Mapping the Great Recession: A Reader's Guide to the First Crisis of 21st Century Capitalism

Abstract

Commentators agree that the crisis that boiled to a bubble in the fall of 2008 (“the Great Recession”) is the gravest downturn since the depression of the 1930s. That makes it one of the two greatest crises in the history of capitalism. And plainly, the crisis continues, yielding severe joblessness and a growing danger of government defaults, bank failures, and stock market crashes. Hundreds of commentators have sought to explain the crisis. Yet much remains murky, even paradoxical. This essay attempts to put the crisis in perspective by mapping the universe of crisis literature. It begins by framing some of the key questions posed in this literature. Next it offers sharply etched reviews of thirteen key books. The result is a multi-faceted portrait of a crisis that is still unfolding.

Notes

¹ This essay, and the thirteen reviews that follow, originated in a graduate seminar taught by David Smith at the University of Kansas in spring 2011. Smith wrote the opening essay. The book reviews, written by the authors whose names appear in the text, were edited and condensed by Smith. Queries can be sent to David Norman Smith, 716 Fraser Hall, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas; email: [email protected]

² As I write these lines, in early August 2011, the economy is racked with worsening problems: government default fears; persistent steep unemployment; and plunging stock markets. At this moment the crisis appears to be far from over.

³ Thomas Palley, “Letter to the Queen,” July 29, 2009, < http://www.thomaspalley.com/?p = 148>.

⁴ Many of Roach's warnings are available online. For a convenient collection, with outstanding material on China as well, see Stephen S. Roach, The Next Asia (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009). See also Richard Duncan, The Dollar Crisis (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003); and Standard Schaeffer, “An Interview with Economist Michael Hudson: The Coming Financial Reality,” Counterpunch, July 11, 2003. Prudent Bear is mainly Doug Noland's brainchild.

⁵ For a rich review of Marxist accounts, see Chris Harman, Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx (London: Bookmarks, 2009). Minskyan analysis is provided by many economists associated with the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College ( < http://www.levyinstitute.org/>). For copious detail on Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs in particular, see the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, Wall Street and the Financial Crisis—Anatomy of a Financial Collapse, April 13, 2011, < http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/Financial_Crisis/FinancialCrisisReport.pdf>.

⁶ Roach, The Next Asia, is a particularly good source on this subject.

⁷ Andrew Gamble, The Spectre at the Feast: Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

⁸ David Leonhardt, “After the Great Recession,” New York Times, May 3, 2009.

⁹ Michael Hirsh explains this history well in Capital Offense: How Washington's Wise Men Turned America's Future Over to Wall Street (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010).

¹⁰ Howard Davies, The Financial Crisis: Who is to Blame? (Cambridge: Polity, 2010).

¹¹ Seldom, indeed, has this classical criterion been more amply realized than in the Chinese case!

¹² Charles Roxburgh et al., Debt and Deleveraging: The Global Credit Bubble and Its Economic Consequences (Beijing, Brussels, Delhi, London, San Francisco, and Washington, DC: McKinsey Global Institute, 2010), < http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/debt_and_deleveraging/index.asp>.