Neoliberal Ideology Only “Partially” to Blame in the Global Financial Crisis? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Alan Greenspan’s Public Discourses on the 2007/8 GFC

Abstract

The voice that encapsulated the heart of the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007/8 was found in that of Alan Greenspan, who served as chair of the United States (US) Federal Reserve through four presidencies from 1987 to 2006. This chapter examines Greenspan’s evidence presented to the US government-chartered Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) of 2011, which related to the GFC. The questions in this paper concern the findings of the FCIC whose overall task was “to determine what happened ... how it happened … and understand why it happened” (FCIC 2011, p. xv). Their central finding was that the financial crisis was not “an act of God” or “Mother Nature” (FCIC 2011, p. 4), that is, it was not a spontaneous, superventive, accidental or self-engendered act or that of an external supernatural force, but the “action and inaction” (FCIC 2011, p. 4) of people. Fairclough’s (2010) suggested point of entry into the crisis has been followed to analyse Greenspan’s discourses, this entry point being “explanations of the crisis, attributions of blame, justifications for and legitimations of particular lines of action and policy” (2010, p. 6).