Capitalism in crisis: what next?

Graham Turner, John Rees and Istvan Meszaros spoke at a meeting called 'The crisis: what next?' on Thursday evening. They discussed, in the forum at the School of Oriental and Aftrican Studies (SOAS) in central London, the nature and likely direction of the current economic crisis.



Graham Turner: "Increasingly, people are really starting to worry about what's going on with the housing market. We've had massive fiscal stimulus, some of which went into the housing market, and yet as we head into the new year we find the housing market starting to run into trouble. This is the crucial battlefield for the world economy going forward, because if in any shape or form we get another dip in house prices over the next six months, you can be sure that financial confidence will take another hit."



John Rees: "We're quite a long way into this crisis - and there may be quite a lot more of it to come - and one of the things that's now being said, the length and breadth of the Left, is that the Left hasn't responded on a significant scale to this crisis... There are shades of opinion within the Establishment about how they think they might be able to solve it on their terms, but there isn't a voice which articulates a consciousness which, I think, actually is fairly well developed."