Carrots grow in sandy soil, look like this...http://www.almanac.com/plant/carrots.

[Dreamwoven]

A couple of interesting article from Acting Man:

http://www.acting-man.com/?p=49318#more-49318

http://www.acting-man.com/?p=49308#more-49308

[Dreamwoven]

https://mises.org/library/worlds-central-banks-are-frozen-fear

There is no desire from banks to raise interest rates, and this after several years of zero or below zero interest rates. See the above link to mises, published today.

[Dreamwoven]

Signs of growing bubble from Mises and Acting Man:

"You do not need to be a financial market wizard to see that especially bond markets have reached bubble territory: bond prices have become artificially inflated by central banks' unprecedented monetary policies. For instance, the price-earnings-ratio for the US 10-year Treasury yield stands around 44, while the equivalent for the euro zone trades at 85. In other words, the investor has to wait 44 years (and 85 years, respectively) to recover the bonds' purchasing price through coupon payments."

and from Acting Man:
http://www.acting-man.com/?p=49318#more-49318

[YesNo]

I agree with the Mises group about bonds. I expect interest rates will rise and then refinancing for governments and corporations will become more difficult.

[Dreamwoven]

Yes, that is my conclusion, too.

[Dreamwoven]

See also this thread: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?87627-Possessions&p=1342332#post1342332

[Dreamwoven]

We have now had a decade when interest rates are held down by U.S. state intervention. But sooner or later a market correction will take place. We have now had a decade when interest rates are held down by U.S. state intervention. But sooner or later a market correction will come. This is discussed in http://www.acting-man.com/?p=51805#more-51805.

[Dreamwoven]

The book by Elly Griffiths The Chalk Pit, has a section on Underground Societies, people who live in some of our most affluent cities, but they are driven to live below the earth. People who - for whatever reason - aren't welcome on the surface - homeless people, the addicts, HIV-positive. There are subterranean communities all over the world - in catacombs, sewers and abandoned metros. The tunnel people in Las Vegas, the Empire of the Dead in Paris, the Rat Tribe in Beijing. A lot of them are proper societies with electricity and phone lines - even churches and restaurants sometimes. The Rat Tribe in Beijing are mostly migrant workers, some of them brought in to build for the Olympics (The Chalk Pit, p.197). See From My Bookshelves http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?86568-From-My-Bookshelves&p=1348600#post1348600.

[Dreamwoven]

I have often wondered why we never hear of these underground societies in the media. It is, after all, a characteristic of many countries and immigration is a permanent issue in both Europe and America. Subterranean communities were also a characteristic of both Liberalism in the 19th century
and Neoliberalism today. There are Nazi Parties in many countries, even Germany, and there are demonstrations against them, but the link between Neoliberalism and Liberalism never seems to be made.

I have come to understand that the freedom of speech that is a characteristic of both Liberalism and Neoliberalism is an important explanatory factor, along with extremes of poverty and extremes of wealth.

[Dreamwoven]

deleted, wrong topic

[Dreamwoven]

An outstanding book on "Market Fundamentalism" is by Fred Block and Margaret R. Somers The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique, Harvard University Press, 2014.

"What is it about free-market ideas that give them tenacious staying power in the face of such manifest failures as persistent unemployment, widening inequality and the severe financial crises that have stressed Western economies over the past forty years? Fred Block and Margaret Somers extend the work of the great political economist Karl Polanyi to explain why these ideas have revived from disrepute in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II to become the dominant economic ideology of our time."

"Polanyi contends that the free market championed by market liberals never actually existed. While markets are essential to enable individual choice, they cannot be self-regulating because they require ongoing state action. Furthermore, they cannot by themselves provide the necessaries of social existence as education, health care, social and personal security, and the right to earn a livelihood.When these public goods are subjected to market principles social life is threatened and major crises ensue."

"Despite these theoretical flaws, market principles are powerfully seductive because they promise to diminish the role of politics in civil and social life. Because politics entail coercion and unsatisfying compromises among groups with deep conflicts, the wish to narrow its scope is understandable. But like Marx's theory that communism will less to a "withering away of the state," the ideology that free markets can replace government is just as utopian and dangerous."
(Introduction to the book)

[Dreamwoven]

It was when I was reading this book that I became aware of the ideological nature of" Reaganomics". You can read about this in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics:

"Reaganomics (/reɪɡəˈnɒmɪks/; a portmanteau of [Ronald] Reagan and economics attributed to Paul Harvey)[1] refers to the economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are commonly associated with supply-side economics, referred to as trickle-down economics or voodoo economics by political opponents, and free-market economics by political advocates.

The four pillars of Reagan's economic policy were to reduce the growth of government spending, reduce the federal income tax and capital gains tax, reduce government regulation, and tighten the money supply in order to reduce inflation.[2] During Reagan's presidency, the national debt almost tripled and the U.S. went from being the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor in under eight years"

There is much more, but Reaganomics cut the taxes on the rich, that was responsible for the stock exchange speculation leading to the Great Recession in the West: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession. This in turn led to the experimentation with zero interest rates. How this will pan out after over 10 years of zero interest rate policies (ZIRP) remain unclear. Block and Somers discuss this in their book, above.

[Dreamwoven]

Of course, long after Reagan died the zero interest rate policies remains an experiment, giving a breathing space for the build-up of demand. This is widely expected to have as yet unknown side-effects. Bitcoin is one such consequence, as consumers play with the idea of ZIRP. It is worth reading Acting Man - to keep in touch with the situation http://www.acting-man.com.

[Dreamwoven]

Karl Polanyi - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Polanyi

- Karl Polanyi's Critique is a book in its own right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book).

Polanyi was originally an Austrian citizen, and like so many Jews his family spoke Hungarian. Hw wrote the Great Transformation while in England and America, and he wrote it in English.

[Dreamwoven]

Karl Polanyi's major contributions to the social sciences starts in Chapter 2 "Beyond the Economistic Fallacy - the tendency in Western thought to analyse all aspects of life through an economic determinism." (Block and Somers (2014 p. 44).

"Polanyi countered this tendency by emphasising the primacy of the "social".

Another book by Gareth Dale "Karl Polanyi: the limits of the market (2013)" has a section on "explaining the neoliberal ascendency" (pp 208-210).

I was interested in the work of Karl Polanyi from many perspectives thanks to my Jewish father who was brought up in the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary and whose father ran a signal box in Slovakia on Czechoslovakia's railways. My paternal Grandfather was a strong supporter of Hungarian nationalism and named his sons after Hungarian leaders (Zoltan being one). He was taken to Auschwitz along with most of my other paternal relatives.

[Dreamwoven]

Polanyi himself wisely fled from Austria-Hungary first to Vienna where he was editor for a major economics journal. Then when Hitler came to power in 1933 and Austrians welcomed the Anschluss with Germany he moved to North America. His book, The Great Transformation was published in Britain in 1944 (see the links at the end of this post for further information).

Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Polanyi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sociology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embeddedness

In market societies, in contrast, economic activities have been rationalized, and economic action is "disembedded" from society and able to follow its own distinctive logic, captured in economic modeling. Polanyi's ideas were widely adopted and discussed in anthropology in what has been called "The formalist vs substantivist debate".[1] Subsequently, the term "embeddedness" was further developed by economic sociologist Mark Granovetter, who argued that even in market societies, economic activity is not as disembedded from society as economic models would suggest.[2]

[Dreamwoven]

From Michael Connelly The Late Show (2017) pp. 130-131:

This is set in Los Angeles, one of the richest cities in the world. Divisions between the rich and the poor exist everywhere.

"Who is it? We have people come and go. Sometimes they just leave their stuff."

Her name's Ramona Ramone. Kinda short Spanish girl? She said she lived here."

"Yeah, I know Ramona. But one thing you should know - she's a man."

"Yes, I know that. She was born a man but identifies as a woman"

That seemed to confuse Denver, so Ballard moved on: "So she lives here?"

[Dreamwoven]

There are a large number of temporary residents in Los Angeles. Mostly living in caravans that have been dumped. Neoliberalism is not just about the rich who gamble on the stock exchange, it is also about the poor, who have no homes.