Ransom Capitalism
In both the financial crisis and the first months of the pandemic, there was a broad consensus that governments needed to make extraordinary fiscal interventions to preserve the means of existence without threatening the economic status quo.
Bailouts are an ideal intervention for a decaying neoliberal politics: they maintain capital flows, rising asset prices and the upwards redistribution of wealth, while supporting the minimum needs of enough of the population to prevent total social breakdown.
Under the bailout consensus, as with the IMF interventions, the state and its citizens are expected to pay private companies’ ransom demands without taking anything substantive in return. There’s no suggestion that the public might acquire a stake in a company in exchange for the money they hand over.
