ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a more detailed review of the nature and scope of fiscal crisis followed by a discussion of how economic globalisation, and more particularly its neoliberal transformation, has contributed to shaping the conditions for the most recent financial crisis. It analyses the impact of the variety of crises evolving from the financial collapse in 2008 and the implications for welfare states. The spectre of the 'fiscal crisis' that lies at the heart of the welfare state was popularised in the 1970s by both Left and Right. The basic problem of the welfare state for neo-Marxists and neoliberals alike was the fact that the public sector stifles private investment to the detriment of economic growth. Globalisation refers to the dramatic increase in the flow of goods, services, economic stocks and information between people, firms and states, over increasingly large distances, since the 1970s. Economic growth is of course an obvious objective so far as accumulating surplus is concerned.
