The Great Debate UK
from MacroScope:
Step aside capitalism, how about leverageism
Our recent post on the End of Capitalism triggered much interest and comment. There were plenty of diverse views, as one would expect. But one thread that came out was that what we are now seeing is not true capitalism (nor, of course, is it old-style communism). Ok, but what is it?
Anthony Conforti suggested in a comment that we need a name for what is happening,:
The first step in defining a new economic paradigm is coming up with the proper terms…new words to define a new economic environment. As words, “capitalism”, “communism”, “socialism” may now be inadequate to describe the emerging economic reality. We need new nomenclature. Any thoughts?
Here's one suggestion. There seems to have been precious little capital building going on is the last few years, so even in a free market, capitalism sounds a bit inaccurate. How about "leverageism"? Borrowers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your shirts.
Slavoj Zizek on resurrecting the Left
Soon after the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, treatise “Das Kapital” saw a resurgence in popularity throughout eastern Germany.
The 1867 critical analysis of capitalism by Karl Marx became a bestseller for academic publisher Karl-Dietz-Verlag, as a rejection of capitalism set in following intense financial turmoil.
Belene: the forgotten death camp
– Anna Mudeva is a Reuters senior correspondent based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Her special report “In eastern Europe, people pine for socialism” looks at widespread disenchantment with capitalism in the region. -
Driving through the dense willow and poplar forests of Bulgaria’s biggest Danube island of Persin on a sunny October afternoon, my throat grappled with a lump of horror and disbelief.
Economist John Kay mulls Berlin Wall anniversary
When the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago, the momentous event marked the triumph of the market economy over planned economic structures, says British economist John Kay.
He explains his views on why the capitalist system reigns supreme.
Getting to grips with the post-Cold War security threat
-John Reid, formerly the UK Defence Secretary and Home Secretary, is MP for Airdrie and Shotts, and Chairman of the Institute for Security and Resilience Studies at University College, London. The opinions expressed are his own. -
The fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9, 1989, was one of history’s truly epochal moments. During what became a revolutionary wave sweeping across the former Eastern Bloc countries, the announcement by the then-East German Government that its citizens could visit West Germany set in train a series of events that led, ultimately, to the demise of the Soviet Union itself.
Twenty years on, what is most striking to me are the massive, enduring ramifications of the events of November 1989. Only several decades ago, the Cold War meant that the borders of the Eastern Bloc were largely inviolate; extremist religious groups and ethnic tensions were suppressed, there was no internet (at least as we know it today) and travel between East and West was difficult. The two great Glaciers of the Cold War produced a frozen hinterland characterised by immobility.
Ghosts of Germany’s communist past return for election
- Erik Kirschbaum is a Reuters correspondent in Berlin. -
Will the party that traces its roots to Communist East Germany’s SED party that built the Berlin Wall soon be in power in a west German state?
Or is the rise of the far-left “Linke” (Left party) in western Germany to the brink of its first role as a coalition partner in a state government with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) simply a political fact-of-life now so many years after the Wall fell and the two Germanys were reunited?
