Central banking in risk discourses: ‘Remaking’ the economy after crisis

This chapter explores risk discourses by deconstructing public recriminations made during a 2008 Congressional hearing into the global financial crisis and the role of US regulators, including the nation’s central bank, better-known as ‘the Fed’. However, the chapter repositions the Congressional hearing as part of the Fed’s own risk management of the US economy. The chapter begins by exploring risk discourses in wholesale financial markets, as well as central banks’ techniques for managing attendant risks. The chapter then provides a brief background to the US Federal Reserve, before setting out the methods and materials for deconstructing US Congressional hearings as discursive events, closing with a discussion of themes arising from testimony given by Alan Greenspan, renowned economist and former Chair of the US Federal Reserve.