The Financial Crisis in Discourse: Banks, Financial Markets, and Political Responses

The financial crisis led to an enormous economic downturn as well as dramatic increases in unemployment, insolvencies and public debt. Simultaneously, it revealed fundamental weaknesses of the current functioning of financial markets, if not global economic relations as such. Why, then, has the financial crisis not led to a more fundamental questioning of the politico-economic system and broader political change? In this paper, we aim to find an answer to this question by analyzing the construction of the financial crisis in German public discourse. We show that this construction is characterized by drama and perplexity, normative incoherence, and a lack of access for political alternatives. These findings, in turn, provide an important basis for understanding the political handling of the financial crisis in Germany