ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the global financial crisis (GFC) back to the major structural changes from social liberal to neoliberal ideology and policy in the early 1980s. Neoliberals call for, and have instituted and maintained, privatisation of health care, education and welfare. The US health care system, with the highest level of privatisation in the developed world, wastes billions in executive salaries, bonuses and benefits, advertising, determining patient eligibility and so on. The chapter is analysed into three main sections. The first deals with corporations, economic policy and democracy, the second with international trade and investment, and the third with banking deregulation, financial markets and the meltdown. Corporations law has failed to address the issue of management control of board appointments with dispersed share ownership, leading to short-term maximisation of management remuneration at the expense of any other social goal. Stock options have historically encouraged accounting manipulations to maximise reported profits rather than actual profit maximisation.
