But everyone else needs to read this, because it's a very interesting take on the current financial crisis (and indeed global financial management in general) from a man who is quite literally a genius. I speak of Noam Chomsky. He revolutionised Linguistics in the Fifties, and then went on to produce such seminal sociological/political works as Manufacturing Consent (a critical look at the role of Media in our society).
In this particular article, he gives the current crisis a historical perspective by discussing the Bretton Woods system that was created after The Second World War.
"Bretton Woods was the system of global financial management set up at the end of the second World War to ensure the interests of capital did not smother wider social concerns in post-war democracies."
Chomsky has this to say about the way things have gone down since Bretton Woods was abandoned, which was around 1971:
"In dramatic contrast, in the neoliberal phase after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, the US treasury now regards free capital mobility as a "fundamental right", unlike such alleged "rights" as those guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: health, education, decent employment, security and other rights that the Reagan and Bush administrations have dismissed as "letters to Santa Claus", "preposterous", mere "myths"."
Read the whole thing. It's worth it.
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