A culture of mania: a psychoanalytic view of the incubation of the 2008 credit crisis

Flattr this!

In his recent paper enti­tled A cul­ture of mania: a psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic view of the incu­ba­tion of the 2008 cred­it cri­sis ,  Pro­fes­sor Mark Stein devel­ops a the­o­ret­i­cal frame­work around the notion of a man­ic cul­ture, com­prised of four aspects: denial; omnipo­tence; tri­umphal­ism; and over-activ­i­ty.

A series of major rup­tures in cap­i­tal­ist economies were observed and not­ed by those in posi­tions of eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal lead­er­ship in West­ern soci­eties,” he said. “These rup­tures caused con­sid­er­able anx­i­ety among these lead­ers, but rather than heed­ing the lessons, they respond­ed by man­ic, omnipo­tent and tri­umphant attempts to prove the supe­ri­or­i­ty of their economies.”

All four of these of these man­ic qual­i­ties were appar­ent in the Aus­tralian trea­sur­er last week “The doom­say­ers have been proved to be com­plete­ly and absolute­ly wrong,” Mr Swan said  . Just as Aus­tralia faces a sig­nif­i­cant slow­ing of the Aus­tralian prop­er­ty bub­ble,  togeth­er with sig­nif­i­cant signs of trou­ble with­in all our trad­ing part­ners and a con­tin­u­ing Euro­pean debt cri­sis , the trea­sur­er stands resplen­dent  in tri­umphant denial  .

Bookmark the permalink.

About Craig Tindale

CEO in the software and technology industry qualifications economics and computer sciences well read on Minksy, Marx, Fisher , Schumpeter , Veber and dozens of of others