Th e British experts were of course aware of the nonneutral class impact of austerity. A 1920 memorandum of the Bank of England read: "Th e process of defl ation of prices which may be expected to follow on the check to the expansion of credit must necessarily be a painful one to some classes of the community, but this is unavoidable" (Bank Memorandum, February 10, 1920, T 172/1384, fol. 30b). Th ese lines disclose how austerity proceeded to normalize class repression through the idea of "unavoidable" and "natural" economic truths that only our experts could deliver.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 1030