scholarly journals Loose Credit and Low Wages: A Re-examination of US Postwar Economic History in Light of the Recent Recession

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Richard Henry Jones

<p>The protracted nature of the current global economic downturn, beginning in late 2007 with the crash of the US credit markets and continuing on into today, suggests that a wider range of policy responses are now required by the international community to get the global economy back on an upwards trajectory of growth. Orthodox economics, with its disproportionate bias towards the supply-side of the economic equation, has proved extremely ineffectual in addressing the multitude of problems associated with the current global recession. In particular, the apathetic approach encapsulated by the neo-classical position, which asserts that the "free market" should be left alone to generate a solution to any economic downturn, has proved a highly costly ideological position for the global economy to follow. Fortunately however, in policy-making circles, a slight move away from the debilitating neo-classical supply-side position is now under way, giving rise to proactive policies that do not wait for the market to "inevitably" fix itself.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Richard Henry Jones

<p>The protracted nature of the current global economic downturn, beginning in late 2007 with the crash of the US credit markets and continuing on into today, suggests that a wider range of policy responses are now required by the international community to get the global economy back on an upwards trajectory of growth. Orthodox economics, with its disproportionate bias towards the supply-side of the economic equation, has proved extremely ineffectual in addressing the multitude of problems associated with the current global recession. In particular, the apathetic approach encapsulated by the neo-classical position, which asserts that the "free market" should be left alone to generate a solution to any economic downturn, has proved a highly costly ideological position for the global economy to follow. Fortunately however, in policy-making circles, a slight move away from the debilitating neo-classical supply-side position is now under way, giving rise to proactive policies that do not wait for the market to "inevitably" fix itself.</p>


Author(s):  
Salman Shaikh

Finance is one of the most crucial elements for the growth and development of any economy. India has adopted the policy of LPG i.e. liberalization, privatization, and globalization, as a result of it the doors of trade and commerce became broadened and today the veins of Indian economy is strongly connected with the global economy. Banks and financial institutions are the significant medium to exchange the finance and let the flow of liquidity to be floated from surplus sector to the deficit one across various countries. Global crisis took place in the year 2007- 2008 in the US economy highly influenced Indian trade as well as majority of the countries at large. In the present paper the attempt is made to reflect the extent of damage to the major countries due to US economic crisis on their GDP, Employment Investments, Etc.


2010 ◽  
Vol 211 ◽  
pp. R51-R62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Barrell ◽  
Dawn Holland

The financial crisis that started in the summer of 2007 and worsened in the autumn of 2008 has involved a repricing of risk and a reduction in the level of potential output in the OECD of between 3 and 5 per cent. In addition it has caused a major recession, leaving output gaps in the UK, the US and the Euro Area currently standing at 3 to 5 per cent of potential GDP despite active policy responses. We show that monetary policy (and especially quantitative easing) has increased output growth in the US and the UK by half a per cent in 2009, and will do the same in 2010Q1. Fiscal policy is also shown to have been effective, but we argue that more could have been done if unfounded worries about excess borrowing had not arisen.


Author(s):  
Louçã Francisco ◽  
Ash Michael

Chapter 5 traces how free market ideology displaced the apparent consensus on economic regulation that emerged from the Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War. Viewed as cranks within economics through the 1960s, Milton Friedman and his supporters built an apparatus of ideas, publications, students, think tanks, and rich supporters, establishing outposts in Latin America and the UK. When developed economies faltered in the 1970s, Friedman’s neoliberal doctrine was ready. With citizens, consumers, and workers feeling worked over by monopolies, inflation, unemployment, and taxes, these strange bedfellows elected Reagan in the US and Thatcher in the UK and rolled to power in academia and in public discourse with a doctrine of privatization, liberalization, and deregulation. Friedman, Eugene Fama, and James Buchanan whose radical free market views triumphed at the end of the 1970s are profiled. A technical appendix, “Skeptics and Critics vs. True Believers” explores the economic debates.


1980 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-49
Author(s):  
G. Jan Hupkes

The early 1970s marked a turning point in mankind's economic fortunes and the author takes 1974 as an 'artificial' vantage point from which to look back, but also forward. Several forces led to the shocks of the seventies: the breaking down in the discipline of the international payments system, rising inflation, the oil crisis, the West's loss of strategic military initiative to the East. The author outlines what ought to be done to improve the economic outlook for the 1980s: The international payments system must be placed on a more stable and disciplined footing, inflation must be controlled by balancing of national budgets, the energy crisis must be contained by reduction of oil consumption via the price mechanism. In South Africa the economic watershed year was 1976; two years later than that of the world economy in general. Since then a policy of strict financial discipline has led to a record surplus in balance of payments, which together with new emphasis on the importance of the free market mechanism and increasing energy self-sufficiency, promises a better economic future for South Africa than for many other countries.Die vroee 1970s was 'n keerpunt in die mensdom se ekonomiese lotgevalle en die skrywer neem 1974 as 'n 'kunsmatige' uitsigpunt vanwaar hy terug kyk, maar ook vorentoe. Verskeie magte het gelei tot die skokke van die sewentigs: die aftakeling van die dissipline van die internasionale betalingstelsel, stygende inflasie, die oliiekrisis, en die Weste se afstand van strategiese militere inisiatief aan die Ooste. Die skrywer dui aan wat gedoen moet word om die ekonomiese vooruitsigte vir die 1980s te verbeter: Die internasionale betalingstelsel moet op 'n meer stabiele en gedissiplineerde grondslag geplaas word, inflasie moet deur die balansering van nasionale begrotings beheer word, die energiekrisis moet via die prysmeganisme deur verminderde olieverbrulk beteuel word. In Suid-Afrika was die ekonomiese waterskeidingsjaar 1976; twee jaar later as die van die wereld-ekonomie in die algemeen. Sedertdien het 'n beleid van streng finansiele dissipline gelei tot 'n rekord surplus op die betalingsbalans, wat saam met nuwe klem op die belangrikheid van die vrye markmeganisme en toenemende energie-selfvoorsiening, 'n bater ekonomiese toekoms vir Suid-Afrika as vir baie ander lande beloof.


1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 833-852 ◽  
Author(s):  
R D Bingham ◽  
K K Sunmonu

In this paper, the changes in the US automobile industry which have occurred over the 1979–86 economic downturn and recovery are examined within the framework of Markusen's profit-cycle theory. When viewing the automobile indusltry as a whole, some of the findings support the profit-cycle theory and others do not. The theory is supported, however, within the context of two distinct automobile industries in the USA—one ‘Fordist’ and the other a Japanese ‘post-Fordist’ system. The Fordist system is entering the negative profit-cycle phase and the post-Fordist system is in the mature phase. The two systems have very different spatial configurations and are likely to have very different economic futures.


1998 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Burkett

AbstractRecent decades have seen a rethinking and renewal of Marxism on various levels, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s when New-Left movements in the developed capitalist countries combined with Maoist, Guevarist, and other Third-World liberation struggles to challenge the ossified theory and practice of Soviet-style communism and traditional social democracy. More recently, the rethinking of Marxism has been driven largely by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its official Marxist ideology, and by the movement toward neoliberal ‘free market’ policies on a global scale, which together have brought forth a tidal wave of frankly pro-capitalist as well as ‘postmodern’ left varieties of ‘end of history'-type thinking. The contemporary challenge to Marxism, however, also has a positive side in the form of popular revolts against the neoliberalisation of the global economy – the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico, the December 1995 public sector upheavals in France, and many others, not to mention the heroic struggle of the Cuban people against the threat of recolonisation by US and global capital. Here the challenge is to incorporate the changing forms of working-class movement, and their new prefigurations of post-capitalist society, into the theory and practice of Marxian communism.


1997 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick McHaffie

The current graphical rhetoric of advertising includes everything from images of the globe borrowed from the US space program (for example, Hewlett-Packard Corp. computer systems), to pseudotribal renderings of a very different sort [for example, Minute Maid's (The Coca Cola Co.) Fruitopia]. The use of these images are part of what Goldman calls the economy of ‘commodity signs’, where produced meanings are linked to commodities through the medium of the print or broadcast advertisement. The increased incorporation of global images in Western advertising presents an opportunity to analyze the ideological underpinning of the ‘new global economy’. The sheer volume of purchased advertising space places these often confusing images before our eyes at an increasing pace, producing meanings which tend to obfuscate and fetishize discourse related to globalism. A decoding of specific advertisements with the use of the Hewlett-Packard Corporation as a case study, juxtaposed against the real spatial practices of the company will reveal ruptures, contradictions, and incoherence in advertising messages which appropriate the symbolic power of global images.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
JOERGEN OERSTROEM MOELLER

Over the last 25 years, Asia’s economic rise has been extraordinary. Its share of global gross domestic product (GDP) has risen from 5.8% to 22.9%. 1 The first phase of high economic growth — up to 1995 — saw Asia enter the global supply chain primarily with labor-intensive/low-cost manufacturing. Domestic consumption was a fairly low share of GDP; Asia was manufacturing mainly for consumption in the US and Europe. As such, it was primarily a rule-taker. In the second phase — from 1995 to 2020 — it gradually turned into an economic force joining the US and Europe in shaping the global economy, exercising significant influence upon the value chain, the cycles of the global economy, transport and logistics, the global capital markets and consumption patterns (consumer preferences and tastes). While not yet among the leading rule-makers, it had become difficult for policymakers (public and private) to make decisions without Asia’s consent. To form an opinion of today’s emerging third phase — post 2020 — the intriguing question is whether the Asian countries have adopted what may be termed Anglo-American economic thinking (basically, the primacy of the market). Or whether behind the curtain, the Asian economy works in its own way diverging from the American and British economic schools. Since demographics and sheer economic scale mean that Asia will dominate the global economy in the years to come, the nature of the Asian economy will be of crucial importance for the future global economy. The conclusion of this paper is that “Asia” in many respects differs — and fundamentally so — from market economy principles. How this prospect should be interpreted is also evolving, as circumstances change. Certainly, the repercussions of COVID-19 have not been the same in the US, Europe, East Asia and South Asia — and this may suggest that socio-political structures have a stronger impact on economic outcomes than economic theory teaches, thus calling into question the global validity of market economy principles.


Significance Services and investment should recover this year but all regions are vulnerable to disruptions. Many supply-side strains will persist, as will the energy, transport and labour market dislocations, which will create shortages, volatile prices and pressure for government intervention.


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