VIII. The collapse of capitalism, Minsky and the Great Financial Crisis

The idea that Marx’s prediction of a complete breakdown of capitalism could be triggered by something as innocuous as a recession may seem far-fetched. After all, recessions are as ubiquitous to post-war capitalism as inflation, bubbles, and military interventions by Washington. Indeed, most recessions in the post-war period were deliberately triggered by Washington to slow growth by cutting off the availability of credit — the mother’s milk of superfluous economic expansion.