Post-Bretton Woods globalization is the unstable Global Minotaur phase of capitalism
Evidence
Where once stood the most stable global capitalist system ever, folks like Volcker were enthusiastically erecting the most unstable international system possible, founded on ceaselessly ballooning deficits, debts and gambles. Their controlled disintegration of Bretton Woods would soon complete the new global system. Most people refer to it as Globalisation or Financialisation. Under the perhaps excessive influence of your taste for the ancient parables, I call it capitalism’s Global Minotaur phase. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 216
Categorization
- DEFINE: Introduces the ‘Global Minotaur’ as Varoufakis’s term for the post-1971 financialized global system — a key concept to be contrasted against technofeudalism later.
- CANDY: The image of the post-1971 system as a ‘Global Minotaur’ feasting on ballooning debts is a memorable, tweetable capsule of Varoufakis’s diagnosis.
- XREF: connects to: Vietnam and Great Society spending cost America its trade surplus and killed Bretton Woods — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 172; The Bretton Woods consensus prioritized domestic full employment over capital mobility — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 416; Bretton Woods achieved the densest capital controls in capitalist history. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 420 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- The Bretton Woods consensus prioritized domestic full employment over capital mobility
#qualifies(0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 416 - Bretton Woods achieved the densest capital controls in capitalist history.
#expands(0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 420 - Bretton Woods institutionalized the monetary nationalism Hayek had attacked since the 1930s
#complicates(0.70) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 424