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A Permanent Crisis pp 1–14Cite as

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Yesterday and Today

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Abstract

In this chapter, the author draws parallels between the First World War and today. He highlights the characteristics of the current financial war as well as the influence of the financial oligarchy’s lobbies and explains how their power translates into an intensive, generalised control of the population and ultimately into the failure of democracy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Personal translation from: Martin du Gard, Roger, Les Thibault, éd. Bibliothèque de la pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1955, vol. II, p. 698.

  2. 2.

    Remarque, Erich Maria, All Quiet on the Western Front, Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, USA, 2000, p. 55.

  3. 3.

    See: Warde Ibrahim, «Des Français qui gagnent», Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2010, own translation.

  4. 4.

    Ibid and Rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel’s trial begins in Paris, The Guardian, 6 July 2010.

  5. 5.

    Folk Sam, “For the Love of Money”, The New York Times, Sunday Review, online, 18 January 2014.

  6. 6.

    On this topic, the following book is a reference: Sinn, Hans-Werner, Casino Capitalism, Oxford University Press, 2012.

  7. 7.

    In 2003, investor Warren Buffet declared that derivatives are “weapons of mass destruction”.

  8. 8.

    According to the World Health Organisation, all over the world close to 1.25 million people die from road accidents every year, 800,000 people commit suicide, that it to say one every 40 seconds, and at least 20 times more attempt it. See: Global Status Report on Road Safety, WHO, 2015 and Suicide Data: A Global Imperative, WHO, 2015.

  9. 9.

    According to the World Health Organisation, more than 300 million people suffer from depression. See the report: Mental Health, WHO, April 2017.

  10. 10.

    According to the World Health Organisation, all over the world close to 3.3 million people die from alcoholism.

  11. 11.

    According to the European Central Bank (ECB), “extended unemployment”, which includes underemployment, affects 15% of the active population of the Eurozone and is therefore much higher than the official unemployment rate of 9%. See the third section of the ECB’s Economic Bulletin, dated 10 May 2017.

  12. 12.

    See the International Labour Organisation (ILO) report entitled: “World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2016”, dated January 2016.

  13. 13.

    See the books Mordshunger by Jean Feyder published by Westend publishers in Germany in 2014 and the one by Jean Ziegler entitled Destruction Massive, Seuil, 2011.

  14. 14.

    Source: FAO, Global hunger declining, but still unacceptably high, 2010.

  15. 15.

    On this topic, see the book entitled: Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food, de Frederick Kaufman, Wiley, 2012.

  16. 16.

    Source: FAO, World Food Situation, 2017 and Welthungerhilfe, Hunger—Verbreitung Ursachen und Folgen, 2017.

  17. 17.

    See Chapter 4.

  18. 18.

    According to the National Education Association, an amount of approximately $322 billion would be required to renovate schools. See: Third World America, Arianna Huffington, Crown Publisher, New York, 2009, p. 113.

  19. 19.

    According to the Department of Transportation, one in every four bridges suffers from structural deficiencies or is dilapidated. On average, they have a lifespan of 50 years and were constructed 43 years ago. According to an analysis by the New York Times conducted based on data from the Environmental Agency, a large pipeline explodes on average every two minutes. Ibid., pp. 100 and 106.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., p. 130, as well as 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson and James Kwak, Pantheon Books, New York, 2010.

  21. 21.

    See: “Wall Street Spent $2 Billion Trying to Influence the 2016 Election”, Fortune Magazine, 8 March 2017.

  22. 22.

    See: The Growth of Finance, Robin Greenwood and David Scharfstein, 2013.

  23. 23.

    See the article written by Maria Luíza Filgueiras in the Brazilian magazine EXAME and published by EXAME.com on 24 November 2014.

  24. 24.

    These are 231 million deaths in the twentieth century. Cf. the book by Milton Leitenberg, entitled: Deaths in Wars and Conflicts in the 20th Century, Cornell University, Peace Studies Program, 2006.

  25. 25.

    Read the excellent book on this topic Masters of the Universe, Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics by Daniel Stedman Jones, Princeton University Press, 2012.

  26. 26.

    See: No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2014.

  27. 27.

    Martin du Gard, Roger, Les Thibault, op.cit., p. 698, own translation.

  28. 28.

    Kraus Karl, The Last Days of Mankind, Yale University Press, USA, 2015, preface.

Bibliography

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Banking and Finance, University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Marc Chesney

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  1. Marc Chesney
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Correspondence to Marc Chesney .

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Chesney, M. (2018). Yesterday and Today. In: A Permanent Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00518-4_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00518-4_1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00517-7

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