This is a review piece on Peter Gowan’s article “Crisis in the Heartland” in the Jan./Feb. 2009 issue of the New Left Review, in light of the significant number of diaries upon the most recent “toxic assets” plan of Treasury Secretary Geithner and in light of the foregrounding of Gowan’s article in the weblog Feral Scholar. Perhaps the most meaningful way to resolve economic debates is to go back through history to examine what happened. This is a diary about why the current economic crisis has happened. Mainstream economics is typically obsessed with the present-day, at the expense of a longer view, and this is precisely what Gowan hoped to circumvent.
(crossposted at Big Orange)