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From crisis to crisis: Capitalism, chaos and constant unpredictability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Anis Chowdhury  and
Piotr Żuk
Anis Chowdhury*
Affiliation:
UNSW Canberra, Australia; Western Sydney University, Australia
Piotr Żuk
Affiliation:
University of Wrocław, Poland
*
Anis Chowdhury, School of Business, UNSW Canberra, Northcott Drive, PO Box 7916, Campbell, ACT 2610, Australia; School of Social Sciences & Psychology, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith NSW 2751, Australia. Email: anis.chowdhury@adfa.edu.au; a.chowdhury@westernsydney.edu.au
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Abstract

Far from being an event of a decade ago, the 2008 global financial crisis is a manifestation of an ongoing crisis of the world order, with social, political and ecological dimensions that cannot be seen separately from each other. The root cause of the crisis can be traced back to the collapse of the Bretton Woods System in August 1971, and the failure to design an equitable and inclusive global financial and economic governance architecture consistent with the changed global economic realities. The vacuum was quickly taken up by the neoliberal orthodoxy that pushed the agenda of wholesale liberalisation, resulting in unprecedented domination of speculative finance capital and multinational corporation–led globalisation. This has seen falling share of wages in national income, growing wealth concentration, rising income inequality and ballooning of household debts. The consequence was frequent and increasingly deeper and wider financial crises.

Keywords

G01E32E44F33O19Debtsglobal economic governanceinequalityneoliberalism
Type
Symposium: The Global Financial Crisis Ten Years On
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 29 , Issue 4: Symposia: Global Financial Crisis 10 Years On; Full Employment White Paper , December 2018 , pp. 375 - 393
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2018

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