A Mute Magazine talk

As the global ruling class finally admits that the 'financial' crisis has spilt over into the real economy, the fiction that the credit crunch is containable has been dispelled. Will resistance to capital's genocidal expansion now become equally uncontainable? Can anti-capitalists take advantage of the global system's instability, or will austerity measures and gloves-off geopolitics triumph?

The collapse of Lehman Brothers has got the mainstream media hitting the panic button and talking of systemic crisis. But the crisis isn't just spreading to the real economy, it began there, argues Jon Amsden

In May of this year, Brian Marks made a valiant attempt to tie together inflation, the current crisis in financial markets, and struggles of the world working class. Marks wrote:

In a time of credit crisis, small to medium bank branches are failing, forcing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to go in and clean up the mess. Coming in stealthily to avoid public panic and sudden withdrawal of all a bank’s funds, which would result in a sinking of the bank and possibly others in the area, the FDIC makes a quick job of taking over the bank.

Short article from Bahrain weekly 'The Gulf' in which the author of 'Super Imperialism' and 'Global Fracture' makes what is hardly the 'modest proposal' he pretends it is, and perhaps also gives a clue as to what he thought he was doing as 'economic adviser' to Denis Kucinich's presidential run. Hudson proposes that an unspecified bloc of 'Middle Eastern' state-capital should try to settle the dollar-standard blackmail once and for all by offering to buy the US out of the military infrastructure (i.e.

Thanks to Meltdown III stalwart Jon Amsden for finding and introducing this impressionistic but telling survey of what a dollar free-falling towards worthlessness ('Monopoly money', anyone?) means in terms of everyday survival in some parts of the world.

For those who may wish to take a break from the lofty abstractions of financial skullduggery and dollar decline, here's how it looks on the fishmarket floor and in other places where the dollar was once the basic currency of international trade but is now losing its former luster.

Michael Hudson on the fiscal policy continuity from Reagan's supply side 'voodoo' through (Bill) Clinton-era government by Goldman Sachs bond traders (a tradition continued with Bush's appointment of Paulson) to the present crisis.

Resurrecting Greenspan
Hillary Joins the Vast, Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

By MICHAEL HUDSON