Uncertainty, Liquidity, and the Postwar American State

A central challenge for capitalist economies is managing the radical uncertainty that impacts investment decisions and long-term expectations. Building on Keynes' insights—explored in the prior session—into uncertainty and the liquidity preference, this session examines how the postwar American state developed strategies and institutional mechanisms to transform uncertainty into calculable risk for the private sector. Against the backdrop of late twentieth-century crises—the oil crisis of the 1970s, a series of financial crises, domestic and international economic disruptions, the 2008 Great Financial Crisis (GFC), and a global pandemic—public actors crafted policies designed to stabilize financial markets by providing liquidity backstops, fundamentally reshaping who bears risk in modern capitalism.

To investigate these issues, this webinar will explore how the United States has responded to financial market uncertainty through liquidity provision and the ideological foundations that have shaped these interventions. Examining how state policy has attempted to manage long-term expectations and investment decisions, it will also unpack how underlying conceptions of money, liquidity, and uncertainty inform the architecture of financial governance in contemporary American capitalism. 

Speakers: