ABSTRACT
There was a strong tendency to interpret the financial and economic crisis in its aftermath mainly as a sovereign debt crisis without any reference to the preceding crises. Although the financial crisis initially could have offered a possibility for a fundamental paradigm shift in economic thought and economic policies, yet a few years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers there are hardly any signs of such a shift (Heise, 2017; Green & Hay, 2015; Pühringer, 2015a). In contrast, the core ‘economic imaginary’ (Jessop, 2013 BOB-0083; Sum & Jessop, 2013) of a ‘functioning (financial) market,’ which had a formative impact on economic and particularly financial market policies still seems to be dominant in European crisis policies. A striking example of the subordination of political discourse to ‘the market’ is given by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “Of course we live in a democracy and it is a parliamentary democracy […] so we shall find ways to shape parliamentary co-determination so that it nonetheless conforms to the markets” (Merkel, 2011).
