Originally Posted by roachboy

fistf: i think it's at that point in thinking about this situation that you have to start looking for more structural explanations. the bromides about "greed" don't let you think about what enabled any particular sequence of actions; the assumption about market actors as "rational" doesn't let you say anything about why a particular set of actions could have unfolded that would have lead to irrational or self-destructive outcomes.

this is all of a piece with a characteristic of neoliberalism that makes it so abberant and destructive: it is predicated on dissocation: of the present from the past, of markets from the rest of the social; of economic activity from politics on and on and on. these gaps, which are created through the application of a priori beliefs, are filled back in again with metaphysics.

at the limit, you get stuff like the economy can be understood as a fictional boxer. anthropomorphism isn't that big a leaf is you believe in stuff like the famous "invisible hand"--which (stealing a line from somewhere or another) has certainly given us a lesson in the modalities of invisibility in this particular situation. something that invisible, all the time, might not exist. just saying. or maybe it's god that the invisible hand is attached to.
if she existed, i wonder what she would have been doing with that invisible hand these past months.
i'd like to think that she'd have gone bowling.