The Crisis of Risk

Book excerpt: For the last decade, progressive scholars determined to understand the 2008 financial crisis have examined the growth of US subprime mortgage debt in the period leading up to the collapse and how government policy supported this accumulation. However, the long history of the subprime crisis, its connection to the patterns of financial risk designated by the postwar international monetary system, has been all too often overlooked. This book explores the long history of the subprime crisis through an original theoretic lens that sheds light on the institutional basis of global debt markets and the role of US Treasury debt in the international financial system.