What's in the frame? How the financial crisis is being packaged for public consumption1

1. These remarks were made at the launch event in London on 25 March for the book Globalization in question by Paul Hirst, Grahame Thompson and Simon Bromley (3rd edn, Polity Press, Cambridge, March 2009). I have kept these written comments in the style in which they were delivered at the meeting.

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Notes

1. These remarks were made at the launch event in London on 25 March for the book Globalization in question by Paul Hirst, Grahame Thompson and Simon Bromley (3rd edn, Polity Press, Cambridge, March 2009). I have kept these written comments in the style in which they were delivered at the meeting.

2. I include under this ‘blame it on globalization’ scenario the important issues of global imbalances. These are obviously a key element in the picture but they are perhaps a little too remote from everyday discourse to have become a key issue in the popular imagination.

3. There may be an additional popular frame emerging that speaks to a different audience from those discussed so far, namely a domestic Chinese audience. This is a frame that points to the consequences of Anglo-American-style capitalism and the advantages of the Chinese style instead. Here the main target is the historic role of the US dollar, which should be replaced by a multilaterally governed alternative, and self-regulation replaced by closer official supervision. Positive Chinese global balances are seen as a result of the careful management of China's international position not of the ‘Asian savings glut’, etc. This is mainly for Chinese domestic consumption, however, conjuring up a ‘prudent public’ and its benefits.