Crisis in the Global Economy Financial Markets, Social Struggles, and New Political Scenarios

Crisis in the Global Economy is the latest and most innovative collective reflectionon the state of global capitalism, developed in the mobile "multiversity" of the UniNomadenetwork of international researchers and activists during the months immediately following the firstsignals of the current financial and economic crisis. It constitutes the first organic andinterdisciplinary attempt to analyze a crisis that is not merely financial in nature but implicatesglobalization and neoliberal capitalism.Crisis in the Global Economy begins with the recognitionthat the current financial crisis is a systemic crisis of the entire capitalistic system as it hasbeen developing since the 1890s. Taking as its premise that today's financial markets are thepulsing heart of cognitive capitalism, financing the activity of accumulation, Crisis in the GlobalEconomy shows how the flow of capital rewards production that exploits knowledge and controls spacesbeyond traditional business. The ineffectiveness of the extraordinary economic measures taken bysingle nation-states over the past few months demonstrates that this crisis is of a completelydifferent order. A financial crisis that affects the "real economy" shows thatfinancialization is one of the most recent and perverse articulations of capitalism.Thecontributions to Crisis in the Global Economy invite us to consider exit strategies from the currentcrisis--strategies that may lead us toward a new horizon of constructing the common.