Causes and Consequences of the Financial Crisis and the Implications for a More Resilient Financial and Economic System: Synthesis of FESSUD Work Package 3

The increasing dominance of finance starting in the late 1970s/early 1980s in the US and the UK, and somewhat later in other countries, was associated with two fundamental and structural processes generating the contradictions of this phase of development and finally the financial and economic crises starting in 2007: the deregulation of the financial (and economic) system and the massive redistribution of income at the expense of labour and low income households. These fundamental processes provided the conditions for the generation of major imbalances within some of the national economies, on the one hand, and at the international level, on the other hand. These imbalances and contradictions led eventually to the deep financial and economic crisis, starting in 2007. Therefore, a more resilient financial and economic system requires the re-regulation and downsizing of the financial sector, the re-distribution of income (and wealth) from top to bottom and from capital to labour, the re-orientation of macroeconomic policies towards stabilizing domestic demand at non-inflationary full employment levels, and the re-creation of international monetary and economic policy coordination.