Interesting Economic Analysis

Robert Brenner's ideas are discussed in this essay by Taggart Murphy published in the Asia Pacific Journal
http://www.japanfocus.org/-R_Taggart-Murphy/3265

Here is a passage written by Taggart with quotes from Brenner:

"One has therefore witnessed for the last dozen years or so the extraordinary spectacle of a world economy in which the continuation of capital accumulation has come literally to depend upon historic waves of speculation, carefully nurtured and publicly rationalized by state policy makers and regulators – first in equities between 1995 and 2000, then in housing and leveraged lending between 2000 and 2007. What is good for Goldman Sachs – no longer GM – is what is good for America.” (emphasis in the original).

"If this is correct, there is no easy fix for our problems. The blowing of asset bubbles is not an unfortunate side effect of regulatory capture or Wall Street's greed. It was the only way governments could keep economic growth from falling below politically dangerous levels once traditional Keynesian methods of fiscal stimulus through deficit spending were no longer adequate to compensate for the sclerosis at the heart of the advanced capitalist economies: “worsening difficulties with profitability and capital accumulation.”