Stabilizing a Keynes-Minsky Model of Financial Fragility

Abstract

The profound insights provided by Minsky's theory of financial instability are insufficient. On the one hand, as Marxists and other critics have pointed out, they tend to dissociate finance from the instability-creating dynamics of the wider economy. On the other hand, they tend to depict the state as an exogenous, stabilizing, influence. This creates an inherent tension in Minsky's analysis, which also insists, “stability is destabilizing.” A Marxist understanding resolves this tension. The state is an essential and active component of capitalism and its contradictions. State interventions may attenuate some of capitalism's destabilizing processes but these displace rather than eliminate the underlying contradictions and themselves contribute to longer-term instability and crises.