Strike Debt’s Rolling Jubilee The Promise and the Performativity of Financial Contracts Christian Riley Nagler Figure 1. The People’s Bailout,Strike Debt’s variety show and telethon, 2012. (Photo by Stacy Lanyon) Around the time of the global financial crisis of 2008 relatively few people in North America knew much about the wider economics of student debt. The issue had garnered very little media attention. In the years following the crisis, however, before the news cycle was consumed by the later stages of the election of the 45th president, it was quite the contrary. Every day saw a major national or international news segment about the shocking rise in rates of student debt since the 1980s, featuring many stories of ordinary people “shackled by unpayable debt” (Beach and Chessum 2012). At that time, it became clear to many that there was a severe asym- metry between the .06 percent interest rate they received from their bank savings accounts (not Christian Nagler is a PhD student in Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His writing has appeared in Performance Research, Art Journal, Filip, Art Practical, and SFMoma’s Open Space. His performances and artwork have been presented at the Tate Liverpool, Oakland Museum of CA, and elsewhere. His dissertation research is about global cultures of speculation and performing the long-term economic future.
[email protected] TDR: The Drama Review 62:1 (T237) Spring 2018. ©2018 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 113 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00722 by guest on 27 September 2021 enough to keep pace with inflation) and the 8 to 20 percent compounding interest they paid on their loans or credit cards (enough to double the principal in a few years).