Capitalism Hits the Fan
The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It
Richard Wolff
published 2009 • 6” x 9” • 256 pages • charts
ISBN 9781566567848 • paperback • $18.00
A breathtakingly clear analysis that breaks down the root causes of
today’s economic crisis
“With unerring coherence and unequaled breadth of knowledge, Rick Wolff
offers a rich and much needed corrective to the views of mainstream
economists and pundits. It would be difficult to come away from this…
with anything but an acute appreciation of what is needed to get us out
of this mess.”
—Stanley Aronowitz, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Urban
Education, City University of New York
Capitalism Hits the Fan chronicles one economist’s growing alarm and
insights as he watched, from 2005 onwards, the economic crisis build,
burst, and then dominate world events. The argument here differs sharply
from most other explanations offered by politicians, media commentators,
and other academics. Step by step, Professor Wolff shows that deep
economic structures—the relationship of wages to profits, of workers to
boards of directors, and of debts to income—account for the crisis. The
great change in the US economy since the 1970s, as employers stopped the
historic rise in US workers’ real wages, set in motion the events that
eventually broke the world economy. The crisis resulted from the
post-1970s profit explosion, the debt-driven finance-industry expansion,
and the sequential stock market and real estate booms and busts. Bailout
interventions by the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury have thrown too
little money too late at a problem that requires more than money to solve.
As this book shows, we must now ask basic questions about capitalism as
a system that has now convulsed the world economy into two great
depressions in 75 years (and countless lesser crises, recession, and
cycles in between). The book’s essays engage the long-overdue public
discussion about basic structural changes and systemic alternatives
needed not only to fix today’s broken economy but to prevent future crises.
Richard Wolff has been a professor of economics at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst since 1981. He has been a visiting professor in
the Graduate Program in International Affairs, at the New School in New
York since 2007. Wolff’s major recent interests and publications include
studies of US economic history to ascertain the basic structural causes
of the current economic crisis and the examination of how alternative
economic theories (neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian) understand and
respond to the crisis in very different ways. His past work involves
application of advanced class analysis to contemporary global
capitalism. He has written, co-authored, and co-edited many books and
dozens of scholarly and popular journal articles. His recent analyses of
current economic events appear regularly in the webzine of the Monthly
Review. In 2009, Capitalism Hits the Fan, the documentary on the current
economic crisis, was released by Media Education Foundation
(www.mediaed.org). Visit http://www.rdwolff.com for more information.
Olive Branch Press
www.interlinkbooks.com
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA
95929
530 898 5321
fax 530 898 5901
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com
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