"The Historical Significance and the Social Costs of the Subprime Crisis: Drawing on the Japanese Experience"

"The historical significance and the social costs of the subprime crisis are examined in three separate but related sections. The subprime crisis originated from the financial turmoil in the USA in 2007, and soon turned into a serious world economic crisis. The first section treats the specific features of the subprime crisis particularly in comparison with the Japanese bubble of the 1980s and the ensuing crisis of the 1990s, and discusses why the crisis became re-coupled this time. A notion of financialization of labor-power as an important new trend is also presented. The second section pursues the comparison further by discussing briefly the great depression that followed after 1929, and suggests reasons why the current crisis might not be equally drastic. Finally, the third section probes into the social costs of the crisis in four aspects. They proved
the failure of neoliberal belief in the rational efficiency of unregulated market principles, and concluded the age of neoliberalism."