{"id":21465,"date":"2016-07-17T16:33:57","date_gmt":"2016-07-17T21:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21465"},"modified":"2016-07-17T16:33:57","modified_gmt":"2016-07-17T21:33:57","slug":"beyond-the-zombie-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21465","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Zombie Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beyond the Zombie Economy\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n
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The present day metaphor is the \u2018Zombie\u2019 economy depicting the economic system as an unthinking monster in relentless pursuit of a single objective.\u00a0Part of the\u00a0Anti-Austerity and Media Activism series<\/a>\u00a0with Goldsmiths.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a>Flickr\/S
\nJ Pinkney. Some rights reserved.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Economic metaphors are important to illustrate the distinct features of specific economic systems that exist at particular times. The Great Depression, for instance, uses a psychological framing of \u2018depression\u2019 to depict the dynamics of an economic system incapable of recovering from financial collapse. The present day metaphor is the \u2018Zombie\u2019 economy depicting the economic system as an unthinking monster in relentless pursuit of a single objective \u2013 here, short-term profits are synonymous with human brains. This builds on from the well-used \u2018Zombie Banks<\/a>\u2019 metaphor made popular in the 2000s to describe the Japanese financial system, in which endless public subsidies to banks resulted in systemic erosion of economic vitality – the lesson was feeding the Zombie only breeds more.<\/p>\n

There are, of course, other\u00a0metaphors used to describe contemporary capitalism<\/a>; like the \u2018Vampire Squid<\/a>\u2019 used to illustrate the role of financial institutions in sucking the life out of the global economy. Sanguineous metaphors are very popular historically for depicting the role of finance within the economy as \u2018bleeding it dry\u2019; the Vampire, like the Zombie, is a monster with a singular rational objective \u2018to feed\u2019 and the humans are always its prey. Of course, Keynes preferred the \u2018animal spirits\u2019 metaphor to explain the same inhumane aspects of markets that must be controlled to sustain a market civilization.<\/p>\n

Two books in particular articulate different aspects of the Zombie economy metaphor. The fist is John Quiggin\u2019s\u00a0Zombie Economics: how dead ideas still walk among us<\/em><\/a>, which systematically unpicks how defunct economic theories are clung to by policy makers and politicians.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beyond the Zombie Economy\u00a0 The present day metaphor is the \u2018Zombie\u2019 economy depicting the economic system as an unthinking monster in relentless pursuit of a single objective.\u00a0Part of the\u00a0Anti-Austerity and Media Activism series\u00a0with Goldsmiths. Flickr\/S J Pinkney. Some rights reserved. Economic metaphors are important to illustrate the distinct features of specific economic systems that exist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[63,111,2310,14202,10696,14203],"class_list":["post-21465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-banks","tag-capitalism","tag-depression","tag-johnna-montgomerie","tag-open-democracy","tag-zombie-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21466,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21465\/revisions\/21466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}