The recessionary malaise that now pervades the senior capitalist economies is manifest in lower rates of capital accumulation and profitability. A firstorder consequence is intensified intercountry and interfirm conflict and competition (e.g., within the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement, and between the European Community and the United States regarding steel quotas and genetically modified foods). A second-order consequence is the end of the honeymoon between corporate gurus and the banking, finance, investor, and regulatory communities. Excessive executive compensation and corrupt management practices are now seen as integral to the accumulation crisis. Finally, blame is being laid at the doors of cultural institutions of education and research that helped reproduce the speculative ideology that inspired the high-tech bubble economy of the 1990s.
