Most accounts of the current financial crisis tell a story of deregulation, out-of-control markets and irresponsible speculation. But few of those works have done more than regurgitate the newspaper coverage. In contrast, The Great Credit Crash digs deeper, drawing on some of the most prominent radical analysts of the modern market to foreground the key questions that are still waiting to be answered. This volume presents a more complete and convincing analysis of the recent economic disaster, which is revealed as a product of a social order built during the triumphalist years of neoliberal capitalism. The contributors assess current events and political responses, critically examining official rhetoric and hegemonic narratives to point the way to an understanding of the crisis beyond the subprime headlines.

Neoclassical economic theory and development economics have failed to deliver the much higher rates of growth and overall development that they promised would result from the freeing up of markets. This book takes issue with the nostrums that underlie free market policies in both developing countries and the rich industrial nations. The contributors want to rethink economics as a discipline and development as a process. Economics needs to redefine many of its concepts to reflect the complex realities of functioning economies. And development needs to be reconceived as a process of social change, in which each country's particular history and institutional workings take centre stage. They point the way to a much more sophisticated understanding of economic development. The ultimate prize, if theory can be grounded in a more accurate analysis of social change, is policies that really will deliver higher economic growth and greater social justice worldwide.