Capitalypse

"An apocalyptic mood has seized the highest levels of global capital as the global financial system continues to implode. This implosion is but the latest financial crisis to wrack global capitalism. Financial crises are inevitable since capitalist growth has increasingly been driven by speculative bubbles such as the housing bubble in the United States. The increasingly uncontrolled financial gyrations stem from the increasing divergence between an expansive financial economy and a stagnant real economy. This "disconnect" stems from the persistent stagnationist trends in the real economy owing to overproduction or overcapacity. The search for profitability is capitalism's driving force, and increasingly, significant profits can only be obtained from financial speculation rather than investment in industry. This is, however, a volatile and unstable process since the divergence between momentary financial indicators like stock and real estate prices and real values can proceed only up to a point before reality bites back and enforces a "correction." The bursting of the US housing bubble is one such correction, and it is leading not only to a recession in the US but to a global downturn owing to the unprecedented level of integration fostered by corporate-led globalization. It will not be easy to restore dynamism by fostering another speculative bubble, for instance, by resorting to "military Keynesianism."

At the global elite's annual weeklong party at Davos in late January, George Soros sounded positively necrological, declaring to one and all that the world was witnessing "the end of an era." World Economic Forum host Klaus Schwab spoke of capitalism getting its just desserts, saying, "We have to pay for the sins of the past." "It's not that the pendulum is now swinging back to Marxist socialism," he told the press, "but people are asking themselves, ‘What are the boundaries of the capitalist system?' They think the market may not always be the best mechanism for providing solutions.""

That's more like it (see next post!). From the brilliant people at the TransNational Institute