The Global Economic Crisis and the Global Accumulation of Capital

The article presents a thesis that the current global economic crisis is the Second Great Depression, after the First Great Depression of the 30s. This is a global crisis of capital accumulation, which is caused by insufficient global demand. The author analyses the theoretical output of John Maynard Keynes, Michal Kalecki, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy. The post-war "Golden Age" of the capitalist economy ended in 1973 with a deep stagflation of the 70s and 80s. Capitals searching for profitable investment, started to be invested in financial speculation, growing since the 80s. This speculation was enabled on a global scale by the Washington Consensus in the 90s. The explosion of financialization of the global economy began. The author presents the analyses of Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff who argued that this was financialization of global accumulation of capital in a form of world financial speculation. This process was completed by the financial crash in 2008, which was the implosion of global speculative balloons. Economics and global economic policy faced challenges of creating new world economic order