Alternatively, one might discern in its vaulting ambition the financial logic of the Structured Investment Vehicle used to hide crushing liabilities, only now being imposed on the state itself. In the meantime, as bond vigilantes conduct their attacks and government insolvency looms, states are forced by neoliberal parties and international agencies to engage in myriad forms of “austerity,” which include fire sales of viable legacy state assets and crude attempts to lower wages and renege on social insurance schemes. Indeed, this narrative that the crisis is all the fault of the government conforms so faithfully to the standard neoliberal script, trumpeted relentlessly from the think-tank shell of the Russian doll since early in the crisis, that it is hard to imagine that the tactical political economy of market-maker of last resort was not engineered to conjure this outcome.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 950