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ContentsForeword by Jeremy Brecher Introduction Chapter 1 The Bloom off the Boom Chapter 2 Deconstructing the Neoliberal Myth Chapter 3 The Latest Bust Chapter 4 Understanding the Crisis Chapter 5 How Asia Caught the Flu Chapter 6 The IMF to the Rescue Chapter 7 What Should We Want? What Should We Fear? Chapter 8 Mainstream Reform Proposals Chapter 9 Progressive Reform Proposals Conclusion Lilliputian Luddites Until Globalization Can Be Built from Below An Excerpt from Panic Rules! By Robin Hahnel Boom and Bust Among economic systems, capitalism is the manic-depressive patient. Exuberance, unbridled optimism, and euphoria are followed by gloom, listlessness, and depression. But no matter how often the cycle is repeated the patient always believes the latest boom will last forever, only to feel foolish again when the bubble bursts. And no matter how often the patient reverts to manic behavior when taken off medication, the economic psychiatric establishment eventually succumbs to the patient's pleas to be taken off medication during the ups -freeing the exuberant economy from policy restraints-only to insist on placing the patient back on meds-re-application of necessary policy protections-when the unmedicated patient crashes. The Latest Boom The truth is that neither part of capitalism's manic-depressive boom-and-bust cycle is healthy. Like most capitalist booms, the benefits of global liberalization during the 1980s and 1990s were not all they were made out to be. In fact, most people in the world were worse off economically at the end of the latest boom than they had been when it began-that is, even before the over-hyped boom metamorphosed into the global economic crisis of 1997-98. How is this possible, you ask? We were told the world economy grew at 3 percent a year in the 1980s and 2 percent in the first half of the 1990s, and that low- and middle-income economies grew more rapidly, averaging 3.4 percent growth in the 1980s and 5 percent in the 1990s. We were assured that growth in trade from increased trade liberalization that has gone hand-in-hand with increased private capital flows and financial integration,