If you've read this you'll understand how grating I find the formulation "financial repression", none the less I like this series of posts. In them Edward Lambert provides a reasonable definition, at least from the point of view of finance professionals who's darker angels can actually be repressed by the phenomenon he describes, but typically aren't. Lambert's focus is on the NeoLiberal era wherein such "repression" has been deployed primarily as a mercantilist tool for states and corporate interests that see monetary accumulation as a power imperative.
It is very important to note however that policies falling within Lambert's definition of "financial repression" were responsible for paying down America's post war debts after WWII and at the same time creating the most robust middle classes the world had ever seen here and in our protectorates of the time. If that's repression, we need more of it. That era saw the tools in the financial repression tool kit put to broad public purpose both thwarting the ambitions of avarice and enobling the protean creativity of labor. So really its the use of the morally weighted "repression" in the naming of a tool I object to: tools are by their nature morally neutral, it is only the human agency that directs their use that lends them moral meaning.
Financial Repression 5: Edward Lambert: Angry Bear
The Middle Class Is Dead: Edward McClelland: AlterNet
Why Its Not About Money: Ian Welsh
Frontiers Of Commerce Without Trust: Rob Wile: Business Insider
Tax Price, Not Value: Steve Randy Waldman: Interfluidity
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