It's a critique of neo-liberal policies and political unions which have defined politics since the 1970s, and embraced by New labour, Thatcher, and most western governments.
It's surprising that many things that British people moan about, such as decline of manufacturing, mass immigration, privitisation, inequalities, are tied up with the embrace of neo-liberalism by all political parties in this country and elsewhere, but yet few know anything about it.
My criticism is that [neo liberal] economics is too much about profit seeking and efficiency rather than the social or environmental costs, the respect for cultures, and enabled manipulation and ultimately the destruction of markets. You will find a number of critiques around the internet, from leading economists, politicians and financiers for more information, you will also find antidotes to it from leading think tanks like the new economics foundation or Keynesian, which went out of fashion in the 70s.
And because the system is so fundamentally broken, the recession is a long way from over yet, especially among certain socio-economic groups.
Neo-liberal does not mean liberal in the sense of the liberal party, its actually another word for Thactherism (although she wasn't for giving up UK control over tax and borders) in short it is:
* The rule of the market — freedom for capital, goods and services, where the market is self-regulating allowing the “trickle down” notion of wealth distribution. It also includes the deunionizing of labor forces and removals of any impediments to capital mobility, such as regulations. The freedom is from the state, or government.
* Reducing public expenditure for social services, such as health and education, by the government
* Deregulation, to allow market forces to act as a self-regulating mechanism
* Privatization of public enterprise (things from water to even the internet)
* Changing perceptions of public and community good to individualism and individual responsibility.
Critics say:
Neoliberal economic globalisation encourages the pursuit of profit regardless of social and
environmental costs. It is associated with:
- Anti-sovereignty: globalization and liberalization is argued by opponents to have subverted nations' ability for self-determination;=
- Exploitation: critics of neoliberal policies consider capitalistic economics to be exploitive;
- Environmental costs: critics argue that neoliberalism leads to more transportation, and that more industrial production occurs in unregulated markets;
- Negative economic consequences: Critics argue that neo-liberal policies produce inequality and deterioration in living standards without the improvements in efficiency which are predicted.
- Increase in corporate power: some anti-corporate organizations believe neoliberalism, in difference to liberalism, changes economic and government policies to increase the power of corporations and large business and a shift to benefit the upper classes over the lower classes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
However after collapse, leading economists said
'This crisis raises fundamental questions about globalization, which was supposed to help diffuse risk. Instead, it has enabled America’s failures to spread around the world, like a contagious disease. Still, the worry at Davos was that there would be a retreat from even our flawed globalization, and that poor countries would suffer the most.'
and
'[There was a] striking … loss of faith in markets. In a widely attended brainstorming session at which participants were asked what single failure accounted for the crisis, there was a resounding answer: the belief that markets were self-correcting.'
'The uncomfortable truth is that democracy and free markets are incompatible. The whole point of democratic government is that it uses the legitimacy of the democratic mandate to diffuse power throughout society rather than allow it to accumulate—as any player of Monopoly understands—in just a few hands. It deliberately uses the political power of the majority to offset what would otherwise be the overwhelming economic power of the dominant market players.'
http://www.globalissues.org/article/39/a-primer-on-neoliberalism
In short the system collapsed because the people that ran the system, knew that governments would have to bail the system out, the other option was complete financial collapse. Point is, so much money has been lost, its going to take a long, long while to work through.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/28/comment.businesscomment
