Disagreeing to Agree: Financial Crisis Management within the 'Logic of No Alternative'

The article argues that amid a cacophony of analyses of the causes of the current financial crisis, those daring to consider its implications and outcomes are decidedly cautious. Fundamentally, crisis managers appear intent on treating this as a minor glitch in an otherwise functioning market. This is a controversial claim. Nonetheless it is the legacy of the perception that neoliberalism is 'the only alternative'; it emphasises the need, however, for truly alternative voices in the ad hoc settlements and negotiations. The article argues that, through the lenses of historical materialism, this crisis is the inevitable result of the prolonged period of credit expansion and financial market reform in recent decades. With this in mind it suggests that the economists and state managers who established these conditions are themselves both unlikely to and incapable of reversing them.