ABSTRACT
This chapter stages an encounter between Smith's sympathetic political economy and contemporary economistic liberalism. It summarizes the themes such as sympathy, mutual sympathy, and the sympathy procedure that is juxtaposed with a few significant aspects of finance implicated in the GFC. The politics of credit risk management are central to an understanding of the GFC. The financialisation of Anglo-American economy and society is central to understanding the shift towards programmes of asset-based welfare over the last 30 years or so. The individualisation of responsibility for welfare is not simply an ideological shift, but something more profound: it relates to a reconfigured ethos towards finance and the self. The chapter shows how sympathy understood as a procedure draws attention to continually negotiable and always provisional contestable interpersonal ethics. A consideration of personal debt can be used to illustrate important differences between an economistic and a sympathetic approach to economic governance.
