ABD'deki 2007-2009 Finansal Krizi'nin demokratik kökenleri: Kurumsalcı bir analiz

In the mid-2007, a liquidity crisis and credit crunch emerged in the United States (US) financial markets due to a dramatic fall in housing prices and defaults in sub-prime mortgage payments. The prior analyses discussed the systemic weaknesses of the financial system, right economic measures to prevent deepening of the crisis and the limits of international cooperation. This thesis, however, focuses on the political origins of the 2007-2009 financial crisis in the US context, particularly discussing how financial architecture that is prone to crises emerged in a democratic setting in the last three decades. The analysis is based on the observation of the historical and empirical evidence indicating a puzzling relationship: Legal and institutional changes embodied the new financial architecture through a set of decisions in democratic processes. At the same time, these changes in the financial realm weakened middle and lower class Americans with stagnant real wages and income inequality. On this basis, this thesis questions how it was politically feasible to institutionalize such a financial system in a democracy with observable negative impacts on the larger of segments of American society. Utilizing institutional analysis and examining the dynamics of American politics, this thesis argues that the new financial system provided cheap and largely available credit options for the broader segments of society to compensate stagnant wages and income inequality. Middle and lower class Americans preferred short-term satisfaction of needs through extreme borrowing provided by the new financial innovation and deregulation. In other words, the broader segments of middle and lower class Americans consented on the institutionalization of new financial system in return for preserving historically constructed living standards.