Introduction

In September 2008, in contrast to any other social catastrophe – global warming, widespread hunger, poverty and the routine deaths of millions of children, AIDS, TB and malaria epidemics, about which ‘there always seemed to be time to reflect, to postpone decisions’ (Žižek, 2009a, 80) – one issue presented itself as ‘an unconditional imperative which must be met with immediate action’: the ‘banks’, for which read finance capital in particular and the global neoliberal order in general, had to be saved (Žižek, 2009a). In the UK, ‘golden parachutes’ (Žižek, 2009a, 12) were handed out to the UK banking system: in December 2009 the National Audit Office (NAO) (2009e) produced an ‘overview of the government's response to the crisis’ which showed that ‘the purchases of shares by the public sector together with offers of guarantees, insurance and loans made to banks reached £850 billion, an unprecedented level of support’. The financial commitments made by governments since September 2008 have included purchasing shares in banks to enable re-capitalisation, indemnifying the Bank of England against losses incurred in providing liquidity support, underwriting borrowing by banks to strengthen liquidity, and providing insurance cover for assets. The government ‘cash outlay’ is said to have peaked ‘at £133 billion, equivalent to more than £2,000 for every person in the UK’ (House of Lords and House of Commons, 2013, 14).

In the US, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), developed on the back of the ‘Paulson Plan’, effectively bailed out the US financial services sector, representing what has been labelled a ‘financial coup’ (Harvey, 2009; Johnson, 2009). Under TARP, the US Treasury committed up to $700 billion to promote stability in financial markets through the purchase and guarantee of ‘troubled assets’ (Congressional Budget Office, 2012, 1), and by February 2012, $431 billion of this had been disbursed (Congressional Budget Office, 2012, 2).