Jonathan Levy - Instability and Inequality: American Capitalism after the Volcker Shock of 1980

[@thattimestampguy]

0:00 Introduction 1:45 The 2008 Financial Crisis, a.k.a. The Great Recession 3:24 Levy begins 6:11 Post-1980, It's about Liquidity Preference 9:55 7:27 A Liquid Asset is easily convertible + Super Liquid = Money - Super Illiquid = A Depreciated Factory 10:59 July 1st 1982, Chair Paul Volcker

[@tomroberts5515]

When did you start stamping times ? Me 2016

[@discountchocolate4577]

This explains so much about the present political economy in ways that I previously couldn't articulate. In the wake of the collapse of the Third Way branch of neoliberal ideology in 2016, the absence of political imagination for a future that isn't either nostalgic or apocalyptic is a direct consequence of the shift away from long-term investments in productive forms of capital towards short-term investments in financial capital, because for nearly the _entire neoliberal epoch_ since the Volcker shock, the rentiers _whose businesses don't even make anything useful_ have reigned supreme, because their openly vampiric business model has remained more profitable (at least in the short run) even _after_ interest rates came back down. _This_ is why we can't seem to invest in civilian public infrastructure anymore without corporate lobbyists making sure some Wall Street vultures get to skim off the top, why many parts of Build Back Better that mostly only benefited the working class and the public were shot down so easily. The sort of public investment we've seen in western and northern Europe, in Japan and Korea, and most recently in China - high-speed rail, universal healthcare, transitioning towards green energy, and the like - won't come back to the US under current conditions. Not before the finance capitalist rent-seekers, who make old-school industrial capitalists look like they're doing honest work, are brought to heel.

[@robertortiz-wilson1588]

Dope.

[@LandDestroyer]

Thanks for uploading this. I'll probably rewatch starting 20 minutes in

[@porgguy4962]

I didn't know one of the boys from Jackass was an Economics Professor.

[@anjankatta1864]

Amazing overview!

[@bleacherz7503]

Lowering cost of capital for corporations = lowering interest earned for savers

[@michaelxpettis]

If Levy were to read "Trade Wars are Class Wars", or the Mian, Straub, Sufi papers, I think he would have a much deeper understanding of what happened in the 1980s to change the world of finance and set off growing income inequality (and the two are related). Levy argues for example that finance changed because of the way business schools taught it in the 1980s. Actually the teaching of finance changed because of the change in global savings in the 1970s (reverting, in a way, to conditions of the 1890s, more than 100 years earlier), which saw itself even in the way Wall Street firms changed in the 1980s.

[@anjankatta1864]

Do the Sufi papers go beyond trade wars are class wars? Anything it says that pettis doesnt?

[@allthemarbles5465]

Your going to seriously ignore alan greenspan and blame Volcker for hiking interests rates into the worst inflation since the greenback and the continental? ROFLMAO! I could talk for longer on how your wrong. If we kept interest rates at 16% we'd be better off. WHO BORROWS IN THE BOND MARKET? Corporations...You need to revisit the Austrians. Mises, rothbard and bombowerg were right.

[@allthemarbles5465]

If you aren't monetizing your profits. your company is worthless. Whether it's today or tomorrow. if you aren't paying dividends on an ebidta basis. Your worthless.

[@kvaka009]

You should write a history book that no one will read.