The Long Downturn

The administration has made economic policy as if it believes that once financial institutions and financial markets are restored, credit will start flowing and growth will follow. This would be in keeping with its analysis of our economic problems, but ignores the deeper roots of the crisis, which lay not so much in the incapacity of financial institutions to lend, as in the overcapacity that has long gripped the global economy.

Read the full policy paper here.

Robert Brenner is Professor of History at UCLA and Director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History. He is the author of “What’s Good for Goldman Sachs Is Good for America: The Origins of the Current Crisis,” available online.