ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses four views expressed with respect to the great recession. The functionalist paradigm believes that the great recession was a moment of instability in an otherwise well-ordered system and explains it by reference to various contingent factors. The interpretive paradigm believes that a relatively new coherent structure which is called the new Wall Street System has generated the great recession. The radical humanist paradigm believes that the subjective nature of expectations in speculative and debt markets leads to financial bubbles, which become incompatible with the real production side of the economy. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) allowed financial institutions to engage in unregulated risky transactions on a large scale. The radical structuralist paradigm believes that the great recession reveals the deeper economic contradictions of capitalism through financialization.
