What I Read About the Global Financial Crisis in 2007 and 2008

Abstract:     
Inspired by Eliot Weinberger's piece in the London Review of Books ('What I Heard about Iraq in 2005') and Walter Benjamin's 'method' of montage I trace the global financial crisis through selected quotations. I follow a chronological approach, sometimes briefly fastforwarding to pursue a storyline. The quotations, which I positioned so that they would hopefully illuminate one another, build up to a crescendo in autumn/winter 2008. The material has been derived mainly from the Financial Times newspaper (FT), but is supplemented with quotations culled from reports, speeches, and official testimonies. This piece can be read as a 21st century homage to Karl Kraus who announced in February 1915 that he had become 'a simple newspaper reader', using just scissors and paste to demonstrate the schizophrenia of contemporary history.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 17

Keywords: global financial crisis, capitalism, Benjamin

JEL Classification: G00

Accepted Paper Series