The Fire Economy: New Zealand's Reckoning

(Paperback)

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The FIRE economy - finance, insurance and real estate - is now the world's principal source of wealth creation. Its rise has transformed our political, economic and social landscapes. From rising inequality and ballooning household debt to a global financial crisis and fiscal austerity, instability has accompanied this new orthodoxy. Yet it has proven remarkably resilient, even resurgent, in New Zealand and abroad.Examining the FIRE economy takes Jane Kelsey back to her bestselling account of the neoliberal revolution, The New Zealand Experiment. The systematic transfer of power first detailed in that groundbreaking work is shown to have advanced, embedding neoliberalism in New Zealand. The FIRE economy is sustained by the norms, rules and institutions of this new orthodoxy - a complex web of global finance, light regulation, debt, risk tolerance and property bubbles.The continuing narrative of neoliberalism in New Zealand reveals financial crises to be inherent to the very structure of the FIRE economy. How we respond to New Zealand's future crises, however, means questioning what responses the failing neoliberal orthodoxy will actually permit.In detailing the barriers the FIRE economy presents to change in New Zealand, Kelsey points towards socially progressive, post-neoliberal futures.

Author Bio

Jane Kelsey is one of New Zealand's most acute social commentators. Professor of Law at the University of Auckland, she is actively committed to social justice in her teaching, her work on Maori sovereignty, and her international research and advocacy on the crisis in globalisation. For several decades her work has centred on the interface between globalisation and domestic neoliberalism, with particular reference to free trade and investment agreements. Jane is currently researching national and international techniques for embedding neoliberalism as barriers to transformation to a post-neoliberal era.