UNREGULATED CAPITALISM IS NOT PRETTY. WE SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING.

Edward Luttwak, Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy (New York: HarperCollins, 1999) (From the bookjacket: "In this incisive critical analysis of today's free-market capitalism, Edward Luttwak shows how it is vastly different from the controlled capitalism that flourished so successfully from the 1945 to the 1980s. Turbo-capitalism is private enterprise liberated from government regulation, unchecked by effective trade unions, unfettered by concerns for employeees or investment restrictions, and unhindered by taxation. It promises a dynamic, expanding economy and new wealth." "The winners--the architects and acrobats of techno-organizational change--become much richer; the loser, the majority, become relatively or absolutely poorer and are forced by downsizing to take the traditional jobs of the underclass, more and more of whom end up in prison. Edward Luttwak challenges the conventional wisdom that jobs lost in old industries will be replaced by jobs in new ones. If General Motors fires you, Microsoft will not hire you; instead you'll be working in 'services,' often poorly paid." "Led by the United States, closely followed by Britain, turbo-capitalism is spreading fast throughout Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world (only in France and Japan is there any resistance) without the two great forces that check its enormous power in the United States: a powerful legal system and the rules of American calvinism. Acknowledging the great efficiency of turbo-capitalism, Luttwak provides no solutions but describes in powerful detail the major societal upheavals and inequities it causes and the broad dissatisfaction and anxiety that may result. He suggests this is a high price to pay for this great dilemma of our times." In short, the global economic collapse that seemed to begin in 2008 (or late 2007), had been building for decades.).