World-renowned economist, Richard Wolf, explores the roots of the Great Recession and its immense impact on working people

In this myth-busting book Nouriel Roubini shows that everything we think about economics is wrong. Financial crises are not unpredictable 'black swans', but an inherent part of capitalism. Only by remaking our financial systems to acknowledge this, can we get out of the mess we're in. Will there be another recession, and if so what shape? When will the next bubble occur? And what can we do about it? Here Roubini gives the answers, and lists his commandments for the future.

The 1990s promised prosperity for the world: a new era of unprecedented economic growth, with capitalism American-style reigning supreme. So why did it all go wrong? As chairman of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors and Chief Economist at the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz was uniquely placed to watch first-hand as the '90s unfolded. This revealing book rewrites the history of the 1990s to show how a misplaced faith in free market ideology created problems that could cost us all dearly. But more than that, it lays out a blueprint for the future. The '90s, Stiglitz concludes, witnessed a misguided attempt to achieve growth on the cheap - and we must learn from our mistakes or pay the price for years to come.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Foreword Tony Kennedy -- Henryk Grossmann and the Theory of Capitalist Collapse Tony Kennedy -- Introduction by Henryk Grossmann -- 1 The Downfall of Capitalism in the Existing Literature -- The point at issue -- The conception of breakdown in the existing literature -- How Kautsky finally abandoned Marx's theory of accumulation and of breakdown -- Notes -- 2 The Law of Capitalist Breakdown -- Is there a theory of breakdown in Marx? -- Preliminary methodological remarks -- The equilibrium theory of the neo-harmonists -- The conditions and tasks of schematic analysis -- Why was classical economy alarmed by the fall in the rate of profit despite an expanding mass of profit? -- The views of classical economists on the future of capitalism (D Ricardo and J S Mill) -- The Marxist theory of accumulation and breakdown -- Marx's theory of breakdown is also a theory of crises -- An anti-critical interlude -- The logical and mathematical basis of the law of breakdown -- Why the Marxist theory of accumulation and breakdown was misunderstood -- The factors of the breakdown and the business cycle -- Crises and the theory of underconsumption -- The elasticity of accumulation -- The restricted development of productive forces under capitalism -- The Marxist theory of imperfect valorisation -- Notes -- 3 Modifying Countertendencies -- Introduction -- Part 1: Countertendencies Internal to the Mechanism of Capital -- Increases in the rate of profit through the expansion of productivity -- Reducing the costs of variable capital through increases in productivity -- Shortening the turnover time and its impact on the rate of surplus value -- The additional money capital required for an expanded scale of production -- The conflict between use value and exchange value

In this revised and expanded edition of Long Waves of Capitalist Development , Ernest Mandel seeks to explain the underlying determinants of the booms and slumps of the trade cycle. Mandel first establishes that there have indeed been twenty- to twenty-five-year-long waves of capitalist expansion and contraction—and that these have persisted in the period since World War II. He then assembles evidence to show that while broad tendencies in the rate of profit have been decisive in triggering downturns, the ingredients necessary for a new upswing are, by contrast, generally political and extra-economic in character. He thereby demonstrates the falsity of neo-liberal doctrines, according to which the free market will itself generate a new formula for balanced and sustainable expansion. Long Waves of Capitalist Development not only offers a penetrating analysis of the ills that have afflicted contemporary capitalist economies but also surveys, and takes forward, one of the classical debates of modern economic history.

This is the fifth in the important series of essays by the former editors of Monthly Review analyzing the ongoing crisis of global capitalism. Following the multiple interconnected stock market crashes of October 1987, the economies of the capitalist world entered a new and dangerous phase of the crisis that began in the 1970s with the end of the post-WWII boom. Sweezy and Magdoff argue that far from being a temporary setback, the events of late 1987 are rooted in the nature of the capital accumulation process itself and therefore unlikely to be reversed. Their argument is especially prescient when viewed in light of the financial meltdown of 2008.