Has "It" Happened Again?

The ongoing global financial crisis, which originated in the United States, quickly spread to a number of countries around the world. Since it began to unravel in the summer of 2007, it has spread with an intensity rarely seen and claimed a great number of victims. The rise of a finance-dominated capitalist system implies profound changes in the way domestic economies operate. In particular, financialization contributed to the decoupling of finance from production as we moved away from a Keynesian production economy to a "predatory" type of financial capitalism, in which the role of banks in particular changed significantly: the bank-firm relationship inherent in the monetary circuit was replaced with a bank-financial market relationship. The financialization of the economy had many important consequences, notably on income distribution, and it is particularly through income distribution that financialization affects economic activity. Throughout this crisis, the profession has rediscovered both Keynes and Minsky, or so it seems. It is against a backdrop of financialization that the Keynesian/Minskyian dimension of the current crisis is discussed in this issue.