Hugo Radice
Introduction
At the time of writing (March 2009), it is clear that what first began some two years ago as a crisis in the obscure sub-prime mortgage market within the US finance industry has developed into a full-blown global economic crisis, with declining output and rising unemployment in many countries. As always in such circumstances, different social forces are now proposing responses that serve their own interests; but for all such groups, in order to frame an appropriate response, it is first necessary to decide what kind of crisis this is.