The Trouble with Capitalism : An Enquiry into the Causes of Global Economic Failure

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shutt, Harry.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Business cycles.

Economic history.

Economics.

OECD countries--Economic policy.

Local Subjects:

Business cycles.

Economic history.

Economics.

OECD countries--Economic policy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (253 p.)

Edition:

2nd ed.

Place of Publication:

London : Zed Books, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The recent collapse of the banking system and instability in the financial markets has dramatically shaken confidence in the global economic order. Is the current variant of 'free market' capitalism really sustainable? The Trouble With Capitalism - originally written, with remarkable prescience, in 1998 - anticipates such a development and explains the underlying economic fragility it has revealed.

Contents:

About the author; Foreword: Apocalypse Now?; Notes; Introduction; 1 | The Origins of Modern Capitalism: A Brief History to World War II; Notes; 2 | The Post-1945 Economic Dispensation in the West; The Proactive State; Figure 1 Total government expenditure (% of GDP), OECD countries; International Collaboration; Emerging Contradictions; Notes; 3 | The End of the Boom and the Neo-classical Reaction; Market Saturation; More Limited Investment Opportunities; Table 1 OECD: variations in rate of change in output, private consumption, fixed investment and consumer prices; Ambivalence on Inflation

Notes4 | The Illusion of Orthodoxy; 'Monetarism'; The Pursuit of Fiscal Rectitude; Privatisation; Figure 2 OECD: the pattern of production and fixed investment growth since the 1950s; A Policy of Desperation; Figure 3 OECD: gross public debt, 1970-97; Notes; 5 | Incurable Addiction to State Support; The Interventionist Tradition; Lenders of Last Resort; The Fiscal Crisis: Threat and Opportunity; Notes; 6 | Globalisation and the Power Vacuum; Banking Deregulation; Speculative Excesses; Anarchy in the Foreign Exchange Markets; Offshore Financial Centres; The Triumph of Short-termism; Notes

7 | Technological Nemesis1. Labour Devalued; 2. Capital: Devaluation Resisted; Revolutionary Implications; Notes; 8 | Coping with the Capital Glut; Expanding the Outlets for Investment; Maintaining the Return on Investment; Notes; 9 | Wider Symptoms of Disintegration: I - The Wreckage of Soviet Communism; The Relative Success of Eastern Europe; China: The Great Exception; Notes; 10 | Wider Symptoms of Disintegration: II - Third World Catastrophe; The Failure of 'Reform'; A Common Thread; Notes; 11 | A Crisis of Legitimacy; The Spread of Lawlessness; Loss of Accountability; Notes

12 | Can the Profits System be Saved?Patterns of Demand; Portents for the Future; A Rebirth of Consumption?; Environmentalism: Less Opportunity than Threat; Illusory Potential of the Third World and the Former Communist Bloc; Retreating to Determinism; Conclusion: No Way Out; Notes; 13 | Political Paralysis; The Trauma of the Left; Rebound of the Right; Forced Unanimity; Popular Red Herrings; Strategies of Desperation; An Ideological Impasse; Notes; 14 | Essential Features of a Sustainable World Order; An End to Growth-Dependency; A New Collectivism; A New Democracy; A New Globalism

An Inescapable ChoiceNotes; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

ISBN:

9786612453571

9781848137943

184813794X

9781282453579

1282453572

9781848135703

184813570X

OCLC:

645092687