Vulture capitalism is a RICO crime wave. We are under the boot of a financial mafia.

My question: Is financialization the last stage of capitalism, and if not, what comes after?

No mention of Marx. Is this inferring that his analysis is now passe and no longer relevant? But the short-coming is explained by Andrew Kliman.

"This lack of interest in Marx isn’t due to dogmatism, but to the fact that these economists are agents of capitalism. Their job is to try to figure out how to solve the economic crisis and how to prevent future crises or at least make them less severe. So I can’t think of a thing that Marx has to offer them. His theory of capitalist crisis isn’t about the defects of any particular set of institutions or any particular form of capitalism. It’s about defects that are inherent in every form of capitalism and are inextricable from it. So I don’t think it offers anything to people trying to alter the system while keeping it intact."

What about government debt? It jumped the shark a long time ago. Someone is going to get a haircut eventually.

A home loan of $200,000 is made from nothing more than a notation. The interest should only be a couple of payments then be just the princaple. After the payoff the money paid back to the bank all those years should be canceled and not continue as money the banks get to loan or invest on into eternity.

So no more loans? Brilliant. Nobody will buy a house or car or etc. Where did you learn economics? Nursery school? Around the bar drinking?

Usery by another name:

The purposes and rules governing our modern capitalist economic system have their roots in Western Europe during the Middle Ages with the merchant capitalists and in North-West Europe about 1600 with the Dutch and English traders. We should not be surprised that things have turned out the way they have - boom/bust cycles, massive disparity in wealth, and almost perpetual war? Simply put, our economic course was set by greedy traders.

What begins badly ends badly.

Interesting article. I particularly like the last three paragraphs.
1. I wonder if the massive student debt qualifies as "private debt"? I also know that 50% of Americans owe more on their credit cards than assets they actually own outright.
2. Are housing prices out of control again? Sure seems like it, living here in LA. The stock market keeps climbing in spite of continually shrinking production and trade. More bubbles forming? Compulsive gamblers just don't know when to quit.
3. Complacency infects every spokesperson for the ruling class. The Democrats purring, "Keep American great." Yeah, right. And the other half yapping about making their American great again, as if it ever was. Nobody dealing with the shrinking pie. All just kicking the can down the road.
Capitalism is dying. The tsunami is forming just over the horizon. Those who study revolution can see it clearly.

Collapse has happened to every civilization to date, especially to the ones that turned into empires. Not all, or perhaps, not many, ended with revolution.

Anyway, the USA is way too fragmented and the ones that the people have their sights on (you know, the "other") are not the ones who f_cked all this up. But that's a story as old as the Bible.

This truly is a planet for slow learners.

Please tell me which ' not many ended in revolution ' . I can not name any.

The Maya, the Sumerians, the Indus, the Anasazi, the Vikings in Greenland, to name a few. Even the warring Inca disappeared not because of revolution, but because of civil war and the Spanish. And many civilizations ended due to overgrowth, climate change, and some because of too much debt and far-flung armies (I would add perhaps a dumbed-down populace, fat and stupid on bread and circus).

Not to say there wasn't violence pre-collapse.

Oh shit.

I am missing the difference between ' civil war' and revolution . While i agree with your list i think YOU stopped the clock at the point thay proved your point.

I have no idea what you just wrote. That's OK, I'm not in this for a fight.

The elite class chose prearranged neoliberalism long ago not only for America but also for the rest of the planet. A few wise nations who remain non compliant or defiant get labeled as the enemy costing the tax payers when the MIC overthrows these governments. Syria the most recent example fell into this category as our capitalists like Genie Oil exploit in the Golan Heights region. These expensive tax payer funded conflicts disguised as Wars are not about threats they are all about neoliberalism. Assad was no dictator he simply didn't go along with the plan.
Monopolies and oligarchy contradict the free market system.

The paid politicians many who were capitalist/bankers deliberately drove the national debt up to the point that we have no other choice than to go bankrupt or to privatize. This happened to many of the regions that we meddled in. Put them in debt and make em pay. The international banking scheme carved out this plan long ago by linking nations under a myriad of other fronts like the BIS, World Bank and IMF. People and population control under various plannings with Agenda 2030 at the fore. All trade to be eventually falling under the control of the financial-corporate nexus with WTO sanctioned "free trade agreements. We have been funding this legalized theft through a complex manipulative arrangement similar to how the Powell Manifesto initiated the collusion of major sectors of our society without a real voice in the process. Absent voices and no representation are no indicators of democracy. Wolin described it best as Inverted Totalitarianism. Its easy money for the master cons close to mafia style.

I found this interesting read in the last day or so so maybe truth is slowly busting through a flawed seam. Depending on your depth of history there's been aspirations of world control in the plan for a few centuries now. Big picture thinking is not all that common I suppose. How many of you out there have seen this very important video? Raise hands if so. John Titus' "All the Plenary's Men" at his 'Best Evidence. Its well worth the 56 minutes and 41 seconds. Its a must see about the fraudulent bailout on the backs of tax payers. I mentioned before it a mafia with more sovereign power than the US Government.
https://youtu.be/2gK3s5j7PgA
http://www.globalresearch.c...
https://youtu.be/CbvN1BiWk1k

No mention of Clinton's repeal of Glass-Steagall as a cause of increased and dangerous speculation. Surely reinstating Glass-Steagall would be a good first step.

Good points. In fact, the current depression began in 1971, when the WW2 boom of 26 years that gave the first Great Depression a reprieve finally petered out. Capitalism is predicated on eternal exponential growth - in a finite world. Well, times' up. We need sharing now, not "growth." And this time around, WW3 - a nuclear one - will not "solve" the crisis.

I’m rather shocked that neither the author nor Dr. Epstein seem to be familiar with Modern Money Theory (MMT). Some examples: “Killing the Host”, by Michael Hudson, “Why Minsky Matters”, by L. Randall Wray, and "Modern Money Theory”, by L. Randall Wray. Some other experts are Stephanie Kelton, Warren Mosler, and Éric Tymoigne, The academic center of MMT research is The University of Missouri at Kansas City and Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

"The publisher of Truth-Out is pro-oligarch and anti-Brexit --- need we know more????"

So, do I take this on your word, or do you have proof? I'm really curious.

Um...I haven't been here in a while...maybe over a year. Is there another Ted that you're going off about or is this your anonymous though-guy m.o.?

Shit, what's happened to this place? Never mind, I was right to leave the first time. Lesson learned.

A simple rule is if it increases your net worth or has future value, it’s good debt. The not so simple is trying to predict the future and whether the predominately male leadership in the world can stay out of wars with one another. The republican
budget solves no problems for the general public nor controlling debt. It has TWO parts to it. either steal from the poor, disadvantaged or middle class. THEN modify tax laws to benefit two percenters, using part that is stolen from the 98% to fund the scheme, otherwise known as the Robin Hood reversal policy.

Time for new epoch. Financial and or climate collapse and consequent chaos should open up revolutionary opportunities.

Don't count on healthcare, legal system, the grid or air travel to be in the future. 3 out of 4 isn't too bad. You might want your kids to have weapons, survival and 18 cent level nursing skills. Let's see if the USA lasts or dissolves into numerous regions. Adios. Las Vegas.

The storm of all storms is brewing. . .

40 years of major screw-ups can create serious fallout eventually.

It would be good to explain to most of us out here exactly what "financialization" really is. From my point of view in its simplest way is the identification/creation of the verifiable value by some self serving convoluted method of an valuing an asset . If that means creating a bubble or a fictitious derivative that investors/banks/governments can be conned into believing that there is "real" value in the asset vs a fake puff ball, then so be it. The beneficiaries of the inflated value hope to (and usually do) cash out before the collapse and leave the people/governments to clean up the mess left behind. In my mind, this is Wall Street theft at its thieving worst (or best if you a Wall Streeter type).

US dollar, propped up only by the fact that no other strong currency is big enough, and no other big currency is strong enough, to displace the dollar as the international currency. It is a bubble, but currently nobody has a pin.

IMO, it means "high-stakes gambling" by the parasites who own everything and everyone.

Agreed - "high-stakes gambling" at a fixed table where the parasite control the table

This is not an intellectual exercise! for anytime you have a cultural system based on competition, stratification, and debt, greed and the ultimate destruction of such a system is guaranteed! The problem with so many experts on this subject is that they delude themselves into believing that we can "get rid of the bath water but keep the baby" when it is the "baby" that is generating corruption and social degradation.

end the Fed..control and print money not the private London bankers from the House of Rothschild.

What shotguns do you recommend?

Very interesting! But how are $80 billion a sixth of $5.1 trillion?

Simple typo. It should have read: "...more than $60 of foreign exchange trading for every $1 of foreign trade." The math checks out.

Is your statement based on research? Maybe it should be 800 billion?

Just simple arithmetic.

Gerald Epstein said: "...there were $5.1 trillion in foreign exchange trades per day in 2016, compared with only $80 billion of trades in goods and services per day. In short, there are more than $6 of foreign exchange trading for every $1 of foreign trade."

$5.1T ÷ $80B = 63.75 = 'more than 60'

So, if we were to say, "...more than $60 of foreign exchange trading for every $1 of foreign trade," it would fit nicely.

Applying Occam's razor (the simplest explanation is most likely), I think it was just a typo.

That conclusion is not a guarantee, but remember: "The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet."

Spotted that too. You'd think when writing about economics, folks would doublecheck the math.

Hey, don't sweat 4 or 5 $B. I wondered, also: WHICH % of top earners they were referring to - the upper 1% OR the upper .01%.

There are simple answers to the problem of over financialization. First impose a financial transactions tax. Remove the distinction between ordinary income and capital gains as when income tax was initiated in 1913. Make a distinction between investing in the real economy and finance for tax purposes. When corporations have large amounts of money stashed off shore make any interest paid on loans up to the amount stashed non deductible. Corporations instead of on shoring profits, borrow at low interest rates using those funds as collateral rather than pay the tax. Investing in the real economy of goods and services should be tax deductible or even a tax credit depending on the social good involved. For instance any investment in a technology or business that helped reverse global warming could be a tax credit. The government would be making a dollar for dollar contribution. Increase the marginal tax rates back to what they were in the 50s.
As a successful small business man from the 70s thru the 2000s, my calculations on what to do with my profits changed. In the beginning when I was presented with the choice of taking the profit personally and paying 50% or more in taxes and using that money to expand my business, I usually chose to expand my business. With the tax cuts of supply side economics, my choice to retain those earnings and pay the tax became more attractive than making the effort to expand my business and buy equipment, rent space and hire more employees. Contrary to the propaganda a high marginal tax rate stimulates investment in the real economy.

Or just keep gold, silver and low maintenance guns ad magazines

Outstanding interview: critical questions and insightful responses. Yet, the question remains: do we have authentic democratic institutions and processes that could block hazardous policies from wrecking societies and the economy, such as is clearly the case with financialization? NO, WE DO NOT! Reinventing politics is a prerequisite therefore to any hope we may have for progressive economic policies. But Kudos to Truthout for publishing such great interviews!

Democracy has been dead since 1787. Didn't know?

Exactly. Politics and economics are intimately and powerfully integrated into each other. To separate the is absurd. We must understand that financialization is simply the development of the political economy of capitalism.