Energizing Finance: The Energy Crisis, Oil Futures, and Neoliberal Narratives

Abstract

This article examines the origins and development of oil futures trading in the United States to demonstrate the important role that energy concerns played in the financialization of the U.S. economy in the 1970s and 1980s. The article contextualizes the emergence of oil futures contracts by narrating the longer history of U.S. futures markets and financialization. It also explores the halting development of oil futures contracts, and analyzes the three kinds of legitimating narratives that accompanied oil futures trading: reason, the primacy of price, and power. As a whole, the article argues that energy crisis discourse contributed significantly to the financialization of the U.S. economy by framing futures markets as the only viable solution to the energy crisis. The much-celebrated oil futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange supported and marked the emergent power of financial thinking as the United States entered a neoliberal era.