Posted on 08/28/2016 5:54:15 PM PDT by Lorianne
The western financial crisis of 2007-8 was the worst since 1931, yet its immediate repercussions were surprisingly modest. The crisis challenged the foundation stones of the long-dominant neoliberal ideology but it seemed to emerge largely unscathed. The banks were bailed out; hardly any bankers on either side of the Atlantic were prosecuted for their crimes; and the price of their behaviour was duly paid by the taxpayer. Subsequent economic policy, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, has relied overwhelmingly on monetary policy, especially quantitative easing. It has failed. The western economy has stagnated and is now approaching its lost decade, with no end in sight.
After almost nine years, we are finally beginning to reap the political whirlwind of the financial crisis. But how did neoliberalism manage to survive virtually unscathed for so long? Although it failed the test of the real world, bequeathing the worst economic disaster for seven decades, politically and intellectually it remained the only show in town. Parties of the right, centre and left had all bought into its philosophy, New Labour a classic in point. They knew no other way of thinking or doing: it had become the common sense. It was, as Antonio Gramsci put it, hegemonic. But that hegemony cannot and will not survive the test of the real world.
The first inkling of the wider political consequences was evident in the turn in public opinion against the banks, bankers and business leaders. For decades, they could do no wrong: they were feted as the role models of our age, the default troubleshooters of choice in education, health and seemingly everything else.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
What is the alternative to “neoliberalism,” and how can we be so confident it will work better?
It's quite obvious, really. We simply must have much, much more European style socialism, regulation, and government interference with the markets. One must always rely on the experts, don't you know...
Where did my sarcasm tag go?
“What is the alternative to “neoliberalism”
First we’d have to figure out what neoliberalism is, and I don’t think that this essay offers a coherent argument. It reads like lengthy maundering from a British point of view.
"Neoliberalism (neo-liberalism)[1] refers primarily to the 20th century resurgence of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism.[2]:7 These include extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy."
He took a very long time getting around to his point: bash Trump.
The author is much stronger, as we would hope, with respect to economic policy, and what it involves is rather more than production, consumption, and money flow. The term hyper-globalism (accurate, in my opinion) describes a set of policies followed by an self-identifying international political class that has managed to subsume both major U.S. parties and not a few of the U.K. parties as well if the author is to be taken at his word. That is why we have a "uniparty". The revolt against that has taken a very imprecise term of "populism" when it is actually very different from the class-based populism of, say, Henry Wallace, and it involves quite a bit more than what is described with equal imprecision as the working class. The revolt is not only economic, it is cultural, it is an expression that Marx was wrong, which was clear by 1917, that class solidarity is, in fact, not a function of proper class consciousness but trumped easily and repeatedly by nationalist tendencies. It is those nationalist tendencies that used to be a matter of apology and continue to be so in Europe that are rearing their heads and rebelling. In practice, "We Are The World" turned out to be as manipulative and destructive a lie as "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer".
This is not an economic trend, nor is it a trend caused by economically-defined social classes. Neither is it fissiparous, especially in the United States. Here it is a revolt against the bitter Balkanization of the country into identity politics that has heretofore been so successful for Democrat machine politics, a transformation back into an American identity that is, to reclaim a stolen word, truly inclusive. That inclusion simply stops at the border. The really radical political and social concept here is the common-sense conclusion that there is nothing wrong with that. The hyper-globalists scream "Nazi" when they encounter it because that's all they have. It is nothing of the sort.
But it is very threatening to the artificial construction of the EU to allow Brits to think of themselves as Brits, French as French, and the reflexive cry there is "Nazi" as well. Global economy, global demographics, global people, global government - it is a dream that has turned into a nightmare and it's time to wake up.
smells like a wannabe globalist/red-china apologist. in other words: a marxist hypocrite.
since he apparently dislikes bankers so much, one might ask the gentleman which “neo-liberal” was it exactly who founded the federal reserve bank. i’m pretty sure it wasn’t RR or MT.
but, the effect of mr. jacks’ hating trump is the flip side of people like Jeff Sessions liking trump. they both tend increase my confidence in him.
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