Obama’s economic recovery strategy open markets and elite power: business as usual?

Abstract

Campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, Obama’s economic recovery strategy pursued in the wake of the global financial crisis turned out to be aimed above all to restoring the confidence in financial markets and, in line with a long-standing drive to create a global Open Door for American capital, a renewed effort at opening yet more foreign markets. This article sets out to explain this continuity, in terms of a strong nexus between US policy-makers and America’s corporate elite substantially linked to US transnational capital. Our Social Network Analysis shows that the (wo)men who made Obama’s (foreign) economic strategy had close ties to the business community in general and Wall Street in particular, while many of them were previously also active in elite think tanks in which they planned for a strategy that implied a continuing commitment to neoliberal globalization.