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Sto caricando le informazioni... Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisationdi Grace Blakeley
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. The last time there had been run a on a British bank was 1886, when Overend, Gurney and Company folded after their appeals to the Bank of England for support fell on deaf ears. Then, in 2008, on the brink of collapse after lending too much money to mortgage-hungry customers, Northern Rock was saved in the largest bank bail-out in history. But why, over one hundred years later, did the Bank of England change tack and intervene? The answer is that, in the years between 1886 and 2008, the UK economy had transformed, and was now more reliant on banks than ever before -- without them, almost every area of economic activity would have ground to a halt. This signifies a fundamental change in the UK's economic model, and this fundamental change has a name- financialisation. Stolen tells the story of how and why this financialisation occurred, what it means for our society and politics, and what the left can do to fight it. At present, the odds are stacked against labour and in favour of finance capital. But what follows it will be determined by which group - the many or the few - manages to take power in this moment of crisis. How we understand this moment, and what we do with it, will determine the course of the future. Blakely delivers a scathing, thorough and very readable account of why the move to 'financialisation' - that is, a vast portion of economic growth has moved to the finance sector rather than the manufacturing or service. As she puts it; the majority of wealth is in the hands of those who make their money from the money they have, rather than those who work for a living. Decades of regulation encouraging this behaviour, along with the selling off of public services and the financialisaton of public life has lead directly to the crash of 2007, austerity and the continuing economic uncertainty that has seen the driving down of wages in real terms. Over each section Blakely lays out the history of how we got here with clarity - the Bretton Woods accord, the post war consensus, and the breaking of this with financial deregulation in the 70s and 80s - and the complete red in tooth and claw free for all since the end of the cold war. I've seen a few negative reviews where it has been said that the author "doesn't understand economics" which is patently untrue; she has a very through grasp of economic theory, and recognises that it is far from being the clear-cut science that many pretend, that it relies on assumptions in prejudices and and understanding that humans are not the 'rational actors' portrayed by classical economics. Blakely very much wears her own bias on her sleeve - as well as lambasting right -wing economics she calls for socialist policies - but also criticises Keynes and Piketty where she feels they deserve it, while drawing on their good ideas. After all this, however, I confess I struggled with the final chapter, on how we fix the situation. Partly, the author loses some of the readability in laying out her vision for the future; suddenly there is less verve and clarity, and it begins to read more like an academic paper. The other problem, though, is that she doesn't shy away from how huge a change needs to be made; it's not just the relatively minor legislation that a government can enact, but root and branch change not just on the level of that undertaken by the post-war Atlee government, but the far greater changes they proposed but were forced to back down from. Blakely also recognises that the forces of international capital would fight these changes before, during and after they were enacted. Frankly, the scale and difficulty of the changes she suggests are beyond daunting, but that doesn’t detract from their veracity. Grace Blakely has given a vital critique of what many call late-stage capitalism, pointing out just how destructive it is, in so many ways, as well as a potential way forward, This book should be on every radical reading list, beside Naomi Klein and Barbara Ehrenreich and Rutger Bregman - and, if you’re wanting more optimism, The Spirit Level and The Optimist’s Guide to the Future. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
A must-read polemic about why the 'recovery' from the 2007-08 crash mostly benefited the 1%, and how democratic socialism can save us from a new crash and climate catastrophe. For decades, it has been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. In the decade leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, booming banks, rising house prices and cheap consumer goods propped up living standards in the rich world. Thirty years of rocketing debt and financial wizardry had masked the deep underlying fragility of finance-led growth, and in 2008 we were forced to pay up. The decade since has witnessed all kinds of morbid symptoms, as all around the rich world, wages and productivity are stagnant, inequality is rising, and ecological systems are collapsing. Stolen is a history of finance-led growth and a guide as to how we might escape it. We've sat back as financial capitalism has stolen our economies, our environment and even the future itself. Now, we have an opportunity to change course. What happens next is up to us. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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