In this issue of Mute we look at the cultural, political and social costs of an era of debt-backed boom now showing signs of busting. Our contributors explore the links between a global glut of financial liquidity and the capitalist self-cannibalisation that sustains it. Tracing the impact of financialised and looted social existence from the micro-politics of student debt and lifelong labour, via the reign of fictitious capital, to the geopolitics of US militarism, this issue asks us to reimagine crisis as a political question with an open outcome.
2007-09, ISSN 1356-7748-206 & ISBN 9780955479694
FURTHER DESCRIPTION
Editorial by Josephine Berry Slater
1. (Section) Debt and the Wages of Easy Money
The Magic of Debt or Amortise This!
Brett Neilson on disowning a debt that can never be repaid
Speculating on Student Debt
The Committee for Radical Diplomacy on how British Higher Education provides students with a basic schooling in debt
The 3 P's
Rob Ray shows how PFI, Private Equity and Pensions devolve risk from the financial sector onto everyone else
Poems
Lunch Poems by Howard Slater
Damaged Good by Andrea Brady
2. (Section) Bubble Trouble - Storing up a Storm
Fictitious Capital for Beginners
Loren Goldner on US political and economic crisis and reactionary anti-imperialism
Waiting for the End of the World
Would a Global Financial crisis mean recession, depression or revolution? Jeff Strahl speculates
Risky Business
Stanley Morgan on Wall Street's reliance on high-tech humbug and hedge fund folderol
Poems
Falling in Love Cream Crab by Keston Sutherland
New Iraq, New Orleans by John Wilkinson
Sung to Sleep by Andrea Brady
3. (Section) Torching Culture - Art, Money, Sport
A Boom Without End? Liquidity, Critique and the Art Market
Suhail Malik on art market boom and criticality bust
Crying Wolf Over Arts Funding
Should we care if New Labour's art funding spree is over? Asks John Heartfield
Art -v- Olympics
Dave Beech argues against elitist responses to the diversion of Lottery arts funding to the Olympics
The Regeneration Games
Mark Saunders on the debt and displacements the 2012 Olympic Games is bringing to London
Poem
Helium Keg by William Fuller
Debt and Crisis Gallery
Liver (depository), 2006, Jo Pryde; Liver (world is your ATM), 2006, Jo Pryde; Debt Fist, 2007, John Wollaston; Screengrabs from Net-Curtain Nazism, Nina Zammit-Zorn; Waste Value, Albert Durman
Illustrations: Chiara Birattari & Zoe Romano, Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Goldie, Matthew Hyland
ISSN 1356-7748-261
ISBN 978-0-9554796-9-4
Dimensions: 22.4 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm
132 pages