Claudio Katz
Universidad de Buenos Aires y Economistas de Izquierda

 Contradictory policies are being applied to the financial collapse in the United States. Nationalization and encouraging mergers constitute the prevalent approach, yet some banks are allowed to fail. Nationalizing toxic mortgages will entail unprecedented costs, yet will not solve the debt problem. The recession that began in North America tends to globalize: European monetary policy deepens the recession; Japan is dragged down by its own depression; the possibility of a new economic block headed by China vanishes. Initial analogies made with the 1987 crash, and with the end of the technological bubble in 2001, have little accuracy. And many comparisons made with the depression of the 1930s miss the differences produced by state interventionism and the globalization of capital and power. However, reference to the 1975-79 period is more useful in figuring out the changing phase of the capitalist economy. A loss of political authority, military adversities, and economic unbalances limit the possibilities of the US to export the crisis. The financial crisis rebuffed the neoliberal beliefs and the assumption that sophisticated investments can help reduce risks. Speculation is inherent to Capitalism, and the bankers and industry have worked in unison. The crunch is due to a peculiar crisis of over-production rooted on the fake valorization of assets and worker indebtedness induced by easy credit. The crisis demonstrates how wage contraction and global competition strengthen the problem of over-production. As well, it converges with a cyclical scarcity of raw materials, fostered by environmental degradation. These processes have exhausted North-American hyper-consumption financed by the rest of the world. Peripheral countries are the most likely to suffer most from the major effects of the crisis, as anticipated by the tragedy of Africa. Even continued control by the ruling classes in the semi peripheral countries over specific economic areas is uncertain. The financial tsunami illustrates the adverse consequences of Capitalism and motivates the construction of a socialist alternative.