Ramaa Vasudevan teaches economics at Colorado State University. She is the author of Things Fall Apart: From the Crash of 2008 to the Great Slump.
Advocates of crypto claimed that it would liberate ordinary people from the constraints of big finance and state-backed money. In reality, it’s become a vehicle for high-risk financial speculation, with the same narrow elite harvesting the gains.
COVID-19 has caused unprecedented disruption to the world economy, shining a harsh light on the frailties of global capitalism. But there won’t be a progressive paradigm shift coming out of the crisis without a dramatic upsurge of collective action.
In spite of mass unemployment and a public health catastrophe, the stock market has been thriving, thanks to massive intervention by the Federal Reserve. We have to break the doom loop that links the Fed to the interests of financial megafirms.
The dysfunctions of modern capitalism have left us perilously exposed to a public health catastrophe. We must build on the solidarity engendered by this crisis to fight for a different world.