Neoliberalism and the Road to Inequality and Stagnation: A Chronicle Foretold

Description

Tom Palley has made a significant contribution to understanding the meaning and significance of neoliberalism. This chronicle collects some of his best work to explain how global adoption of neoliberal policies over the past thirty years has increased income inequality and created tendencies to stagnation. The book explores the impact of neoliberal policies on the US, Europe, and global economy. It shows how the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession were predictable outcomes of the neoliberal policy experiment, as is the emergence of global "race to the bottom" competition. It also explains how Europe's economic fragility is connected to the neoliberal design of the euro. Neoliberalism creates a particular variety of capitalism. It is a political choice. That means society is tacitly engaged in a "war of ideas", the outcome of which will determine our future political economic trajectory. Students, scholars, and readers in economics and political science will find this rich collection illuminating in their efforts to better understand the policy matrix that currently dominates the political landscape. Contents About the Author Preface Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: Neoliberalism as a Variety of Capitalism PART I: THE UNITED STATES 2 Economic Contradictions Coming Home to Roost? Does the U.S. Economy Face a Long-Term Aggregate Demand Generation Problem? 3 The Questionable Legacy of Alan Greenspan 4 The Fallacy of the Revised Bretton Woods Hypothesis: Why Today’s Global Financial System is Unsustainable and Suggestions for a Replacement 5 The U.S. Economy after Bush 6 America’s Exhausted Paradigm: Macroeconomic Causes of the Financial Crisis and Great Recession 7 The US Economy: Explaining Stagnation and Why it Will Persist PART II: EUROPE 8 Europe’s Crisis Without End: The Consequences of Neoliberalism 9 The European Monetary Union Needs a Government Banker 10 Fixing the Euro’s Original Sins: The Monetary–Fiscal Architecture and Monetary Policy Conduct PART III: THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 11 Capital Mobility and the Threat to American Prosperity 12 The Free Trade Debate: A Left Keynesian Gaze 13 The Economics of Globalization: Problems and Policy Responses 14 Developing the Domestic Market 15 The Rise and Fall of Export-led Growth 16 A Labor Perspective on Globalization 17 Labor in the Global Economy: The Globalization Clock PART IV: THE WAR OF IDEAS 18 After the Bust: The Outlook for Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policy 19 The War of Ideas: A Comparison of the U.S. and Europe 20 Inequality and Stagnation by Policy Design: Mainstream Denialism and its Dangerous Political Consequences