{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":291,"pdf_page":291,"physical_index":291,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"e853472d289de7f7be99a76c6177a88885f37a72feefd5d89de5ece1efbfcf33"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"In the spring of 2008 the dominant theme in mainstream economic commentary had been that a \"decoupling\" of different national economies would enable Asia to keep expanding at its old speed while Europe and America suffered. By new year 2009 the recession had spread to Japan, where car output fell at a record rate, to China, where there were thousands of factory closures in the south east,38 and to India, where a business lobby group warned that 10 million manufacturing jobs could be lost as exports collapsed.39 The victims of the Asian crisis of 1997-Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia-were battered once again. So too were the victims of the slump which swept the former Eastern bloc from the late 1980s onwards-the Baltic states, Ukraine, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania. In Russia the collapse of the record world oil prices of only six months before led to a fall in the value of the rouble, escalating inflation and a renewed spread of poverty.\n\nFinancialisation and the debt economy had proved incapable of moving world accumulation forward at its old speed in the 1980s, 1990s and mid-2000s. It had faltered every few years and, at the end, threatened to fail completely, leading to a crisis of unpredictable depth. Governments which in words, if not in practice, had insisted that the free market could be left to cure its own faults, were now faced with the grim reality that left to itself capitalism could, as in the 1 930s, threaten to fall into a catastrophic slump, with the collapse of each giant firm ricocheting through the economy and leading to the collapse of others.\n\nUrged on by some of the giant corporations, states saw no alternative but to intervene in the economy on a scale unprecedented except under circumstances of total war. So it was the Bush administration, the most right wing in the US for 75 years, that effectively nationalised the mortgage corporations Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac early in September. There was one last attempt to rely on the market when it allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust-a decision praised by the Financial Times editorial as a \"courageous\" and a \"risk that might well pay off\" .40 The disastrous outcome left states with no choice not only to attempt one and half trillion dollar bail-outs, but in effect to partially, and sometimes completely, nationalise not just relatively small banks like Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley in Britain, but some of the giants. As they did so, their advisers began to ponder whether the only solution to the crisis might be the nationalisation of whole banking systems. State capitalism, and its ideological correlate, Keynesianism, was making a massive comeback after being hidden in an ideological closet for a generation.\n\nFinancialisation and the Bubbles That Burst\n\n291","previous_page":290,"next_page":292}