Neoliberal Capitalism Through The Curtain Of The Economic Crisis Cover Image

Neoliberalni kapitalizam kroz zavesu ekonomske krize
Neoliberal Capitalism Through The Curtain Of The Economic Crisis

Author(s): Đurđica Đ. Vukajlović, Ana D. Anufrijev, Milan Lj. Stamatović
Subject(s): Economy
Published by: Универзитет у Нишу
Keywords: neoliberal capitalism; hegemony; privatization; makroeconomic indicators

Summary/Abstract: The history of capitalism consists of different phases. Neoliberalism is the last one. That is a completely new type of capitalism, i.e. its reincarnation, well-known for its violence. It can be said that it started in 1979 with Volcker's increase stop, but also with the revolutions in Chile and Argentina during 1970s or with the governments of Margaret Thacher in Britain and Ronal Reagan in the USA. The center of Neoliberalism is in the USA where financialization and financial hegemony reached its peak, based on the assumption that the free market, as a self-regulating system, by the power of its "invisible hand" allocates the resources and ensures peace and well-being to all the peoples of the world in an efficient way. However, this doctrine has not bypassed the countries of Eastern Europe, since it was proclamed as the holy trinity of Washington Concensus – liberalization, deregulation and privatisation. Thus, neoliberal market fundamentalism has boiled down to the glorification of market and eliminating the state monitoring of economy. Does the world economic crisis present the end of this hegemonistic economic system? The current economic crisis has been caused by the crisis of subprime mortgage loans that resulted in mortgage balloon explosion. It started during 2006 by structural crisis due to the hyper-production in car industry and the crisis of real estate market in the USA. A rapid plummet of inflated prices of residential and commercial properties has resulted in decline in property values thus jeopardizing mortgage system and all its derivatives that existed thanking to real estates whose value decreased. Besides, three American, as well as some European and Japanese, car manufacturers have noted steep falls in sales. Thus, the crisis that has been spoken and written about for full two years is not only a world financial crisis, but a comprehensive crisis of the Western civilization that has overflowed to all the parts of the world. As for Serbia, it faced the world economic crisis in the middle of its own crises in economic, social and political spheres. In other words, local and global crises have crossovered and poured into a dangerous flow. In plans and forecasts that are aimed at recovery, we cannot close our eyes in front of dramatic economic indicators. Unfortunatelly, the possibilities of recovery are, thus, more than modest.

  • Issue Year: 2011
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 447-463
  • Page Count: 17
  • Language: English