Only three years ago, the world economy seemed poised on the edge of catastrophe, as financial firestorms ripped through East Asia, Russia and Latin America. A sustained period of significant growth in the US, however, seemed to save the day against all the odds. So impressive was the surface appearance of this rescue mission that all manner of commentators proclaimed#once again#that a #new economy# or #new paradigm# of unlimited and harmonious growth had been forged. Today, as recession looms, the babble about internet start-ups is exposed as vapid. Yet the pundits are no nearer an understanding of how or why the boom turned into a bubble, or why the bubble has burst. In this crisp and forensic book, Robert Brenner demonstrates that the boom was always a fragile phenomenon#buoyed up by absurd levels of debt and stock-market overvaluation#which never broke free from the fundamental malady of overcapacity and overproduction which continues to afflict the global economy