Secular Stagnation, Low Growth, and Financial Instability

Abstract

Rentier-financier capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalization have been in crisis since 2008. It is characterized by low growth rates, quasi-stagnant wages, and increase of inequality since rentiers replaced business entrepreneurs, neoliberalism became the hegemonic ideology, and globalization became the means to achieve the best of all possible worlds. But the rich capitalist world faces the threat of secular stagnation. In this article, I discuss this threat, the main authors who have been discussing it, and the new historical facts that are behind such a threat. Among the threats are the fall of the productivity of capital associated with information and communication technology, the increase of market power, the profusion of capitals, and globalization, which opened room for the successful competition of developing countries. These new historical facts don’t cause stagnation but low growth rates and general uneasiness.