Abstract
This article examines the 2007 banking crisis from an interdisciplinary and, in particular, social constructivist perspective to identify its structural and systemic causes. After presenting and explaining a wide meta-theoretical framework that can accommodate different understandings of socio-economic action, it argues that some of the scale-invariant properties of community currency systems could usefully be applied to global finance. On this basis, it presents a concrete proposal for strengthening the democratic dimension of the banking system as a vital nexus between the real economy, government and society.
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References and Notes
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As we explained above, the lack of information does not refer so much to the individual mortgages and normal investments as to the opaqueness of the repo market.
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Acknowledgements
Lance Breitstein's internship at LSE was organized by Arcadia University. Paolo Dini's time during the writing of this article was funded by the EU project OPAALS, contract number FP6-034824. Both contributions are gratefully acknowledged. Paolo Dini would like to acknowledge a few pivotal conversations he had many years ago with Dr Mary Redmond around the concept of trust, which partly inspired the research discussed in this article. Finally, the authors are very grateful also to Professor Robin Mansell of LSE, who provided in-depth and detailed critical feedback on every aspect of this article.
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Breitstein, L., Dini, P. A social constructivist analysis of the 2007 banking crisis: Building trust and transparency through community currencies. J Bank Regul 13, 36–62 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/jbr.2011.16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jbr.2011.16