The age of monopoly-finance capital

Monthly Review

Volumn 61, Issue 9, 2010, Pages 1-13

  Foster, John Bellamy ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 77950161286     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-09-2010-02_1     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (46)

1. John Bellamy Foster, "MonopolyFinance Capital,' Monthly Review 58, no. 7 (December 2006): 1-14. This was included as a chapter in John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009).
2. See also Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966).
3. The current "recourse to finance" and the rise of monopoly-finance capital should not be simply confused with what Rudolf Hilferding was referring to in his classic work Finance Capital (1910), in which he defined "finance capital'' as ''capital controlled by banks and utilized by the industrialists.' Rather, today the issue is one of the speculative employment of money capital in global financial markets as part of a secular financialization. Although this process has enormously increased the power of financial institutions and markets, it is far removed from the much simpler era of the rise of investment banking, which was the focus of Hilferding's analysis.
4. See Doug Henwood interviewed by Geert Lovink, ''Finance and Economics after the Dotcom Crash," December 20, 2001, http://www.nettime.org.
5. See also Paul M. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1942), 266.
6. The theory of accumulation presented in Monopoly Capital was built on the earlier economic works of Michael Kalecki and Josef Steindl.
7. See Michael Kalecki, Theory of Economic Dynamics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1965);
8. Josef Steindl, Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976).
9. The concept of "creative destruction" was Schumpeter's term for the innovation, often involving the destruction of previous capital, that characterized capitalist production. Yet the innovation he celebrated has just as often been a kind of destructive creativity, generating economic waste, as emphasized in Baran and Sweezy's analysis.
10. See Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: HarperCollins, 1942), 81-86.
11. On Baran and Sweezy's thesis on the ''outer limits" of civilian government spending as a percent of GDP, and its empirical confirmation from the 1930s to the present, along with the significance of this, see John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, "A New New Deal Under Obama," Monthly Review 60, no. 9 (February 2009): 1-11.
12. Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy, Stagnation and the Financial Explosion (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1987), 13.
13. Foster and Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis, 49, 121, 129.
14. Paul M. Sweezy, "More or Less on Globalization," Monthly Review 49, no.4 (September 1997): 3-4. The term "financialization" first made its appearance in Monthly Review in 1995 in a review that addressed Kevin Phillips's book Arrogant Capital, which had made use of the concept
15. See Bertram Gross, "The Reserve Armies of the Insecure," Monthly Review 47, no. 1 (May 1995): 43.
16. Paul M. Sweezy, "Monopoly Capital After Twenty-Five Years," Monthly Review 43, no.7 (December 1991): 56.
17. All of these theses can be found in Magdoff and Sweezy's writing. See, for example, Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy, The Irreversible Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988), and
18. Paul M. Sweezy, The Triumph of Financial Capital," Monthly Review 46, no. 2 (June 1994): 1-11. Also Foster and Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis.
19. John Bellamy Foster, Harry Magdoff, and Robert W. McChesney, "Crises: One After Another for the Life of the System," Monthly Review 54, no.6 (November 2002), and
20. "What Recovery?" Monthly Review 54, no. 11 (April 2003): 5-6;
21. John Bellamy Foster, The Household Debt Bubble,' Monthly Review 58, no.1 (May 2006): 1-11;
22. Fred Magdoff, The Explosion of Debt and Speculation," Monthly Review 58, no. 6 (November 2006): 1-23. These last two articles were later incorporated as chapters 1 and 2, respectively, of Foster and Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis.
23. Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009), 219, 240-247
24. Jim Reid, "A Trillion Dollar Mean Reversion?" Deutsche Bank, July 15, 2008, http://www.nuclearphynance.com/User%20Files/85/thought-of-jim- 14july.pdf;
25. Lawrence H. Summers, "Responding to an Historic Economic Crisis: The Obama Program,' Brookings Institution, Washington, D. C., March 13, 2009.
26. See Larry Elliott, "Comic Book Economics and the Markets," The Guardian (July 6, 2009);
27. Steve Hansen, "Asset Price Driven Economic Recovery Underway," Financial Times blog, Seeking Alpha (August 30,2009), http://www.seekingalpha. com;
28. John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, "Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation," Monthly Review 61, no.5 (October 2009): 1-3.
29. Nouriel Roubini, "Mother of All Carry Trades Faces an Inevitable Burst," Ft.com (Financial Times blog), November 1, 2009;
30. 'Bernanke: No Obvious Asset Bubbles in US Now,' Wall Street Journal, November 16, 2009.
31. 16.''Economic Crisis Ebbs, Systematic Risks Don't" Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2009.
32. Summers, ''Responding to an Historic Economic Crisis." It is noteworthy, in this context that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke has long taken the position that the job of preventing asset bubbles resides primarily with the regulatory function of the federal government and not with the Federal Reserve Board and monetary policy.
33. Reinhart and Rogoff, This Time Is Different, 212-14.
34. Harry Magdoff, "A New State of Capitalism Ahead?" in
35. Arthur MacEwan and William K. Tabb, Instability and Change in the World Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989), 350.
36. "Economic Crisis Ebbs, Systematic Risks Don't"; Floyd Norris, To Rein in Pay, Rein in Wall Street" New York Times, October 30, 2009;
37. Henry Kaufmann, The Road to Financial Reformation (Hobotnen, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2009), 99-101;
38. Glenn Greenwald, "Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street's Ownership of Government' Salon.com, April 4, 2009.
39. David Rosenberg, "Market Musings and Data Deciphering" (November 25, 2009), http://www.glushkinsheff.com.
40. "Fears of a New Bubble as Cash Pours In," Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2009.
41. Samir Amin, "Seize the Crisis!" Monthly Review 61, no.7 (December 2009): 1-16, and
42. Capitalism in the Age of Globalization (London: Zed Books, 1997), 4-5.
43. See "Winners and Losers as the Dollar Falls,'' New York Times, December 6, 2009.
44. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Decline of American Power(NewYork: New Press, 2003), 249-272, and
45. The Crisis of the Capitalist System" (November 12, 2009), MRzine, http://www.mrzine.org.
46. John Bellamy Foster, "Why Ecological Revolution?" Monthly Review 61, no.8 (January 2010): 1-18.