Again, and especially at this level, the crisis had nothing to do with either personal morality or state profligacy. The state had been written into irrelevance beyond providing courts, weights, measures, and defense goods. Just as it didn't start the run on the repo, amplify the crash, or cause risk blindness, so the state had nothing to do with the design of the new instruction sheet. Indeed, the new instruction sheet was designed to keep the state as far away from market processes as possible. Morality was present to be sure, but it was an upturned morality where the naked self-interest of financial market actors was taken to be the most positive virtue because its pursuit led to optimal outcomes despite moral intention.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 135