ABSTRACT
Capitalism is today in a systemic crisis that started in the summer of 2007. Financial instability arose from the difficulties inherent in a particular segment of US financial markets and then spread to the rest of the world. Hey, presto! the financial crisis mutated into a banking crisis and, in less than a year, it became a full-blown crisis of the real economy. The recession is likely to be a prolonged one, even if one accepts that the feeble recovery, if there is a recovery at all, will not dive into another depression. In the medium term, therefore, capitalism may well face a prolonged period of stagnation with mass unemployment.
