Should we be more concerned that collapsing share values and widespread corporate failure and fraud beg some serious questions about the viability of the present world economy? Harry Shutt persuasively demonstrates that the present crisis is the culmination of 30 years of deepening stagnation. Faced with a long-term trend of reduced demand for both capital and labor the world economy has only avoided a vast recession through growing reliance on official subsidy and market distortion. Shutt points out that regulatory reform can only work by limiting profitability but that a more sustainable...

Since 2008, we have found ourselves confronted by an historic financial holocaust that world leaders have struggled to come to terms with. All have willfully ignored its long-term, systemic causes and are thus unable to chart a way to survival. As explained by Harry Shutt - who was almost alone in foreseeing such a disaster in the 1990s (in The Trouble with Capitalism) their continued denial stems from a vested interest in maintaining a capitalist profits system which is not only as destructive as it was in the 1930s but as outmoded as feudalism was in 1789. Thus it can now only be sustained...