ABSTRACT
Recent years have seen a growth in popular and critical awareness of the instability that accompanies a global economy. Rising personal and public debt, excessive financial risk-taking by banks (and questions about regulation), and flexible production practices, with their attendant effects on job security and working conditions, have combined to generate a wide constituency of market resistance in the Global North. Popular movements like Los Indignados, Occupy, Podemos, and Momentum have enjoyed a rare period of acceptability and growth, as the idea of a smooth-functioning global economy is set against the effects of its instabilities, inequalities, and a wider set of values in the public sphere. Indeed, a commitment to sound money, financial stability, and transparency—the hallmarks of macroeconomic fiscal rectitude—have been forcibly questioned and critiqued throughout events like the United States bank bailouts and the European debt and currency crises.
