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Diversification of Money economic sociology_ the european electronic newsletter Vol ume 12, N umber 3 | July 20 11 12.3 Editor Nigel Dodd, London School of Economics Book Review Editors Mark Lutter, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies Sascha Münnich, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies Editorial Board Patrik Aspers, Stockholm University Jens Beckert, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne Johan Heilbron, Centre de Sociologie Européenne, Paris Richard Swedberg, Cornell University, Ithaca Table of Contents Note from the editor _2 Money Nutters | by Bill Maurer_5 Using the Future in the Present: Risk and Surprise in Financial Markets by Elena Esposito_13 For a Love of False Consciousness: Adam Smith On the Social Origins of Scarcity by Gustav Peebles_19 History in Finance and Fiction in History: The Crisis of 2008 and the Return of the Past | by Amin Samman_26 Economic Crisis and the Politics of Austerity in Ireland | by Niamh Hardiman_35 The European Sovereign Debt Crisis: the Portuguese Case by João Carlos Graça, João Carlos Lopes and Rafael Marques_38 Living on Borrowed Money: On the Social Context and Responses of the Current Greek Crisis by Sokratis Koniordos_48 Book Reviews_ 58 http://econsoc.mpifg.de Note from the editor 2 Note from the editor Dear reader, crisis, which was in this respect a crisis of the future . Esposito argues that we need to develop systems that can Welcome to the latest issue of the European Economic learn to expect surprises. She describes these systems in Sociology Electronic Newsletter . The first article of this Luhmann’s terms as “techniques without defuturization, issue, by Bill Maurer, continues the series of pieces we aiming … at multiplying possibilities and observing them” have been carrying this year – by Ryan-Collins, North and rather than simply trying to control them. Hart – on the diversification of money. Bill addresses some- thing of a hot topic, Bitcoin, whose value has been soaring The article by Gustav Peebles tackles another issue of pro- so much recently that it seems eminently reasonable to be found interest to economic sociologists as they deal with talking of a bubble. He uses the phrase money nutters to models of the future, namely the problem of time scarcity. refer to the frenetic activity and eccentricity that sometimes Peebles offers a fascinating insight into this problem by characterizes the development of alternative currencies. “It considering Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments . is a crazy time for money”, he writes. Bill’s dazzling piece is This contains the argument, which Peebles also finds in particularly interesting for the comparison he makes be- Locke, that there is no such thing as natural scarcity. tween Really Really Free Day and Bitcoin: both projects are Rather, “scarcity is created by mankind in order to achieve informed by the belief that the era of government fiat very particular and cohesive social goals.” As Peebles money is coming to an end, although “end of the world- shows, Smith’s key insight was that socially produced scar- ism” has a different hue in each case. Maurer also consid- city is the origin of morality itself. Smith realised, however, ers related developments – mobile payment services like that the one key exception to this rule is time – which, Google Wallet and Square Card Case, and M-PESA in the although abundant for society as a whole, is naturally global South – in which it is the “profitability” of payment scarce for individuals. Peebles’s argument looks at the services that is the driving force behind supposedly “uto- conflict of interest that this distinction inevitably implies: pian” monetary developments bringing an end to the between the collective and the individual when it comes to “evil” of government debt and fractional reserve banking. the valuation of time. While it is in the collective interest to These developments might not be quite as positive as undersell time, it is in the interest of individuals to value some of their advocates are claiming. Maurer poses an time more highly – a fact they invariably come to appreci- interesting question: whether we can coherently “defend ate only when it is too late. Peebles ends with the sugges- the virtue of a public payments infrastructure” without tion that we should find a fair price for time, one that necessarily retaining the flawed system of central banking brings the collective and individual interest closer together. and national capitalism whose prospective demise so in- It is a provocative idea with some fascinating implications. spires the money nutters . Time is a central issue, too, in our fourth piece, by Amin Our next three pieces deal with the fundamental question Samman. Whereas Esposito, as we have seen, character- of time in economic life, economic theory and economic izes the financial crisis as a crisis of the future, Samman history. The first, by Elena Esposito, addresses a challenge invites us to think through “how the past has come to that has emerged from the financial crisis for regulatory acquire such a strange presence during the crisis of 2008”. authorities due to their failure to come to terms with open- As Samman points out, while orthodox economic theory ended monetary and financial futures. In her work more tends to exclude time from its deliberations, the study of generally, Esposito uses the ideas of Luhmann to theorize economic history has increasingly involved the use of cli- the relationship between money and time. The argument ometric methods which tend to exclude precisely those she makes here is that the financial system is characterized elements, such as the unfolding of narrative and plot, that by a feedback loop whereby risk models that were de- should be integral to the analysis of economic events in signed to take account of all possible futures were actually historical time. Samman’s central argument is that only by unable to take into account the impact of their own pres- bringing meta-history into crisis theory can these deficits ence within those futures. This, argues Esposito, is the be addressed – and this means not only analysing previous inherent circularity that was at the root of the financial economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter Volume 12, Number 3 (July 2011) Note from the editor 3 crises but the intersubjective constitution of such crises would actually operate. In economic terms, the expectation themselves as historical events from which we can learn. that the lowering of interest rates made possible by Euro- zone membership would encourage growth did not come Our final three articles return to a theme that has been to fruition: they encouraged higher levels of borrowing dealt with in every issue of the Newsletter this year, the instead. Indeed the economic performance of Portugal was Eurozone crisis. Previously, we carried articles on role of poor in the early years of Eurozone membership, contribut- the media making the crisis worse (Juko), the problem of ing to the major structural imbalances that have been collective interests and the sociological case for issuing sharply exposed – and made progressively worse – as the Eurobonds (Dodd/Lenhard), the implications of the crisis current crisis has unfolded. Listing the austerity measures for economic governance (Young), its roots in distinctive now being imposed on to Portugal, the authors suggest forms of debt (Deutschmann) and broader connections that there is a real danger that the patient will be killed by between this particular crisis and the emergence of new the treatment that has been prescribed. None of the three forms of money (Hart, North). For this issue, I asked au- most likely alternatives to such deep austerity measures – thors based in three countries whose citizens have been at greater integration, higher transfers, or simply exit – seems the sharp end of the crisis so far – Ireland, Portugal and especially attractive. But what these authors see as the Greece – to reflect on its causes, trajectory and possible most sensible way forward – renegotiating the debt bur- outcomes. As a result, we have three up-to-the-minute, den to allow time for smoother adjustment – also seems tightly-argued and insightful pieces which I am sure will unlikely as creditors continue to be protected at the ex- attract a great deal of comment. pense of “the sacrificed populations of the Eurozone pe- riphery ”. Niamh Hardiman’s article tells the story of pressures that have been building up in Ireland for quite some time. As Whereas the problems in Ireland and Portugal have fo- she points out, the key problems began with private debt: cused on the build-up of private debt (household and cor- ”It was the private rather than the public sector that en- porate, respectively), in Greece the situation fully justifies gaged in a surge of borrowing in the wake of the low the description usually applied to the euro crisis as a interest rate regime instituted by the Euro.” This was not whole: it took shape as a sovereign debt crisis from the so much a problem of using over-sophisticated financial very beginning. As Sokratis Koniordos shows in his paper, instruments that misconstrued risk, as a plain vanilla prob- in order to uncover the roots of this crisis we need to lem of exuberant lenders getting sucked into a bubble. But probe deep inside the specificities of Greek society and the key issues raised by Hardiman relate to the austerity politics, for example its clientist system of bartering for measures that have been put in place to deal with the political favour, which account for Greece’s severely dam- aftermath of the bubble, namely the huge public deficit aged fiscal position. Koniordos argues that ”an us and that was accrued when those lenders had to be rescued.
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