Strategies of Perpetuation. How Financial Journalists Maintain Economic Imaginaries During Crisis

The North-Atlantic financial crisis has challenged many taken-for granted assumptions about the functioning of economies. It has raised expectations that paradigmatic or regime shift might take hold, replacing finance-oriented accumulation and neoliberalism. However, the arrangements of crisis management have, so far, perpetuated the established economic formation. The paper explores what part public crisis representations played in the restoration. It examines crisis lessons ‘taught’ by well-reputed commentators in the German financial press during the years 2006-2010, applying a combination of corpus analysis and critical discourse analysis (Kutter 2012). At the level of suggested problem solutions a stronger emphasis on coordination and Neo-Keynesian recipes can be identified. At the level of more encompassing discursive practice, however, three strategies of perpetuation prevail: causal stories that shift explanations of the crisis from the structural to the individual and vice-versa in a way which avoids systemic readings of crisis as well as attribution of responsibility to financial actors (blame deflection); a debate on regulatory policy re-emphasising notions of a ‘strong’ state while at the same time slating the ‘big’ national-protectionist state (substitute debate); and the crowding-out of voices that refer to other traditions of economic thought (German model, corporatism) by a generalising portrayal as populist and misled (silencing). These strategies allow commentators to maintain the accustomed view of the “liberal regulator” against neo-mercantilist policies introduced by the German government and popular critique of unfair burden-sharing.