Politics Speakers Series and Social Democracy Suppressed Series present:
Adam Tooze
Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia University
The recent financial crisis has given rise to a resurgence of interest in the tense relationship of capitalism and democracy. What this literature has tended to ignore is the fact that the financial crisis of 2007-2012 did not unfold according to familiar patterns. This surprise has given rise to a new economics of financial crises that centers not on national economic aggregates and imbalances but on the multi-currency balance sheets of transnational banks and shadow banks. This paper will explore some of the implications of this new economics for thinking about the state. It will argue that the specific logic of transnational financial crisis requires us to reconsider familiar models of the crisis-ridden relationship between capitalism and democracy.