Transcript The Global Financial Crisis and Care: Context and Gender Aware Responses Isabella Bakker, York University [email protected] WIDE Conference Care Economy and Care Crisis, June 20, 2009

The Global Financial Crisis
and Care: Context and
Gender Aware Responses
Isabella Bakker, York University
[email protected]
WIDE Conference Care Economy
and Care Crisis, June 20, 2009
Three perspectives on capitalist crises,
accumulation & care
1.
Market fundamentalists and “pure” neo-liberals:
capitalism is an economically efficient system &
crises are short-term & self-correcting. Markets
should be allowed to self-regulate.
2.
Most economists: capitalist accumulation is unstable
& crises are endemic. They require macroeconomic
planning & political intervention to allow for
stabilization & the resumption of “balanced growth.”
Both of these perspectives generally treat the Care
Economy as an ‘externality’ and as the ‘safety net of
last resort.’
Another View
3.
The radical position: Capitalism is a system of
power. It does not involve the accumulation of goods
for livelihood and social well-being, but accumulation
of monetary values which in turn allows for control
over society & the labour of others.
The goal of capitalist accumulation has nothing to do
with livelihood, it has everything to do with increasing
the social power, wealth & control of the few.
Sees Care Economy as a producer of labour & of
values, subsidizes capital; social reproduction is part
of and constitutive of production (Power, Production and
Social Reproduction: Human In/security in the Global Political
Economy, Palgrave Macmillan 2003).
Context: seven features of capitalism 1989-2009
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Turnover time of capital accelerates, profits boom & rates of
exploitation of people & nature increase.
Political power of free enterprise & the propertied fully restored,
unprecedented growth of a global plutocracy.
Subordination of state forms to capital (following some socialization
and nationalization of the means of production 1917-1989).
Governments promote market + privatization + workfare + cut
provisions for families, education, health, leading to privatisation of
risk for a majority; state guarantees (socializes) risks for big capital,
e.g. huge bail-outs, subsidies.
Acceleration of extreme inequality of income, wealth & life chances.
Expropriation or dispossession of producers of their means to
subsistence – parallels early capitalist dispossession, enclosure and
colonization.
Capitalist markets increasingly govern food supplies, water and other
basic necessities: global hunger and starvation mediated by the
capitalist market in ways that resemble 19th century capitalism.
Context: the Current Financial
and Economic Crisis
2 aspects to consider:
1. deregulation of finance
2. growing inequality and declining wages
1. Origins of this crisis is in Global North - Deregulated financial
markets & very bad supervision.
Broader activities for banks (beyond earning interest to
trading of stocks & asset securitization -pooling of loans e.g.,
mortgages/Lehman Brothers, into sellable assets which
offloads risk to others and earns profits. Real vs. securitized
mortgages.
Wall Street self-regulates: faster and greater profits.
Current Crisis: Financial
Deregulation & More
Exploitation
2. Contradiction of neo-liberalism: Growing
inequalities in US and declining wages since
1970s (growing exploitation) presents a barrier
posed by the real economy: sub-prime loans
and inability of households to pay (debt of US
firms and households-savings well below
consumption) --thus falling housing prices, less
construction, ripple effects.
Shift from 3 Ds: dollars,
deficits, debt to 3 Bs:
bonuses, bailouts, banks“it’s political.”
Socialization of risk for wealthy and the
privatization of risk for majority.
Opportunity costs of bail outs: how
better spent for instance for care
economy?
Global priorities: capital comes first
 EU + US + UK bailouts
& fiscal stimulus = US$17
trillion.
 This is over 22 times
larger than the total
planned funds for the
UN’s Millennium
Development Goals
 MDGs seek to provide
minimum & basic health
& education for billions
of the world’s very
poorest people between
now and 2020.
18
16
14
Total Committed to Bailout &
Stimulus in the EU, Britain and
US
US$ 17 trillion
12
10
8
6
Cost of Millennium
Development Goals
US$ 750 billion
4
2
0
By Way of Comparison
1
Previous Crises of Economic
System and of Care
 Crises of care and social reproduction are a
long-term phenomenon in the Global South
(“crisis on top of crisis”) and a product of neoliberal doctrine (free markets & capital flows,
privatize, limit gov’t, IFI institutions-IMF, WTO,
WB).
 Examples: debt crisis early 80s, Asian financial
crisis 97, post-89 former East Bloc restructuring,
Argentina 2001, SAPs in 80s and 90s, food and
fuel crises (market prices).
Continuities and Differences
Continuities: Crises are endemic to capitalism but
heightened and depended under neo-liberal
globalization
 1940s Bretton Woods-”finance as the servant
of production”
Differences: This is the first truly global crisis: no
existing alternative as there was in 1930s
(USSR).
 Collective Keynesian response but one-sided:
finance rather than real economy.
Discontinuities of Current
Crisis
Size of states in capitalist economies far bigger than
in 30s & neo-liberalism doesn’t roll back fully yet
privatizes most profitable segments.
More countries abandoned (not necessarily
voluntary - e.g., IMF) automatic stabilizers and redistributional policies that acted as buffers.
Once economies are stabilized, there will be
pressure for fiscal austerity - cost cuts based on
weakest constituencies and post-emergency calls for
austerity (“balancing the books”).
Current Crisis and
Care
1.
2.
3.
Pressures for fiscal austerity will decrease fiscal space
and privatize existing social safety nets. Wealthy can pay
for care vs. poor who require socialized system but have
care informalized.
Remittances are likely to fall as even wealthy or middle
class cut back on transnational motherhood: impacts on
sending communities infrastructure and care spending.
Care crisis more visible in global north? In global south
represents a continuum and depends on context: those
places more fully integrated into global economy through
export led development and global care chains may have
more visible impacts.
Toward a Gender Aware
Stimulus Package
Reduce care burden: recognize, account for
and redistribute unpaid work: decent work for
women and men; infrastructure (state
regulation & provisioning).
Socialize risk: regulate finance; access to
minimum social safety nets for everyone;
broaden tax base through global response;
popular and gender responsive budgeting;
ODA/FfD; cost human rights commitments
and align with budgets.