The Fire Economy: New Zealand's Reckoning

The FIRE economy—finance, insurance, and real estate—is now the world's principal source of wealth creation. Its rise has transformed our political, economic, and social landscapes. From rising inequality and ballooning household debt to a global financial crisis and fiscal austerity, instability has accompanied this new orthodoxy. Yet it has proven remarkably resilient, even resurgent, in New Zealand and abroad.

Examining the FIRE economy takes Jane Kelsey back to her bestselling account of the neoliberal revolution, The New Zealand Experiment. The systematic transfer of power first detailed in that groundbreaking work is shown to have advanced, embedding neoliberalism in New Zealand.

The FIRE economy is sustained by the norms, rules, and institutions of this new orthodoxy—a complex web of global finance, light regulation, debt, risk tolerance, and property bubbles. The continuing narrative of neoliberalism in New Zealand reveals financial crises to be inherent to the very structure of the FIRE economy.

How we respond to New Zealand's future crises, however, means questioning what responses the failing neoliberal orthodoxy will actually permit. In detailing the barriers the FIRE economy presents to change in New Zealand, Kelsey points towards socially progressive, post-neoliberal futures.