The big, bad wolf and the rational market: portfolio insurance, the 1987 crash and the performativity of economics

MacKenzie, Donald

doi:10.1080/0308514042000225680

Cited by 234 publications

(118 citation statements)

References 47 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

111

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Political discretion becomes increasingly marginalized and censured as normalizing mathematical/risk models depoliticize the decision-making process (de Goede, 2005;Langley, 2008;Luhmann, 1993). Rather than simply 'informed opinions', it is through their 'performative' effects (Austin, 1962;Callon, 1998;MacKenzie, 2004), as a socio-technical device of 'control' (Deleuze, 1995), that ratings construct an infrastructure of referentiality -via the 'AAA' scale -denoting what 'correct' and 'normal' fiscal conduct should entail. Investment-grades grant access to liquid capital markets so governments must adapt to satisfy their (austere) criteria and align with the norm in order to perform the functions of 'government' and refinance existing debt obligations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Credit rating agencies and the sovereign debt crisis: Performing the politics of creditworthiness through risk and uncertainty

Paudyn

2013

Review of International Political Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

1As Member States struggle to retain the investment grades necessary to allow them to finance their governmental operations at a reasonable cost, credit rating agencies (CRAs) have been blamed for exacerbating a procyclical bias which only makes this task more difficult. How CRAs contribute to the constitution of the politics of limits underpinning the European sovereign debt crisis is at the core of this article. As a socio-technical device of control, sovereign ratings are an 'illocutionary' statement about budgetary health, which promotes an artificial fiscal normality. Subsequently, these austere politics of creditworthiness have 'perlocutionary' effects, which seek to censure political discretion through normalizing risk techniques aligned with the self-systemic, and thereby selfregulating, logic of Anglo-American versions of capitalism. The ensuing antagonistic relationship between the programmatic/expertise and operational/politics dimensions of fiscal governance leaves Europe vulnerable to crisis and the renegotiation of how the 'political' is established in the economy.New regulatory technical standards (RTS) can exacerbated the performative effects on CRAs, investors and Member States.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Credit rating agencies and the sovereign debt crisis: Performing the politics of creditworthiness through risk and uncertainty

Paudyn

2013

Review of International Political Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In that assay devices are demonstrated here to be both market devices and a critical part of an in vivo experiment in constituting a spatially bounded market in ship recycling, their significance goes beyond the specifics of the empirical case to connect with more fundamental debate about economies as performative (Callon, 1998(Callon, , 2007Callon et al 2007;Mackenzie, 2003Mackenzie, , 2004Mackenzie, , 2006Mackenzie, , 2009Mackenzie et al 2007). Much of the interest here has been in economics' multifarious effects on economies, and particularly how effects are woven into material practices that perform economies into being.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Political markets: recycling, economization and marketization

Gregson¹,

Watkins²,

Calestani³

2013

Economy and Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.

show abstract

“…Section 3 registers a third guiseöit works to signal the inexhaustibility of the built environment and its capacity for endless surprise. The paper concludes by emphasising the performative qualities of asbestos fibres by highlighting the importance of demolition activities not just to furthering understandings of performative cultural economies (Amin with Thrift, 2007;Mackenzie, 2004;Mackenzie et al, 2007;Thrift, 1997;2000a;2000b) but to debate about materials and materiality (Ingold, 2007) and by reflecting on how thinking about asbestos in these ways contributes to the emergent debate on vital materialisms (Bennett, 2004a;2004b;Hawkins, 2006;.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More conceptually, though, what this tells us is that surveys provide insufficient calculative agency. Thus, whilst they might look like typical calculative tools [eg spreadsheets, balance sheets, time sheets, and economic models (see Mackenzie, 2004;Mackenzie and Millo, 2003;Mackenzie et al, 2007], the calculation they perform with materials is only skin deep. Indeed, whilst they provide a schematic of materials present, there is always the potential for these materials to surprise and to exceed.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Inextinguishable Fibres: Demolition and the Vital Materialisms of Asbestos

2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

IntroductionTowards the end of her report Killing the Future, Asbestos Use in Asia, Laurie Kazan-Allen remarks:``asbestos is yesterday's material and should be relegated to the dustbin of discredited technologies and discarded materials; an asbestos-free future is possible'' (2007, page 37). Produced for the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS), an NGO based in the UK, her report exposes the global trade in chrysotile (white asbestos); delineates patterns in its production and consumption, highlighting its extensive use in construction projects throughout Asia; and emphasises the consequences for human health of its continued widespread and deregulated use. (1) The consequences are indeed stark. According to estimates from the WHO, 125 million people are exposed to asbestos annually in an occupational capacity, with around 9000 occupationally related deaths occurring per annum, primarily from asbestosis and mesothelioma. Environmental exposure is also significant. That asbestos is just another

show abstract

The big, bad wolf and the rational market: portfolio insurance, the 1987 crash and the performativity of economics

Cited by 234 publications

References 47 publications

Credit rating agencies and the sovereign debt crisis: Performing the politics of creditworthiness through risk and uncertainty

Credit rating agencies and the sovereign debt crisis: Performing the politics of creditworthiness through risk and uncertainty

Political markets: recycling, economization and marketization

Inextinguishable Fibres: Demolition and the Vital Materialisms of Asbestos

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About