ephemera

notes

theory & politics in organization© ephemera 2009ISSN 1473-2866
www.ephemeraweb.org
volume 9(1): 61-72

What I read About the Global Financial
Crisis in 2007 and 2008*
Christian De Cock

Review of
abstract

Inspired by Eliot Weinberger’s piece in the London Review of Books (‘What I Heard about Iraq in 2005’)
and Walter Benjamin’s ‘method’ of montage I trace the global financial crisis through selected
quotations. I follow a chronological approach, sometimes briefly fast forwarding to pursue a storyline.
The quotations, which I positioned so that they would hopefully illuminate one another, build up to a
crescendo in autumn/winter 2008. The material has been derived mainly from the Financial Times
newspaper (FT), but is supplemented with quotations culled from reports, speeches, and official
testimonies. This piece can be read as a 21st century homage to Karl Kraus who announced in February
1915 that he had become ‘a simple newspaper reader’, using just scissors and paste to demonstrate theschizophrenia of contemporary history.

Introduction“What I have written consists, as it were, almost entirely of quotations. It is the craziest
mosaic technique you can imagine.” (Walter Benjamin, Letter to Gerhard Scholem,
December 22, 1924)“Walter Benjamin dreamt of publishing a book composed entirely of quotations. I lackthe necessary originality. Juxtaposed, quotations take on novel meanings and enter into
a mutual debate.” (George Steiner, Grammars of Creation, 2001, p.13)“I believe that this means cultivating a different kind of academic positionality which
we might call, following Simmel, ‘the glance’ – an attempt to produce writing which
can function as critical direct action through its close attention to the present. Suchquick-response writing to the quick responses of capitalism, located somewhere
between academia and journalism, is currently starved of outlets and yet it seems to me
that if we want to keep up with capitalism’s ceaseless experimentation… we will need__________*

This reading was carried out as part of a project sponsored by the UK Economic and Social
Research Council (Grant reference: RES-176-25-0002).
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© 2009 ephemera 9(1): 61-72
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What I read about the Global Financial Crisis
Christian De Cockto cultivate this art more than any other. Otherwise, we will become disconnected fromthe very entity we wish to critique.” (Nigel Thrift, Knowing Capitalism, 2005, p.11)“Journalism, so the adage goes, is the first draft of history. In 2008, the Financial Times
had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to report, analyse and comment on the most serious
financial crisis since the Great Crash of 1929… It was a story tailor-made for the FT.”
(Lionel Barber, Editor-in-chief of the Financial Times, December 2008)

2007
Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank: “There is now suchcreativity of new and very sophisticated financial instruments . . . that we don’t know
fully where the risks are located. We are trying to understand what is going on – but it isa big, big challenge.” (January 2007)“Credit risk cannot in practice be somehow magicked away. It is bound to land
somewhere, and, in the event of a severe credit crunch, the overlending of the present
boom is almost certain to end badly for some.” (The Independent, February 2007)“It may surprise readers to learn that this World Economic Outlook sees global
economic risks as having declined since our last issue in September 2006. Certainly thisis at odds with many recent newspaper headlines and commentary, which have focusedon problems related to U.S. mortgages, the potential for ‘disorderly’ unwinding of
global imbalances, and worries about rising protectionist pressures. Nevertheless, as
discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, looking at the big picture, we actually see thecontinuation of strong global growth as the most likely scenario”. (IMF World
Economic Outlook Report, April 2007)
Simon Gibson, CEO Wesley Clover, Private Equity House: “It kind of starts to soundlike the dotcom boom. When suddenly, you know, you have a realisation that theinmates are running the asylum… when you start to see those demonstrations of excess,you kind of know that it probably will go.” (May 2007)
Chuck Prince, CEO Citigroup: “As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up
and dance… We’re still dancing.” (FT, 09/07/07)
Jim Cramer former Hedge Fund Manager, CNBC financial cable channel host: “Bankexecutives are calling me in distress. We have Armageddon. In the fixed income
markets, we have Armageddon.” (August 2007)
Matthew Rothman, a Chicago PhD and head of quantitative equity strategies at
Lehman Brothers: “Wednesday is the type of day people will remember in Quant Landfor a very long time. Events that models predicted would happen only once in 10,000
years happened every day for three days.” (August 2007)62© 2009 ephemera 9(1): 61-72
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What I read about the Global Financial Crisis
Christian De Cock

Mr Cassano, Head of Financial Products Division AIG: “It’s very difficult to see how
there can be any losses in these [CDS] portfolios.” (At Investor Meeting in Manhattan,
December 2007)

2008“A more fundamental lesson still concerns the way the financial system works.
Outsiders were already aware it was a black box. But they were prepared to assume thatthose inside it at least knew what was going on. This can hardly be true now. Worse, theinstitutions that prospered on the upside expect rescue on the downside. They are rightto expect this. But this can hardly be a tolerable bargain between financial insiders andwider society. Is such mayhem the best we can expect? If so, how does one sustain
broad public support for what appears so one-sided a game?” (FT, 27/02/08)
Joseph Ackermann, CEO of Deutsche Bank: “I no longer believe in the market’s selfhealing power.” (March 2008)“Prices in some credit markets are likely to overstate the losses that will ultimately befelt by the financial system and the economy as a whole, as they appear to include large
discounts for illiquidity and uncertainty. Conditions should improve as market
participants recognise that some assets look cheap relative to credit fundamentals.”(Bank of England Financial Stability Report, April 2008)
Sir John Gieve, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England: “While there remain
downside risks, the most likely path is that confidence and risk appetite will return
gradually in the coming months.” (April 2008)“APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.”(T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922)
Sir John Gieve, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England: “The instability of the global
financial system in recent weeks has been the most severe in living memory.” (October
2008)“In recent weeks, the global banking system has arguably undergone its biggest episodeof instability since the start of World War I.” (Bank of England Financial Stability
Report, October 2008)
Lord Turner, Chairman of the FSA (Financial Services Authority): “In April of this year
[2008] everybody knew that something pretty big had happened to the world’s financial
system. What we had no idea, bluntly, was how extreme it was going to be…There has
63© 2009 ephemera 9(1): 61-72
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What I read about the Global Financial Crisis
Christian De Cockto be a bit of sort of humility that some or other of the things that we’ve said in the past
must be wrong, because otherwise we wouldn’t have gone wrong.” (October 17, 2008)
Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve and chair of the Economic
Recovery Panel in president Obama’s administration: “Today’s financial crisis is theculmination, as I count them, of at least five serious breakdowns of systemic
significance in the past 25 years – on the average one every five years. Warning enoughthat something rather basic is amiss… Simply stated, the bright new financial system –for all its talented participants, for all its rich rewards – has failed the test of the market
place.” (Speech to the economic club of New York, April 8, 2008)
Pete Peterson, Chairman the Blackstone Group: “Do you feel that the senator has somespecial attributes, like his presumed ability to unifying the country, that might transcend
the principle of long term fiscal responsibility? Or is there a relationship between yoursupport of Senator Obama and your commitment to long term fiscal responsibility?”
Paul Volcker: “Well I will make a great confession in this small group that I did, I
thought we weren’t supposed to talk about political matters here.”
Pete Peterson: “You and I have never done what we should have done.” (April 8, 2008)
Horst Köhler, German President and former head of the IMF: “I am still waiting for aclear, audible mea culpa. The only good thing about this crisis is that it has made clear
to any thinking, responsible person in the sector that international financial markets
have developed into a monster that must be put back in its place… Capitalism only has
a future if it rises up to its responsibilities, especially its responsibility towards the
weak. It is about practising responsibility and solidarity without at the same timeswitching off market and price mechanisms.” (May 14, 2008)
George Soros, Hedge Fund manager: “The system, as it currently operates, is built on
false premises. Unfortunately, we have an idea of market fundamentalism, which is now
the dominant ideology, holding that markets are self-correcting; and this is false
because it's generally the intervention of the authorities that saves the markets when
they get into trouble.” (May 15, 2008)
Michael Lewitt, Investment Advisor: “Allowing investment banks to be leveraged to thetune of 30 to 1 is the equivalent of playing Russian roulette with 5 of the 6 chambers of
the gun loaded. If one adds the off-balance sheet liabilities to this leverage, you might
as well fill the 6th chamber with a bullet and pull the trigger.” (April 11, 2008. Quoted
again in Testimony of Jared Bernstein, Senior Economist Economic Policy Institute,
Joint Economic Committee of the United States Senate and the United States House ofRepresentatives, July 23, 2008)“Since a year is a natural period of comparison, it makes sense to think of a recession asa time when the economy is worse than a year earlier on a range of measures. It might
happen, but Britain is not there yet, and not even close.” (FT, 11/07/08)
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve: “We may not easily
confront or accept the price dynamics of home and equity prices, but we can fend off64© 2009 ephemera 9(1): 61-72
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What I read about the Global Financial Crisis
Christian De Cockcries of political despair which counsel the containment of competitive markets. It isessential that we do so. The remarkably strong performance of the world economy since
the near universal adoption of market capitalism is testament to the benefits ofincreasing economic flexibility.” (August 4, 2008)
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve: “I made a mistake inpresuming that the self-interest of organisations, specifically banks and others, was suchthat they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders… I had been going for
40 years with considerable evidence that it was working very well. The whole
intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year.” (October 23, 2008)“The iron faith in markets and de-regulation of Mr Greenspan, given an honoraryknighthood by the Queen in 2002 for his ‘contribution to global economic stability’, hasbeen shaken… The most powerful chairman of the Federal Reserve, accorded the statusof a mystic with unparalleled insight into the inner workings of the American economy
as he presided over an ostensibly limitless growth in prosperity, a contrite Mr
Greenspan now confesses to being ‘in a state of shocked disbelief’ at the present
financial turmoil.” (FT, 24/10/08)
Stephen Roach, Chairman Morgan Stanley Asia: “The Fed will need to replace its
ideological convictions with common sense… Over the past decade, an ideologicallydriven Fed failed to make the distinction between financial engineering andinnovation… Driven by its ideological convictions, the Fed flew blind on thederivatives front…This trust in ideology over objective metrics was a fatal mistake.”(October 27, 2008)
Stephen King, group chief economist HSBC: “It will also be the fault of all thoseeconomists and other technocrats who took the view that, freed of political influence,
policymaking institutions could make the world a better place though their ‘technical’skills. In the event, this was merely wishful thinking.” (October 30, 2008)
Stephen Cecchetti, Professor of global finance at Brandeis International Business
School: “While we need to clean up the present mess… the fundamental innovations
should remain. As we think about how to adjust the financial regulatory system, it isimportant that we do not stop what is going on, just that we do it better.” (June 22,
2008)
John Thain, CEO Merrill Lynch: “Right now, we believe that we are in a very
comfortable spot in terms of our capital… We’ve been, I think, pretty balanced in termsof what we sold, and at what prices we sold them. And so we have not simply liquidated
stuff at any price we could get.” (July 17, 2008)“$8.5 billion share offering announced… Merrill also announced it would sell CDO’svalued at $11bn in Q2 2008 for $6.7bn, or 22 cents on the dollar.” (FT, 28/07/08)“BofA said in a statement it would exchange 0.8595 shares of its common stock foreach Merrill common share in a $50bn all-stock transaction. Based on Friday’s closing
prices, the offer is the equivalent of $29 per share and 1.8 times Merrill’s stated tangible65© 2009 ephemera 9(1): 61-72
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What I read about the Global Financial Crisis
Christian De Cockbook value… Mr Thain’s willingness to accept market realities has enabled Merrill
shareholders to escape a total wipe-out.” (FT, 15/09/08)“The crisis is partly an epistemological one. Few people outside of the financial
industry have ever understood how the new complex derivatives work. Were they
hedges or means of multiplying leverage? It turns out that few people inside theindustry understood either. The most astonishing stories of the past week have to dowith AIG’s final weekend, when teams of government analysts and accountants fromthe world’s leading investment banks could not figure out how much cash the company
would require in order to collateralise its credit-default swaps. Estimates rose from
$20bn to $85bn.” (FT 19/09/08)
AIG Share Price (Source FT.com): AIG worth $4.5 billion [down 97% on the year –was world’s biggest Insurance company] with a total derivative exposure of $441bn on
October 24, 2008.

“In the fraught weekend that preceded Lehman Brothers’ slide into bankruptcy, thebankers and regulators huddled in the headquarters of the New York Federal Reserve
made a startling discovery. ‘We have no idea of the details of our derivatives exposureand neither do you,’ a senior Lehman banker told government officials, according topeople familiar with last month’s events. He was right.” (FT, 31/10/08)“It is no exaggeration to say that, in financial terms, the world changed fundamentally
this week. The firestorm that has blown through the global economy in the past sevendays has destroyed so many famous names that it is hard to know where to lay the firstwreath. Lehman Brothers has gone bankrupt. The ‘thundering herd’ of Merrill Lynch
has been sent to the abattoir. Investors have been desperately ditching shares even in
those icons of global capitalism, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The sickness inthe credit markets has snuffed out HBOS, Britain’s largest mortgage lender. Others
remain on the critical list.” (Independent Leader, 20/09/08)“A Bad Week in Hell!” (Rubric heading of Global Outlook Report, JP Morgan Chase,
September 2008)66© 2009 ephemera 9(1): 61-72
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What I read about the Global Financial Crisis
Christian De Cock

“The financial system has reached the point of maximum peril… If the unravelling of
the banking system continues, the economic consequences will be dire. Yet there is aneven greater risk: that the politicians… draw the wrong conclusions and take the wrong
decisions, losing their confidence in markets altogether. It would not be the first time.
After the Wall Street Crash, markets were deemed to have failed and US lawmakers
attempted to regulate short-cuts through the crisis… and deepened the ‘GreatContraction’ of 1929 to 1933. The price of popular anti-market sentiment was muchhigher in some of Europe’s fledgling democracies: fascism [emphasis added]… This isa difficult time to defend free markets. Nevertheless they must be defended, not only on
their matchless record when it comes to raising living standards, but on the maxim that
it is wise to let adults exercise their own judgment. Market freedom is not a‘fundamentalist religion’. It is a mechanism, not an ideology, and one that has proved
its value again and again over the past 200 years. The Financial Times is proud todefend it – even today.” (FT Leading article, 25/09/08)
Chrystia Freeland, FT American Editor: “Thursday afternoon was the moment America
realised its version of capitalism was no longer working. You could feel the pain of thateureka moment from Wall Street to Main Street, where the middle class howled at themagnitude of a mooted $700bn bail-out package [the original proposal ran to only three
typed pages!]. The most direct expression of this epiphany was on Capitol Hill, wherean apostate faction of House Republicans declared their 11th-hour opposition to thefinancial plan being advanced by their own president and secretary of the Treasury… At
the heart of the rebellion was the fear that, as Jen Hensarling, the Texas congressman
who led the resistance said, the rescue plan would lead the US down ‘the road tosocialism’.” (September 29, 2008)“The End of American Capitalism?” (Washington Post lead article, October 10, 2008)“The ideology of the US is a lack of ideology. Where Nicolas Sarkozy, the French
president, could not resist being photographed reading Marx’s Das Kapital andannouncing the death of ‘capitalism’, the Americans settled down to fix the problem.
They will do everything required to stem the crisis: for evidence of this, witness theshift of the $700bn bail-out fund from buying toxic assets to recapitalising banks.” (FT,
16/10/08)“A hedge fund manager who made what is thought to be one of the biggest percentage
profits of all time bowed out of the business on Friday with a fierce attack on the‘idiots”“…running big banks… Mr Lahde is one of the few hedge fund managers to havecorrectly predicted the subprime crisis. One of his funds made a return of 870 per centlast year. Money is now being returned to investors as the remaining business is shut
down.” (FT, 17/10/08)
Andrew Lahde, Lahde Capital Management: “I was in this game for the money. The
low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the
Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not
worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top ofcompanies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our67© 2009 ephemera 9(1): 61-72
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What I read about the Global Financial Crisis
Christian De Cockgovernment. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making iteasier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God blessAmerica… I truly do not have a strong opinion about any market right now, other thanto say that things will continue to get worse for some time, probably years. I am content
sitting on the sidelines and waiting. After all, sitting and waiting is how we mademoney from the subprime debacle.” (Open letter, October 17, 2008).
“A meeting with Charles Bean, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, provided
the Scarborough Evening News business reporter Laura Crothers with an unexpected
scoop yesterday… In a curious interview, he spoke first of his childhood visits to thetown to see his grandparents, before delivering the most startling official prediction yeton the impending recession: ‘This is a once in a lifetime crisis, and possibly the largest
financial crisis of its kind in human history’… The comments made waves on trading
floors, in front rooms and through Whitehall – but not in Scarborough, where the
Evening News’s front page instead carried a story about a trial for theft and deception.”(FT, 24/10/08)
George W. Bush: “It would be a terrible mistake to allow a few months of crisis toundermine faith in free market capitalism…. History has shown that the greater threat toeconomic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market – but too
much.” (November 13, 2008)“In sworn testimony, five of the highest paid and most powerful hedge fund managers,
including George Soros, blamed the crisis on the ‘financial system itself’ as they sought
to explain their compensation policies to a committee of sceptical legislators…
Justifying his own pay package, Philip Falcone, co-founder of Harbinger Capital,
pointed to his modest upbringing in Minnesota, where, he said, his father never earned
more than $14,000 a year… John Paulson, of Paulson & Co, whose bearish views on
the mortgage bubble made him the most highly paid fund manager last year, according
to some calculations [pay estimated at $3.7bn], said his pay reflected returns toinvestors.” (FT, 13/11/2008)
Charles Bean, Deputy Governor for Monetary Policy of the Bank of England: “Thepresent financial crisis has many parents, encompassing both market failures andsupervisory shortcomings. A non-exhaustive list would include: inadequate incentives
for care in the origination of loans if the risks are to be passed on; extreme opacity inthe nature of the risks underlying complex structured finance assets; too much relianceon statistical models of risk based on past behaviour; disproportionate dependence on
ratings by end-investors and a failure to observe due diligence; excessive closeness of
the ratings agencies to those who were issuing debt; compensation schemes in financial
institutions that encouraged excessive risk-taking and a focus on short-term returns; afailure by originating banks to realise the extent to which distributed risks could returnto them; excessive reliance on short-term wholesale funding and inadequate attention to
the potential liquidity of assets; and a failure by regulatory and supervisory authorities
to appreciate fully the risks inherent in the ‘originate-to-distribute’ model. The ongoingwork of the Financial Stability Forum and G20 to address these and related issues andto strengthen the financial system against any future repeat is, of course, extremely
welcome.” (November 22, 2008)68© 2009 ephemera 9(1): 61-72
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What I read about the Global Financial Crisis
Christian De CockSlavoj Žižek, co-director of the International Centre for Humanities, Birkbeck College:“It is unlikely that the financial meltdown of 2008 will function as a blessing in
disguise, the awakening from a dream, the sobering reminder that we live in the realityof global capitalism. It all depends on how it will be symbolised, on what ideologicalinterpretation or story will impose itself and determine the general perception of thecrisis. When the normal run of things is traumatically interrupted, the field is open for a‘discursive’ ideological competition… Consequently, to put it in old-fashioned Marxist
terms, the main task of the ruling ideology in the present crisis is to impose a narrativethat will not put the blame for the meltdown on the global capitalist system as such, but
on its deviations – lax regulation, the corruption of big financial institutions etc… The
danger is thus that the predominant narrative of the meltdown won’t be the one thatawakes us from a dream, but the one that will enable us to continue to dream.”(November 14, 2008)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Professor of risk engineering at New York University
PolyTechnic Institute: “A crime has been committed. Yes, we insist, a crime. There is a
victim (the helpless retirees, taxpayers funding losses, perhaps even capitalism and freesociety [emphasis added]). There were plenty of bystanders. And there was a robbery(overcompensated bankers who got fat bonuses hiding risks; overpaid quantitative risk
managers selling patently bogus methods).” (December 7, 2008)
Willem Buiter, Professor of European Political Economy at the LSE, former chief
economist of the EBRD, former external member of the UK Monetary Policy
Committee: “We have no longer just a crisis in the financial system. We have gone evenbeyond the stage where there is a crisis of the financial system. The western (northAtlantic) financial system we knew has collapsed. If I may paraphrase that great
ensemble of Nobel-prize winning financial wizards, Monty Python’s Flying Circus:‘This financial system is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its
maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to the tax
payer’s perch it’d be pushing up the daisies! Its metabolic processes are now history!
It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the
curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-FINANCIAL
SYSTEM!!’.” (November 26, 2008)“It has been a bad year… So bad that royalty wants to know what went wrong. ‘Why
did no one see it coming?’ Britain’s Queen Elizabeth asked during a visit to the London
School of Economics this month… Giulio Tremonti, Italy’s finance minister, raised thepredictive bar last week when he said Pope Benedict XVI was the first to foresee thecrisis. A 1985 paper showed, according to Mr Tremonti, ‘the prediction that an
undisciplined economy would collapse by its own rules’… If only society had listened
to the younger Cardinal Ratzinger more than 20 years ago – before, of course, it was
reasonable to forecast he would be the next Pope.” (FT, 24/11/08)
Haukur Már Helgason, department of philosophy at the Iceland Academy of the Arts:“At the same time, there is an enormous sense of relief. After a claustrophobic decade,anger and resentment are possible again. It’s official: capitalism is monstrous. Trytalking about the benefits of free markets and you will be treated like someone
promoting the benefits of rape. Honest resentment opens a space for the hope that one
69

© 2009 ephemera 9(1): 61-72
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What I read about the Global Financial Crisis
Christian De Cockday language might regain some of its critical capacity, that it could even begin todescribe social realities again. Or things might go quite differently: perhaps nothing
stands in the way of a complete neoliberal victory. Perhaps it’s the end of history, not ina liberal democratic utopia, but in capitalismo puro, a capitalism that bears no relation
to freedom: capitalism as mere fact.” (November 20, 2008)“Last week, Mr Madoff told senior employees, including his sons, that his investment
management firm had lost $50bn over a number of years, according to court documents.
Prosecutors alleged that he said his operations were “just one big lie” and “basically agiant Ponzi scheme” – where investment managers pay old investors with money raised
from new investors. There is little information on where the $50bn Mr Madoff isalleged to have said he lost actually went.” (FT 15/12/08)
Chrystia Freeland, FT American Editor: “From Bernie Madoff's self-declared Ponzi
scheme, to Dick Fuld’s Jonestownstyle collective immolation at Lehman Brothers, tothe subprime lending fiasco, the US version of the market economy – and many of its
leading players – have failed more spectacularly than even the darkest dreams of Noam
Chomsky could predict.” (December 19, 2008)“The Belgian government on Monday night became the first national administration tofall as a direct result of events linked to the global financial crisis.” (FT, 23/12/08)“Self-pity doesn’t wash here [Iceland], though. In the queue for a charity food parcel,
and some toys to give to her children, one woman says: ‘What I like about the kreppa[crisis] is people start to be cosy, more human’.” (FT, 24/12/08).
“A clean-up is overdue. Yet, in cleaning up, we must remember deeper truths: humanbeings will always believe what they want to; and so regulation will always fail. We
know, too, that nothing better than the market system is on offer, however flawed.
Financial markets fail. They are also indispensable.” (FT Leading article, 27/12/08).
God (explaining himself in a fragment of Brecht’s play St. Joan of the Stockyards): “I
have a book here about research on economic conditions. Crises are supposed to be
governed by natural law. But now I ask you, wouldn’t I know something about it in thatcase? I tell you there is no truth in it whatsoever. I have never had the slightest thing to
do with economics. I have never got involved in it and I never will get involved in it.”1__________
1

Slightly adapted translation from Jameson’s Brecht and Method, Verso, 1998 (p.41). The originaltext reads: “Ich habe da ein Buch über die Konjunkturforschungen. Die Krisen sollen da auf
Naturgesetzen beruhen. Da frage ich Sie aber doch, davon müßte schließlich ich auch etwas wissen.
Und ich sage Ihnen, kein Wort davon ist wahr! Ich habe mit Wirtschaft nie das Geringste zu tun
gehabt. Für mich ist Wirtschaft überhaupt nicht vorhanden. Ich habe mich nie in sie eingemischt, undich werde mich nicht einmischen“.
70© 2009 ephemera 9(1): 61-72
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What I read about the Global Financial Crisis
Christian De CockAppendix A: From Squeeze to Crunch to Crisis! (FT keyword
article counts)
Credit Squeeze

Credit Crunch

Global Financial Crisis

Jul-0714

69

84

Aug-07

107

311

282

Sep-07

472

233

355

Oct-07

735

175

299

Nov-07

687

189

282

Dec-07

624

190

270

Jan-08

462

390

316

Feb-08

243

348

297

Mar-08

287

359

370

Apr-08

419

552

502

May-08

266

458

356

Jun-08

223

449

315

Jul-08

213

581

316

Aug-08

160

550

251

Sep-08

227

646

878

Oct-08

182

749

1974

Nov-08

126

567

1268

Dec-08

81

467

825

71

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What I read about the Global Financial Crisis
Christian De Cock

1600
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0

Credit Squeeze
Credit Crunch
Global Financial
CrisisJulS e 07
p0
No 7
v0
Ja 7
n0
M 8
ar
M 08
ay
-0
Ju 8
lS e 08
p0
No 8
v08

Articles published

FT Keyword SearchMonthsthe author

Christian De Cock is Professor of Organization Studies at Swansea University. He has a long-standing
interest in the role of the arts, literature and philosophy in management theory and management
development. His current research focuses on particular features and manifestations of capitalism with his
most recent fieldwork exploring various facets of finance capitalism.
E-mail: c.de-cock@swansea.ac.uk

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