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The recent world crisis, often likened to the Great Depression of the 1930s, has impacted the lives of millions of working people across the world. Quite dramatically, mainstream supply-side theories failed to predict the crisis. Moreover, these have treated the crisis as just another recession caused by a faulty fi nancial system—an argument that fails to explain why it has continued and spread, with little signs of abating. This book bringsthe real economy into focus and unravels how increased income and wealth inequalities have contributed to instability in the US and, thereafter, the world economy.
Blending macroeconomic theory and empirics in a rare manner, the author convincingly argues that fi nancial malfunction is not a cause of the crisis but a mere manifestation of a deeper malaise that had been spreading across the real economy much before the crisis occurred. Locating the current crisis in the context of certain fundamental changes that have taken place in capitalism since the mid-1970s, the book engages with a wide range of issues of contemporary concern such as the confl ict between capital and labour under globalization; the linkages between concentration, distribution, debt, wealth, and fi nancialization; the implications of debtdriven consumption; and the relationship of business cycles with the stock market and the housing market
ISBN - 9780198088417
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