ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores development, crises, and transformation of global capitalism and its impact around the world through the current global capitalist crisis and beyond. It focuses on a cogent analysis of the global political economy and argues that US and global capitalism has entered a period that is evolving from a deep recession to a severe depression-one that has been fueled by military expansion, war, and naked imperialism. Mike-Frank G. Epitropoulos points out that the capitalist offensive in Greece is being waged by the banks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the leaders of the European Union (EU), and that the rhetoric is that of 'there is no alternative'. Clearly, the current global economic crisis is a crisis of the capitalist system on a world scale, and as such it affects all major components and institutions of global capitalism.
