"...Blyth [also] argues that the burden of present-day austerity falls disproportionately on the poor and specifically on the financial-asset poor. Drawing on the language of securities contract and trading, he describes present-day austerity as a 'class-specific put-option,' one that is 'written on the majority of asset poor OECD citizens' (Blyth 2013, 258). By this Blyth means that the dynamics of austerity, especially the transformation of private into public debt that foreshadowed the rolling out of austerity measures, has effectively drawn the financial-asset poor into a project of bailing out and re-liquidating the assets (the loans and mortgages) that banks had sold and contracted out for trade on finance markets. Contemporary austerity, then, should not be confused with a project that simply benefits (or bails out) financial institutions and elites. Instead, austerity should be understood as a project that benefits the financial-asset rich, especially that part of the population holding contracts on mortgages, loans, superannuation, and other assets that are traded on financial markets."
Lisa Adkins The Time of Money (2018) p.52
