The beauty of the dynamic is that other segments of the NTC could then exercise their hostility toward both the federal government and the Federal Reserve with seeming justification, thus filling up most of the political space churning around reactions to the crisis. For instance, the Tea Party could not have existed without this “market-based” practice of shifting the onus of business-induced leverage onto the state, then having private interests run the bailout, and then, as a consequence, precipitating a crisis of state legitimacy. Once set in motion, it has been a juggernaut that moves of its own accord. In parallel with carbon trading, the medium-term failure of the policy turns into long-term political success for the neoliberals.

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