Implications of the international crisis (the opening lecture of Ankara University for the year 2009/10)

Abstract

In this short article, Boratav presents a multifaceted analysis of the economic crisis that broke out in 2008. The author, first, points out the nexus between the actual crisis and some structural tendencies that have been present in the economy of the United States of America, qualified as a “dangerous state of senility” by the author. In the following sections of the article, Boratav puts the emphasis on the fact that any system of economic relations that is based on financial capital is prone, by the very nature of this system, to produce a crisis. Moreover, according to Boratav, crisis tendencies that appeared in the metropolitan (centre) countries will affect several countries (Latin America, Turkey, some countries of Eastern Europe, and Russia, among others), and will exert a negative effect on the take-off process they have recently entered. The author criticizes the insensitiveness of the policy-makers, and questions to what extent this insensitivity is a result of unawareness. If crisis remedies are merely concerned with a change in the nature of those actors/institutions that are supposed to regulate economy (including a re-configuration of global power balance) not a single change in the socio-economic system or a shift in the type of policy instruments to intervene with/regulate the economy seem possible, argues the author.