Global Ponzi scheme threatens to implode
From WSWS
Asian stock markets opened Monday with another sharp selloff. As of this writing, China’s Shanghai Composite index had dropped by over 8 percent and Japan’s Nikkei, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and Australia’s All Ordinaries were all down by more than 3 percent. China’s central bank was preparing another round of cash infusions into the country’s financial markets.
The global panic, which has wiped out over a trillion dollars in stock values in the US alone, has shattered the claim that the US and world economies are in the midst of an economic recovery.
Prompted by decelerating economic growth in China, a collapse of financial markets and currencies in the so-called emerging market countries, and a continuing fall in the price of oil and other commodities, the plunge in stock prices is an expression not simply of passing conditions, but rather the inability of governments and central banks to address the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system that led to the Wall Street crash and recession of 2008–2009.
What appears to be coming to an end is the period when massive infusions of cash by central banks into the financial markets, combined with a ruthless assault on the living standards of the international working class, could paper over the systemic character of the crisis and produce a boom in stock prices, corporate profits and the wealth of the financial aristocracy—even as the real economy continued to stagnate.
No comments:
Post a Comment