ABSTRACT
The financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent recession were products, in part, of the greatest regulatory failure of the postwar period. For some, the costs were primarily material. According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of American families fell by nearly 40 percent between 2007 and 2010. 1 They lost their jobs, their homes, their retirement funds, and their invitation to participate in what President George W. Bush referred to as the “Ownership Society.” For others, the costs were ideological, as the crisis forced a reevaluation of core foundational assumptions about the political economy. Efforts to diagnose the sources of the crisis and design a new regulatory architecture began in earnest in the autumn of 2008 as policymakers sought to find a path to economic recovery. This episode is of great interest. Most immediately, the stakes involved are enormous. New regulations could prevent a future financial crisis from occurring or, at the very least, minimize the damage. Moreover, it is of inherent interest insofar as the crisis and its consequences were in many ways a product of the larger neoliberal agenda that found an expression for a generation in key policy decisions.
