The Pandemic as Financial Laboratory

Abstract

COVID-19 quarantine measures impacted incomes, labour and housing situations in different ways, particularly in the domestic sphere. In Argentina, “financial inclusion” polices” were linked, on one hand to the “bankarization” of new sectors to access relief funds, and on the other to the proliferation of fintech to mediate the receipt of funds. Debt, as a way of privatizing the crisis in the ability to eat, protect and heal oneself, solves emergencies in the here and now and exploits and conditions future time. Household debt, as a specific articulation of gender mandates, extracts value from reproductive tasks. Household debt is also an index of public debt, its cascading down the social hierarchy, and, as such, allows for a simultaneous analysis of the micro and macro planes. Even prior to the health emergency, the expansion of financial technologies targeting the most precarious sectors was becoming an accelerator for taking out non-banking debt.