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Let me begin soon after the beginning of economics: with money. Money is a concept whose centrality to Economics, especially to conventional Economics, is hard to overestimate: Money is the main means by which economists tend to appeal more easily to an alleged scientificity for their discipline, because it so easily lets them ‘Go forth and quantify’.

The several decades following the conclusion of World War II evidenced the generalised application of activist economic policies oriented toward the stimulation and manipulation of aggregate demand. In Western Europe and in much of the Western hemisphere these policies proved quite successful in raising living standards and generating economic growth. Nevertheless, for the past decade or so these long‐tried policy prescriptions have not appeared to work very well, and “stagflation” accompanied by low productivity growth has set in. As a consequence, there has occurred a return to a more “classical” set of economic postulates and policy prescriptions. Such policies have been adopted not only in the more developed parts of the western world (e.g., United States, Great Britain) but also in its lesser developed areas. Nowhere has this application been more in evidence than in the Southern Cone countries of Latin America — Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a discourse analytical understanding of the political economy. The term “crisis” is an important label in recent discussion in political economy. Yet the genuine discursive dimension of “the crisis” and the multiple linguistic layers of the crisis discourse remains an open issue.

Realist perspectives usually believe in an external reality of crises independent of the language construction; in contrast, constructivist perspectives argue that a crisis is always the result of a socio-linguistic construction process. This contribution follows a critical-constructivist perspective, thereby taking into account powerful discursive actors which are able to “declare” a state in the world as a “crisis”.

From a discourse analytical point of view, this paper examines the rules and logics of crisis management policy, arguing that a new politico-academic elite has appeared which is beyond the classical distinction between “Keynesians” and “neo-liberals”. By taking a position in the discourse of the recent debate on financial regulation, these new elite might be able to manage the crisis for a particular time, as they are constructed as “moderating actors” through academic and political discourses.

From a practical point of view, this analysis cannot offer economic solutions; from an analytical viewpoint, it will not give insights into discursive contexts.

This analysis helps to understand current debates on economic policy and to improve the communicative efficiency of the participants.

This paper combines a discourse analysis with a governmentality perspective and applies this analytical tool onto a political and economic topic currently prevailing in the global political economy.

Following Braudel's conceptualization of capitalism and Arrighi's periodization of systemic cycles of accumulation, the authors focus on the patterns of recurrence of financial expansions enabling capitalism to revitalize itself through crisis; in this, crisis is considered in both aspects — crisis‐as‐restructuring and crisis‐as‐rupture. The ways in which finance aided by the blocks of governmental and business agencies in the present stage affects investment and business cycles result in a progressive increase of inequality between rich and poor countries, as well as inequality within the most developed countries. The authors tackle the crisis phenomenon through a genealogical analysis of the formation, consolidation and disintegration of the successive regimes of accumulation on a world scale through which the capital economy expands. They furthermore examine the crisis of capitalist accumulation through the relation of money and the state, which leads them to the field of debates on the changed relationship between the global economy and the national state. However, the crisis is also marked by a milestone which, despite dangers and pitfalls, opens up endless possibilities. They end the paper with a critique of the politics of money and advocate a socially responsible finance management, which will pave the way for a structure of society in which humanity will exist as an end in itself, rather than as a resource for the accumulation of money.

Professor Shackle has long maintained both the originality of the liquidity preference theory of interest rates and its paramount importance for macroeconomics. He has argued, for example, that:

Following Braudel’s conceptualization of capitalism and Arrighi’s periodization of systemic cycles of accumulation, the authors focus on the patterns of recurrence of financial expansions enabling capitalism to revitalize itself through crisis; in this, crisis is considered in both aspects ‐ crisis‐as‐restructuring and crisis‐as‐rupture. The ways in whichfinance aided by the blocks of governmental and business agencies in the present stage affects investment and business cycles result in a progressive increase of inequality between rich and poor countries, as well as inequality within the most developed countries. The authors tackle the crisis phenomenon through a genealogical analysis of the formation, consolidation and disintegration of the successive regimes of accumulation on a world scale through which the capital economy expands. They furthermore examine the crisis of capitalist accumulation through the relation of money and the state, which leads them to the field of debates on the changed relationship between the global economy and the national state. However, the crisis is also marked by a milestone which, despite dangers and pitfalls, opens up endless possibilities. They end the paper with a critique of the politics of money and advocate a socially responsible finance management, which will pave the way for a structure of society in which humanity will exist as an end in itself, rather than as a resource for the accumulation of money.

Historically, the disintegration of a culture was gradual, over many generations. But the crises of industrial culture have emerged swiftly, during the past thirty years, due to the accelerations of technological change and global interdependence, as we slid from the Soaring '60s through the Stagflation '70s into the Economizing '80s. Surface political and economic remedies, whether the latest nostalgia for Monetarism in the West or the latest 5‐year Plans for the socialist economies, cannot address the new malaise: growing resource‐depletion, unhappy workers, alienated tax payers, soaring inflation, balance‐of‐payments problems and general loss of domestic control of national economies due to the realities of global economic integration. The old political consensuses break down and new alignments have not yet emerged to channel the energies of the electorate, or even explain what has happened.

Paul Samuelson was attracted to the irregular economic development pattern of some South American countries because of the links between economic performance and political factors. He discussed the influence of “populist democracy” on Argentina’s relative economic stagnation, which, he argued in the 1970s and early 1980s, served as a dangerous paradigm for the American economy under stagflation. Stagflation phenomena marked the end of Samuelson’s “neoclassical synthesis.” Moreover, he applied his concept of “capitalist fascism” to deal with military dictatorships in Brazil and (especially) in Chile. The Brazilian translation of his Economics in 1973 brought about a correspondence with Brazilian economists about the “fascist” features of the regime. The main variable behind the South American economic and politically unstable processes discussed by Samuelson was economic inequality, which became also a conspicuous feature of the American economy since the adoption of market-based policies in the 1980s and after.