Financial Evolution and Central Bank Credit: Ethics, Morals, Taxation, Stagnation and Bank Holidays

Abstract

Since the credit crisis of 2007-8 the global economy has been in a stagnant condition, with little growth, little wage increase (Gordon, 2014), but a division in asset devaluation, with oil collapsing in recent years and many other commodities, likewise losing ground while gold and stocks rising or holding steady. Fearing a repeat of the Great Depression, economists, led by Ben Bernanke, a scholar of the Great Depression, acted to save the finance industry and create sufficient liquidity to reverse a catastrophic drop in the stock market (Bernanke, 2015a; 2015b). The strategy since 2009-10 has been to continue this liquidity, while attempting to stabilize banks. While no Great Depression-like destruction of value or massive unemployment took place (or only a short temporary one in some views), little success in overcoming stagnation has taken place with only very low growth. This article discusses the importance of destruction, especially in banking and finance, and identifies the central problem as a lack of opportunity for capitalist evolution strangulated by central bank and government action and the American form of anacyclosis, yet mediated by what can be identified as Durkheim’s social condensation process.