Globalization in Crisis


Book Description

This book analyses the present global financial and economic crisis, the most severe in nearly a century, and a wider set of multiple and converging crises with aspects and repercussions that go well beyond the current economic climate. Written by some of the world’s leading international scholars in the field of Globalization studies and related disciplines, this important collection addresses numerous key aspects of the relationship between Globalization and global crises, past, present, and future. It sheds new light and understanding on the concept and theory of Globalization and of ‘crisis’. The authors explore such issues as global finance and financial regulation, neoliberal ideology and policy, the ‘crisis of globalization’, the decline of Western hegemony, world systemic crisis, the moral crisis of ‘Western capitalism’, environmental and climate change crises, world order, hyper-violence and the international system, a crisis of the ‘global modern’ and a global civilisational and hostpric crisis, the rise of the global South, the historical dialectics of capital and social responses to crisis, the future of capitalism and the prospects for transformative alternatives. This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.




Crisis in the Global Economy


Book Description

'Crisis in the Global Economy' reflects on the state of global capitalism, developed in the mobile 'multiversity' of the UniNomade network of international researchers and activists during the months immediately following the first signals of the current financial and economic crisis.




The Crisis of Globalization


Book Description

In recent years, the effects of economic openness and technological change have fuelled dissatisfaction with established political systems and led to new forms of political populism that exploit the economic and political resentment created by globalization. This shift in politics was evident in the decision by UK voters to leave the European Union in June 2016, the November 2016 election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, as well as the rise of populist movements on left and right throughout much of Europe. To many voters, the economy appears to be broken. Conventional politics is failing. Parties of the left and centre-left have struggled to forge a convincing response to this new phase of globalization in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. This book examines the challenges that the new era of globalization poses for progressive parties and movements across the world. It brings together leading thinkers and experts including Andrew Gamble, Jeffry Frieden and Vivien Schmidt to debate the structural causes and political consequences of this new wave of globalization.




The Great Interwar Crisis and the Collapse of Globalization


Book Description

Challenging the standard narrative of Interwar International History, this account establishes the causal relationship between the global political and economic crises of the period, and offers a radically new look at the role of ideology, racism and the leading liberal powers in the events between the First and Second World Wars.




After Globalization


Book Description

In the 1980s, U.S. officials adopted tax and monetary policies that channeled huge new resources into Wall Street, which fueled a stock market boom. To increase profits and payouts to investors as stock prices soared, corporate managers consolidated businesses, outsourced manufacturing to low-wage countries, and adopted new technologies to increase productivity. Government officials then facilitated mergers and negotiated free trade agreements to speed the process of globalization. Wall Street became an engine of capital accumulation and a force for global change. These developments resulted in massive job losses and stagnant wages for most Americans. Meanwhile, tax cuts and the stock market boom created vast new wealth for the rich, and the top 10 percent seized 50 percent of all income in the United States. The result was growing economic inequality. During the decades that followed, globalization triggered regional economic crises, toppled governments, transformed societies, galvanized economic development in China, and created new forms of wealth and inequality around the world. Then in 2008, a financial crisis rooted in Wall Street triggered the Great Recession, wrecked the legitimacy of globalization as a development strategy, and unleashed populist or "restrictionist" social movements and political parties that challenged globalization and attacked its economic and political foundations. This book examines the origins of globalization in the 1980s, the developments that triggered the Great Recession, and the political and economic forces that contributed to the disintegration of globalization as a force for change in the modern world. After Globalization explains what happened—and what comes next.




Global Slump


Book Description

Global Slump analyzes the global financial meltdown as the first systemic crisis of the neoliberal stage of capitalism. It argues that—far from having ended—the crisis has ushered in a whole period of worldwide economic and political turbulence. In developing an account of the crisis as rooted in fundamental features of capitalism, Global Slump challenges the view that its source lies in financial deregulation. The book locates the recent meltdown in the intense economic restructuring that marked the recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s. Through this lens, it highlights the emergence of new patterns of world inequality and new centers of accumulation, particularly in East Asia, and the profound economic instabilities these produced. Global Slump offers an original account of the “financialization” of the world economy during this period, and explores the intricate connections between international financial markets and new forms of debt and dispossession, particularly in the Global South. Analyzing the massive intervention of the world’s central banks to stave off another Great Depression, Global Slump shows that, while averting a complete meltdown, this intervention also laid the basis for recurring crises for poor and working class people: job loss, increased poverty and inequality, and deep cuts to social programs. The book takes a global view of these processes, exposing the damage inflicted on countries in the Global South, as well as the intensification of racism and attacks on migrant workers. At the same time, Global Slump also traces new patterns of social and political resistance—from housing activism and education struggles, to mass strikes and protests in Martinique, Guadeloupe, France and Puerto Rico—as indicators of the potential for building anti-capitalist opposition to the damage that neoliberal capitalism is inflicting on the lives of millions.




The World Economy After the Global Crisis


Book Description

The global credit crisis of 2008 2009 was the most serious shock to the world economy in fully 80 years. It was for the world as a whole what the Asian crisis of 1997 1998 was for emerging markets: a profoundly alarming wake-up call. By laying bare the fragility of global markets, it raised troubling questions about the operation of our deeply integrated world economy. It cast doubt on the efficacy of the dominant mode of light-touch financial regulation and more generally on the efficacy of the prevailing commitment to economic and financial liberalization. It challenged the managerial capacity of inherited institutions of global governance. And it augured a changing of the guard, pointing to the possibility that the economies that had been the leaders in the "global growth stakes" in the past might no longer be the leaders in the future. What the crisis means for reform, however, is still unclear. This book brings together leading scholars and policy analysts to describe and weigh the options. Successive chapters assess options for the global financial system, the global trading system, the international monetary system, and the Group of 20 and global governance. A final set of chapters contemplates the policy challenges for emerging markets and the advanced economies in the wake of the financial crisis.




The Global Economic Crisis


Book Description

From Greece scrambling to meet Eurozone austerity measures to America’s sluggish job growth, there is every indication that the world has not recovered from the economic implosion of 2008. And for many of us, the details of what led to the recession—and why it has continued—remain murky. Economic historian Larry Allen clears up the subject in The Global Economic Crisis, offering an insightful and nonpartisan chronology of events and their consequences. Illuminating the interlocked economic processes that lay beneath the crisis, he analyzes the changing nature of the global financial system, central bank policies, housing bubbles, deregulation, sovereign debt crises, and more. Allen begins the timeline with the economic crisis in Japan in the late 1990s, asking whether Japan’s experience could be an indicator of the outcome of the recession and what it can teach us about managing a sluggish economy. He then takes a comparative look at the economies of Brazil, China, and India. Throughout, he argues that many elements have contributed to the ongoing crisis, including the introduction of the euro, the growth of new financial instruments such as securitization, collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, interest rate policies, and the housing boom and subprime mortgage fiasco. Lucid and informative, The Global Economic Crisis provides an impartial explanation to anyone seeking to understand the current state—and future—of the world’s economy.




The Legacy of the Global Financial Crisis


Book Description

Much has been written on the financial crisis of 2008 – the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression – analysing its causes and the risks for the future of the global economy. This book takes an alternative approach which focuses on the legacy of the global financial crisis, what is remembered and what lessons have been drawn from it. This volume provides perspectives on this legacy from a variety of contributors including central bankers, regulators, politicians, academics, and journalists. They offer insight into what remains of the crisis in terms of public and industry awareness, changes to the post-2008 financial architecture, lessons from the national experiences of highly exposed small economies, and considers this legacy in terms of oversight by regulatory regimes. These diverse perspectives are drawn together here to ask how we can ensure that these lessons will be transmitted to the new generation of global financiers.




Global Imperialism and the Great Crisis


Book Description

In this provocative study, economist Ernesto Screpanti argues that imperialismOCofar from disappearing or mutating into a benign OC globalizationOCOOCohas in fact entered a new phase, which he terms OC global imperialism.OCO This is a phase defined by multinational firms cut loose from the nation-state framework and free to chase profits over the entire surface of the globe. No longer dependent on nation-states for building a political consensus that accommodates capital accumulation, these firms seek to bend governments to their will and destroy barriers to the free movement of capital. And while military force continues to play an important role in imperial strategy, it is the discipline of the global market that keeps workers in check by pitting them against each other no matter what their national origin. This is a world in which the so-called OC labor aristocraciesOCO of the rich nations are demolished, the power of states to enforce checks on capital is sapped, and global firms are free to pursue their monomaniacal quest for profits unfettered by national allegiance. Screpanti delves into the inner workings of global imperialism, explaining how it is different from past forms of imperialism, how the global distribution of wages is changing, and why multinational firms have strained to break free of national markets. He sees global imperialism as a developing process, one with no certain outcome. But one thing is clear: when economic crises become opportunities to discipline workers, and when economic policies are imposed through increasingly authoritarian measures, the vision of a democratic and humane world is what is ultimately at stake."