Great Recession and Beyond: Revisiting the Pillars of Economic Thought

Abstract

The global capitalist economy is experiencing its hardest and longest crisis since the 1929 Great Depression. Initially dismissed, in the summer months of 2007, as mostly a routine financial turbulence, the crisis conditions accelerated slowly, to turn into a prolonged “great recession”. What is more revealing in this conjuncture is that the current crisis had not been initiated in the so-called emerging markets of the global periphery, but erupted directly in the hegemonic centers of the capitalist world. What lies at the root of the crisis is not the usual common accusations of “corrupt” governments of crony capitalism, with their over-interference to the market rationality, but the upfront irrational exuberance of the “free” markets, with their unfettered workings guided by the private profit motive.