Theme: 2008 Financial Crisis

An irate member of the public shares his views concerning the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath.Read more

A film directed by Bregtje van der Haak, following sociologist Manuel Castells and the independent thinkers of the Aftermath Network, who have been gathering for the past three years to examine the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.Read more

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM). Read more

Boomerang is about what he has come to see as the larger phenomenon behind the credit crunch: the increase in total worldwide debt from $84 trillion in 2002 to $195 trillion now. The thesis is that “the subprime mortgage crisis was more symptom than cause. The deeper social and economic problems that gave rise to it remained.” Read more

Though the situation is often described as a problem of inequality, this is not quite the real concern. The issue is runaway incomes at the very top—people earning a million and a half dollars or more according to the most recent data.Read more

Suspicions that capitalism and democracy may not sit easily together are far from new. From the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, the bourgeoisie and the political Right expressed fears that majority rule, inevitably implying the rule of the poor over the rich, would ultimately do away with private property and free markets.Read more

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel, then chief of staff to President-elect Obama, said in November 2008, describing the opportunities for reform presented by the financial meltdown.Read more

As we approach three years since the fall of Lehman Brothers, the incentives that led the financial sector to take on too much risk still exist. Read more

Did anti-regulation lobbying fuel the subprime crisis? This column shows that there is a strong relationship between financial industry lobbying and favourable financial regulation legislation. It argues that the financial industry fought, and defeated, measures that might have curbed some of the reckless lending practices that many think played a pivotal role in igniting the crisis. Read more

Nearly four years after the onset of the worst financial crisis since 1929, a remarkable unanimity as to ‘what is to be done’ appears to prevail among mainstream Anglophone economists.Read more

Suppose we describe the following situation: major US financial institutions have badly overreached. They created and sold new financial instruments without understanding the risk.Read more

Keynes’ General Theory is 75 years old. In this column, Paul Krugman argues that many of its insights and lessons are still relevant today, but many have been forgotten.Read more

The main consequences of the internationalization of monopoly capital for accumulation are the intensification of world exploitation and a deepening tendency to stagnation.Read more

It has been noted repeatedly that almost no top bankers have faced serious consequences for their actions in the financial crisis. But there is a Wall Street corollary that might be even more pernicious: Good guys are punished.Read more

America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and MedicareRead more

There comes a point when the financial sector has a negative effect on growth – that is, when credit to the private sector exceeds 110% of GDP.Read more

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Apart from the patently nonreality-based dissent of its Republican members, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission could hardly have expected the report it issued in January to arouse much excitement.Read more

For much of the past two decades, the Republic of Ireland found itself hailed as a crowning glory of neo-liberalism. Between 1993 and 2000, Irish gnp grew by an average of 9 per cent a year.Read more

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer. Read more