Ireland, bond markets and democracy

"Making the “market” the actor abstracts from the real world of speculators and financial fraud. It facilitates the mythology that the dysfunctional financial system is not the work of men and women (mostly the former) within institutions with socially irrational rules and norms, but a manifestation of the inexorable operation of the laws of nature that no government can change. This objectification is ideology: it is not “markets” that seek socially devastating budget reductions in Ireland, Greece and elsewhere, but a specific collection of financial speculators whose anti-social behaviour is possible because governments removed regulations of capital markets". You can read the rest of John Weeks' post on Social Europe Journal here.