ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the European core-periphery divergences in the period preceding the crisis (1999–2008). It outlines the evolution of the French economy since the formation of Monetary Union. The book also presents an interpretation of the crisis that differs from the 'consensus narrative', which saw the crisis as a standard balance of payment crisis along the lines of the models applied to the developing countries. It focuses on the internal divides within two countries, Germany and Italy, representative, respectively, of the core and the periphery. The book also focuses on the factors that interrupted the golden age of post-war capitalist development in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and argues that the great inflation of the 1970s, associated with political and social tensions, intertwined discontinuities in the modus operandi of western capitalist countries.
