Reconsidering Systemic Fear and the Stock Market: A Reply to Baines and Hager

This article responds to Baines and Hager’s recent critique of the capital-as-power model of the stock market. Proposed by Bichler and Nitzan, this model seeks to explain how financial crises are tied to the concept of ‘systemic fear’. Bichler and Nitzan tested their initial model on US data, finding a strong correlation between capitalist power (as they measure it) and systemic fear. However, when Baines and Hager extended the model to four other countries, they found conflicting results. I respond to Baines and Hager, and argue that they were perhaps too quick to dismiss systemic fear as a useful concept. I re-examine systemic fear in twelve countries, and find that (with a few exceptions), it correlates with capitalist power. These results suggest that the notion of ‘systemic fear’ is useful for studying both capitalist crisis and national diversity in capitalist development.